I know what you're talking about Kris, I really do; the area in which we grew up was very Irish Catholic - I was Catholic. But when I tell you that I grew up with her, I mean I knew her family very well (including her siblings), our mothers were close, and I spent some time in her house throughout our childhood. Don't get me wrong, she suffered the loss of her mother at a very young age and that was certainly difficult. And her father was not the easiest man, but I'm just saying that she paints a very horrid picture and it simply wasn't any worse at her house than most everyone else we knew. We lived in a working class town in the 60's and 70's in a regular run of the mill housing development. Having been a part of the first generation of settlers that moved out from NYC into our area of LI, I can tell you that there were many families envious of us. When I hear her bash it the way she so often does, it just grates on my nerves. She makes it seem like she was locked in the closet, beaten and starved and I know that wasn't so.
I think some people make thier whole lives about where they came from instead of where they are going and I see so much of that with large media personalities, movie and tv stars and it's getting old. She has had a successful professional and public career and kudos to her for making it so! But the rest of it, I wish she would spare us.