The New First Ladies

When Mary Todd Lincoln was in the White House she used to hold seances.  Everyone thought she was a nut case.  Well, here's a better one.  Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of the new Prime Minister of Japan, has been to Venus.  She says it is very green there.  She also says that Tom Cruise was Japanese in another life and they know each other.  She is waiting to go to Hollywood to meet him, at which point he will greet her with the nonchalant "Hi, it's been a long time"! and then they will make a movie together.  Could I make this up?  It's all true!.

Miyuki Hatoyama

There was a time when being First Lady of anything meant posessing a certain sense of decorum and poise. 
Bess Truman, Bernadette Pompidou, Mamie Eisenhower?  Talk about staying in the background.  Practically invisible.  Now we have a guitar strutting model in the Elysee Palace who used to sleep with Mick Jagger, and a hot, smart, hula hooping mom in the White House.

I tell you - what's this world coming to?  Well I'll tell you - smart women are no longer listening to men.  They are doing their own thing and loving it.  Why didn't we learn this years ago?  When I was young we had to take Home Economics classes.  That's where you learned to make whoopie pies and sew a straight seam.  What they didn't tell you was that you were going to subjugate yourself and become someone else's slave for a good thirty or forty years.  Now that's Home Economics.  I wish I could have gone to Shop class.  At least that way I would know how to run a band saw.  No one had ever washed my socks, or folded my towels.  My sister makes her husband do his own laundry. Brilliant!  And he does it!  I always said my brother-in-law was a saint.

But cooking and sewing aren't enough.   We burden ourselves with pets, other people's children, car pools, baking cookies, hosting the perfect birthday parties, ridding ourselves of fat stomachs, making a fabulous tarte tatin, and bringing home the bacon.

And then they expect us to look good too.  And if we don't they will just go and grab another gullible woman.  Gird your loins ladies.  Grab your swords, put it on the line and say NO!  You'll be amazed at how good it feels.

Say what???

In the Incredible But True department, which is just down the hall on the left, is this photo, courtesy of my friend, comedian Joey Villagomez.  Now I love the Dollar Store, but steak???? That's taking the saving money thing way too far.  Very scary.

Next up from the creative types in the Incredible But True Dept. is this photo of La Michelle in her best hula hoop form.  I wonder if they gave her one of those weighted ones, which make all of the difference when you are going for the record.  They say she made 142 revolutions.   I won the hula hoop contest at our office Christmas Party a couple of years ago, but I cheated, I did it around my neck.

Now I ask you, would you have ever seen Laura Bush or Betty Ford out there on the lawn, not only hooping it up, but also clapping and thoroughly enjoying herself.  What does all of this mean for the rest of America?

Walk down the street in any American city.  The slovenliness and girth of most American women is astounding.  How can they be so rotund? The news recently has been full of stories and statistics about how uphappy women are and how they do all of the work of childraising, housework, homework, cooking, etc. AND they hold down full time jobs. Just managing a household with children should be enough to make most of us drop a few lbs.  Did we really need a Time Magazine poll to tell us this?  Men have definitely received the most benefit from the sexual revolution of the '70s and '80s.  They haven't changed a bit!  They still play golf for eight hours on the weekend, still leave their socks on the floor, still are clueless about children's schedules, and still pretend they don't know where the laundry detergent is kept. 

And yet they still won't pass ERA.  This image is from my favorite artist in the universe, Susan Baker, of Truro, MA.  As you can see, it was done in 1988.   Not much change there.  Ah, those were the days, marching down Michigan Ave. with LaDonna Harris, Gloria Steinham and Betty Freidan leading the parade of thosands of outraged women.  NO RESULT.  If we put Susan's slogan into practice, things would change lightning fast!

Yet, here is La Michelle.  Beautiful, smart, poised, with the belt going on at all times around that fabulous body.  She even has the girls make their own beds.  They seem like happy and well adjusted children despite the pressure of living in the White House.  I hope that some of her healthy eating prose does rub off on the American women who are killing themselves each time they put a Double Whopper with cheese in their mouths.  "Hey, can ya SuperSize it"?