Entry 1:

Dear Sarah and Brent,

If nothing else, this book is a wonderful record of how often and unwisely Hillary re-engineered her hair. But I sure wouldn't have read it without Slate's handsome financial inducements. In fact, it returned me to my recurring nightmares of covering the distaff side of the White House early in my reporting career, for the "Style" section of the Washington Post. There all manifestations of first lady graciousness were treated with gruesome seriousness. We had to dress up to cover state dinners, which mostly just gave Strom Thurmond a chance to ogle more parts of you and meant that you felt that much more weird and supplicating when you sidled up to guests to ask them, um--well gee, once you had Tom Selleck's attention, what did you ask him? How do you like the White House? How do you feel about the administration of Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson? (I feel sure I am the only member of Slate's "Book Club" whose byline has appeared on a story titled "Night of the Smiling Swedes.") It was all a great big glossy fuss about something completely without substance--a phenomenon that Hillary's book replicates exactly.

Now obviously the White House has a ceremonial function that it will go on performing, and I guess first ladies will go on being doomed to oversee it. But I am mystified over why Hillary Clinton, or Rodham Clinton, or whoever she is now, should want to plant such a flag in the sands of hostessdom at this late date.

I read it, more than anything, as part of the overall Clinton Rehabilitation Project. Making your way through the text, you stumble constantly on the phrase "Bill and I." Bill and I did this, Bill and I thought that. ... The whole thing is far more Clinton-centric than White-House-centric, to a positively cheesy degree. Note the subtitle of the book: At Home With History. Doesn't it say, We are too a classy couple, no matter what Maureen Dowd says about us? All those family snapshots (and reader beware: There are so many cute family costume parties you may come away with the impression that presidents and first ladies spend half their time dressing up in silly costumes) are of a piece with the nostalgic, self-admiring exit interviews that President Clinton seems to be granting every national magazine with a circulation over 200. The word "impeachment" makes a single apologetic appearance in the text, as one of "life's changes" weathered during the past eight years, but not until the second-to-last page of the text.

Still, the question is ... Why does she care? And what enemies can she possibly hope to disarm, at this late date, through the magic of bad Barbie prose? ("We've tried many different styles, sometimes changing [flower] arrangements at the very last minute!") The rules for this kind of writing say that it must be as bland, as full of empty cliché, as tone deaf as possible. (My favorite: "[W]e believe that the arts are not a luxury but a necessary and vital part of American life. During the darkest days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln often visited the theater. ...")

The book may offer a few minor rewards to the small circle of readers who care intensely about the White House. Who would have imagined, for example, that the family kitchen (see Page 47) looks like a bad "Before" picture in a shelter-rag makeover exercise? (Blue and pink floral wallpaper, cheap-looking--oak, maybe?--cabinetry.) More than anything, I came away with a new understanding of how oppressive life must be for a first lady. Though she writes about it only with the gentle rue dictated by First Lady Prose, we can imagine what Hillary must have thought when the chief usher and the social secretary sat her down, a few weeks after Bill's first inaugural, and told her it was time to get cracking on a theme for the dozens of Christmas trees she would be expected to decorate.

Anxious to hear your thoughts on motives,
Marjorie