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I'll see you and raise you, Julia; I don't give a rip how much Cindy's outfit cost. Of all the phony-spumoni windows into character, the gotcha of pointing out that presidential candidates and their spouses have done well in life, and thus have nice stuff, really does nothing for me. (It's not eating arugula that makes you an elitist, or wearing diamonds that makes you Marie Antoinette, either; Cindy travels around the world doing relief work, so case closed on that front.) I just did a piece on Michelle Obama for Reader's Digest, too, and I saw where one reader had posted a complaint that if I weren't such a crazy Michelle lover, I would have pointed out the damning fact that she wears $500 Jimmy Choos! And not only that, but she sees a personal trainer! OK, duly noted, but are we really voting on shoes now? In the race for worst-shod, I guess Ralph Nader would win. :(
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And so begins the bride-off. Blech.
Articles like this one pitting Michelle Obama against Cindy McCain, remind me of how gross the position of first lady can really be. The wives of the candidates are being evaluated for such important qualities as jeans-size, glamour, personal wealth, public speaking abilities, and sense of style. Obama is in trouble for over-sharing (Barack is sock-challenged.) McCain for under-sharing (her financial info). Oh and now Michelle is being called “Obama's baby mama" by the ever-classy Fox News (although for my money that fist-bump pretty much redefined foreplay in America for a generation or two).
Maybe it’s too much to hope for anything less than the relentless meringue of these kinds of pieces, but given that we were but a breath away from a Cindy McCain versus Bill Clinton race, is it possibly time to rethink the way we talk about presidential spouses in a way that bypasses the size of their jeans?
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When I heard what Michelle Obama said, I thought uh-oh, classic DiKinsleyan gaffe: She said something true but unflattering, and thus a total no-no for someone in her position; that's why they call it impolitic. I also assumed she was talking about race, though that might be a total projection, because when I say I've never been prouder of my country, what I mean is that though the sickness of racism has afflicted us from the beginning, we may finally be ready to prove ourselves better than that.
The more scandalous quote, if we took it at all seriously, would be the one from Cindy McCain, about how she has always been and always will be proud of her country. I'm sure she did not mean that Abu Ghraib or water-boarding or cherry-picking intel to justify the wrong war have filled her with pride; and honestly, under her husband, I don't think any of those occasions for shame would have occurred. But, apparently, you can never go wrong saying things that everyone knows not to take too literally. Which may be why Hillary carries on giving victory speeches.
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Dahlia, you got that right: Putting prospective first ladies in red suits is a none-too-subtle code meant to evoke the administration that's currently back in nostalgic vogue. Nancy Reagan wore the color so often (usually in that same fire-engine shade we saw last night) that it came to be called "Reagan red." Last year, Mrs. Reagan took Laura Bush on a tour of an exhibit of red dresses at the Reagan Library. To wear it is to quote her as unambiguously as McCain evoked the Reagan/Stallone '80s by marching onstage to the Rocky theme for his victory speech. Michelle Obama's donning of the hue is more complex. Obviously, this choice is supposed to recall the general optimism of the morning-in-America days. But is it also meant to reassure us that Michelle, who only last year left her high-powered job as an executive at the University of Chicago hospitals, will remain safely on the Nancy-esque sidelines when her husband becomes president, confining her role to charity work like the cleft-palate foundation whose board Cindy McCain serves on (and through which she adopted their now-16-year-old daughter from Bangladesh)? At any rate, the color-coded association of both women with the ultimate loyal-but-silent political spouse clearly serves to distance them from a certain prospective first husband who doesn't need to wear loud colors to get himself noticed.
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