My Day with Michelle Obama

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a newspaper column called ‘My Day' from 1936 to 1962.  FDR was president from 1933 until his death in 1945, so the first 9 years of her column were written as a kind of behind-the-scene look at life in the White House - kind of reality journalism of the day.  It was a mix of public relations for FDR and her own personal take on the issues of the day, mostly centered around women's rights issues in one way or another.  

She wrote the columns 6 days a week, and missed only four days in the entire time - and those four were the days after FDR's death, on April 12, 1945.  She was back at work on April 17 with a column about FDR's death, written in a way that was her trademark - personal but never sentimental.

My mother's father was Eleanor Roosevelt's brother - Hall Roosevelt - a handsome, much loved, socialite.  My mother grew up with the Roosevelts often going to the White House as a teen.  She remembers putting a pony into the elevator built for FDR, just as he was calling for it on the upper floor (the elevator had been installed just for FDR because polio had put him in a wheelchair).

My mother remembers ER in the White House writing her column, dictating it to her secretary, a woman named Malvina Thompson.  I came on the scene later, spending my teen summers at Val Kill Cottage in New York, which was ER's permanent home after FDR's death.  I too, remember ER sitting in a small alcove adjacent to the living room, dictating away to Miss Thompson.  By this time she had been writing it for more than 20 years.  As a teenager I didn't really know what she was doing, or why, just that she seemed to be working 24 hours a day.

ER's column was very popular- it brought a sensible, caring, and calm voice to the American breakfast table, through a financial depression, a world war and years of racial tension. Women looked to her column much as some do of ‘Dear Abby' to see what a reasonable (and rather independent) woman would think about the issues of the day - race, poverty, war, family, etc.

We need this voice again, and I think Michelle Obama could do it.  The times are similar to the 1930s - we are in another depression (or long recession - take your pick), and we're in two wars.  We need someone who can take all this in and translate it into something that the average family can relate to - and equally important, we need someone who can remind us, as my great aunt did, of the reasons we do things as a people - not as a nation.

During the last 8 years we've been told about why we went to war, of why people need to be tortured, or why we need to have our phones and email tapped, or why we don't need the world's approval.   We've heard numerous political or legal discussions with talking head experts.  But what we haven't heard about is what this has meant to us as a people.  I personally think it's going to take years for us to fully acknowledge and come to terms with the death of 100,000 Iraq civilians who died as a result of our nation's dubious military actions.   It's so horrendous that we can't really think about it  - but that's the kind of dialogue that needs to start.  We need to think of our place on the world stage - we are not alone, that ship sailed a long time ago.

My mother sent a letter to Senator Obama and Michelle, congratulating them and urging them to follow in FDR and ER's rather large shoes and reestablish this country as a world leader - not via its military might, but rather via its values and morals.  I think I'll just include a quick note to Michelle to see if she'll take up writing ‘My Day' just where my aunt left off - we could sure use it.

NO NEWS MAKES NEWS!

Enough politics, financial meltdowns, and global news, let's just go the whole other direction and talk about great headlines from the Onion, my favorite real news site.

I always wanted a job at the National Enquirer, or the Weekly World News writing the headlines, I mean how much fun more fun could it be than coming up with things like

Multiple Personality Man Charged Triple Room Rate!'

or

Vegan Vampire Attacks Trees!

or my personal favorite:

Housewife Experiences Half-rapture....& Gets Stuck in the Dining Room Ceiling!

Just so that we can pretend that this is all educational, and rationalize spending the time reading this stuff, did you know that the tabloids were officially created back in 1952 when an Italian fellow bought New York's Racing tip sheet - The National enquirer.  He paid $75,000 for it.  He quickly changed it into articles about bizarre and grisly stuff, things like ‘I Ate My Baby!' and readership skyrocketed.  I think he was the first to require the exclamation point at the end of every headline.

Okay, so now take that kind of idea and mix it with a sort of Harvard Lampoon mentality and you get The Onion - a very funny paper (and website).  These guys come up with some of the best stuff, really.  Here's a sample of today's top stories from their site:

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good' Video. 

Just take a look at it, and I think you'll get the idea for the Onion.  It's sort of a John Stewart meets the web sort of thing.

Their site features headlines like ‘McCain Gets Hammered AT Local VFW', and a local news headline

KANKAKEE, IL - Seven-year-old Clinton Ferris is still wearing his Spider-Man Halloween costume, and he has no intention of taking it off

and a new CIA finding that

Syria Harboring More Than 15 Million Known Arabs!

So, forget factcheck.org, check out the onion.

Halloween Costume Political Poll

So, with all the high paid pollsters running around claiming why they really know what's going on, (unlike all the past elections when they got it all wrong) I thought I'd go one better. 

I think that your chances of getting elected are inversely proportional to the popularity of your Halloween costume.  Odd?  Nope, just logic.  Here's how it goes.  The thing is, when it comes to Halloween, folks want to wear something fun, strange, gory etc.. and serious doesn't cut it.  You want to make someone smile, stare, or hand over candy, and wearing a JFK costume would only assure you that you're candy bag would be on the light side by the end of the evening.

So, if you're a politician you want to be taken seriously - what you don't want is to become a popular Halloween costume.
So, on to the research.  If you type in the politician's name, followed by ‘Halloween costume' into Google, you'll be told how many web sites are currently talking about that costume - which gives you a relative idea of how popular it is.  Remember you don't want a large number if you want to get elected.

Results: Presidential Candidates.

John McCain: 1,110,000
Barack Obama:  913,000

The vp candidates were a little different:

Sarah Palin:  892,000
Joe Biden: 244,000

As an aside, I love this comment from a Ms. Phoenyx, an employee of Costume World in Far North Dallas:

"We haven't had any requests for Joe Biden. As far as I know, nobody wants to look like him."

Sorry Joe.

There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs.  You need 270 to win. So, adding up the search results and dividing them back into the electoral votes, we come up with....

Obama: 340
McCain: 198

As of today, Monday, Slate polls (from pollster.com) has it 306 Obama, to 142 McCain with 90 tossups.   I'll bet my Halloween Costume Political Poll - HCPP, will do well, and by next year will be the standard.

Another aside:
Want to dress like Sarah Palin and don't want to spend the money on a purchased costume?  No problem, just follow Jerry Moore's hints (retail manager of Norcostco Texas Costumes).

"I tell people to get a brown wig, or if you can't get brown at this late date, black. You need to pull it up into a bun and then have the long hair cascading. And I tell them to go to Payless and buy some high heels - the higher the better."

If only the Republican National Committee had asked Jerry before spending the $150,000 on Sarah's outfit, they could have saved a whole lot of money and avoided the media spotlight.