She's a Lady...


Robin Givhan, the Washington Post staff writer who occasionally subjects the powerful to a bracing fashion critique, offers common sense and logic as balm for the latest rightwing mouth-foamer frenzy, Nancy Pelosi’s scarf.
According to Ms. Givhan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives followed the letter of Moslem tradition with the accessorized color of our own cultural spirit:

One hesitates to say that she accessorized her ensembles with the scarves…. They were more meaningful than that. They allowed her to be respectful of the day's hosts while maintaining her own public identity. She looked like herself and she maintained control of the visual message.


Another American walker of the world stage didn’t fare as well:

There are few images more discomforting than public figures thrust into foreign cultures and required to wear the host's traditional attire. Almost without exception the visitors tend to look smaller and more vulnerable. They evoke the uneasiness of children who have been dressed by a parent.

The above photo shows President Bush looking fat and uncomfortable at the 2005 APEC Summit in Korea.

Photos: AP, Eric Draper-White House
- posted by Sean @ 3:22 PM 0 comments

 

As our current nears his fate, I feel it’s worth noting that all 45 previous Vice Presidents of the United States have been interesting creatures.
None, however, have proved to be as unusual as our gun-toting 46th, Richard Bruce Cheney, the purported 2nd most powerful man in America observed lurking in off-stage shrubbery bordering Wednesday’s Rose Garden photo op.
This morning, wider swathes of the blogosphere than my humble little corner have noted Cheney’s unusual aboveground lurking and some eagle-eyed commenters are speculating on the lifeless appearance of the left Cheney arm.
Arms aside, most Presidents, including the failed Ivy League Beta heading this unprecedented Bush Interregnum, have only one Vice President.
By dint of death, scandal and renominating conventions, seven American leaders have been served by two different Veeps and one, alone, by three separate heirs to what has become our American throne.
Only two Vice Presidents in history have held office with two differing Presidents in separate though successive terms.
One held Cabinet rank in two different governments within the continental United States and only one has presided over a separate shadow government not specified in the Constitution and officially grandfathered the lesbian birth of a grandson.
While the co-joined fate of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney are still media-cleansed stories in progress, Wednesday’s telling visual metaphor of a shrubbery-lurking presidential shadow coupled with nearly seven years of wide-ranging Chaney lore makes it perfectly clear that our current veepish occupant will definitively reside in an unparalleled and hopefully lonely historic niche.
Blog and press speculations on the Vice President’s top secret health based upon a few seconds sighting of a limp left arm seem fair, however, my prurient, pajama-clad and trash cable-ready brain wants to know if Mr. Cheney’s no doubt pricy leather loafers lingered near or upon the exact spots where presidential pets Barney and Mrs. Beasley have exercised their, (ahem!), official outdoor pet duties…

Photos: AFP, Reuters
- posted by Sean @ 3:33 PM 0 comments

 


Speaker Pelosi and Petulant Bush
The Vice Petulant in the Bushes

Photos: AFP, AP
- posted by Sean @ 11:53 AM 0 comments