5 posts tagged “first lady”

Now the presidential election is over, I see David Letterman has no more reason to show his bias with wisecracks against women allied to conservative parties. And, in fact, this is a pretty high-profile guest. It’s pretty hard to beat the First Lady of France. And she gives some interesting insights about how she met the President and her life as Première Dame.

Finally, one of the Bushes meets some New Zealanders—the First Lady is greeted by New Zealand soldiers and police officers in Afghanistan. The haka is a customary greeting, borne from Māori culture.
   I was going to go in to a bit more depth on this video about how nice it was for Mrs Bush to have some contact with our country. However, I am embarrassed by some 19-year-old New Zealander on YouTube who has entered several racist, anti-Māori comments at this video’s page.
   If any Kiwis want to comment on JZZ’s anti-Māori rhetoric, which I think embarrasses our country as it is hardly representative of what most New Zealanders think, please head on over to that page.
   Normally I would just consider him a teenage troublemaker and troll, but there’s another part of me that says if we keep turning a blind eye to our young people’s misbehaviour, then are we telling them that it is acceptable?
   Slamming a single race is hardly productive.
   I assume for the purposes of this discussion that the teenager is Caucasian, statistically speaking. I realize he could be another race.
   In one comment, while calling Māori unkind, a ‘wishy-washy race are full of fakes, liars and cheats,’ he also mentions that no Māori has over 50 per cent blood. Anyone see the easy target there? Using JZZ’s logic: the Māori were, after all, living in relative harmony before the arrival of the English—ergo dilution of their blood by pakeha has introduced criminal genes.
   In another comment, Māori are branded uncivilized because they only had a written language since the 1800s. I guess using that logic, that must make my own race superior since the Chinese have had a written language a few thousand years before Christ.
   And a teenager who posts videos of a Toyota Soarer is hardly, as he describes himself, a ‘car connoisseur’. The Soarer can only trace its automotive lineage to 1981, 96 years after the internal combustion engine automobile was first devised.
   Of course these are all silly arguments. By taking JZZ’s logic we get nowhere.
   This is not a politically correct demand for all New Zealanders to “just get along”. But we are obviously creating a generation of some New Zealanders who by their racism will impede national progress.
   The root causes of, say, there being a large Māori–Polynesian prison population stem from colonization and a failure to integrate cultures.
   We cannot turn back the clock but we can become steadily more open-minded to our own solutions that are distinct from the monocultural Westminster system.
   And as a community that once enforced its own standards, perhaps it is time we extended that same thinking to the online world.
   YouTube isn’t a forum to educate in any depth with its limited space. However, it is a place where we may signal disapproval of behaviour with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and perhaps the odd pithy comment pointing out the faults of racist thinking.

From France 2, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy got a much better reception in the UK than in France. A nice summary of the very packed two days for the Sarkozys, with an emphasis on the First Lady. The kiss in the segment is a nice, romantic finalé to the piece.

This video, from the Élysée, was taken yesterday when the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the First Lady arrived in London to meet HM Queen Elizabeth II and HH the Duke of Edinburgh. I wrote in a comment on Timothy’s Vox blog, after reading an article about it, that Mme Sarkozy did not know where to stand and tried to follow her husband and the Queen on the inspection. I was wrong: looking at this video, the First Lady knew exactly where to go and accompanied Prince Philip in her meet-and-greet. The Jacqueline Kennedy comparisons aren’t invalid.
   And it seems the newly hyphenated Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is on her way to being the most photographed woman of 2008: her image sells political, fashion (she’s wearing Dior by John Galliano) and gossip media.

I wasn’t around when Lady Bird Johnson was First Lady of the United States, but to me it is always a big deal when the spouse of a head of state passes. We mark our times and eras through the leaders, but oftentimes, we chart the progress of our society through their spouses. Lady Bird Johnson—born Claudia Alta Taylor but known by her nickname—was “the other LBJ” who had the decorum of her predecessor, but was a markedly different woman to, say, Hillary Clinton, who took a very active role in her husband’s image and policies (and may wind up being President herself).
   It is not to say that Mrs Johnson was not active in politics. When white southerners felt that their way of life was under threat from the Civil Rights Movement, it was Mrs Johnson who went on a tour to appeal to constituents. However, the way First Ladies were involved in the 1960s were seen as less bolshy as their involvement in the 1990s. Mrs Johnson provided the 36th US presidency with a sense of stability during an era which saw the United States change hugely.
   As the 1970s unfolded, we saw First Ladies take their turn in the spotlight with growing media interest, arguably started in the early 1960s with Jacqueline Kennedy’s tour of the White House. Betty Ford on The Mary Tyler Moore Show comes to mind in the mid-1970s, while in the 1980s, Nancy Reagan, a former actress, fitted in to a glamorous era.
   Mrs Johnson said she had had a wonderful life, aware that she is part of a very exclusive league. Forty years after her stay at the White House as First Lady, we can take the opportunity that her passing provides: to take stock once more of the contributions that she made, a symbol of reassurance and American values, and analyse whether they are fitting for our times. I say that the more things change, the more they stay the same.