"But Ladies’ Man: The Careless Heart of John F Kennedy is far more interesting than its tacky title suggests."

"(Sloppy subtitle too: Kennedy’s heart was not exactly the organ he was putting about back then.) Leamer has become known for telling the stories of the people around a famous person: Capote’s Women, Hitchcock’s Blondes, Warhol’s Muses — you get the picture. He goes through the stories of some of Kennedy’s mistresses here and includes first-hand interviews with the few still surviving, such as the posh Radcliffe student Diana de Vegh, whom Kennedy eventually installed as a researcher in the White House so he could have quickies with her in the Lincoln Bedroom. 'It was chit and chat and then some sex and then go home,' de Vegh tells Leamer, making Kennedy’s seduction methods sound on a par with a teenage boy’s...."

From "Why did JFK risk everything for casual sex?/In Ladies’ Man, Laurence Leamer asks what drove President Kennedy to conduct affairs with everyone from his secretary to an alleged Nazi spy" (London Times). 

"Leamer’s main argument is that Kennedy’s compulsive sex life was driven by his poor health.... He also had repeated painful STDs due to his refusal to wear condoms.... If I had to pick Kennedy’s lowest point in this book

"Reading Count of Monte Cristo in One Sitting."

Its a TikTok thing. I'm seeing 12 videos in this group. Check it out. Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a thing these days, but why? It's super-long, so people have been avoiding it, but word has got out that it's a very exciting, gripping read. If you like — or think you might like — video of people reading, click through. It really is people reading — reading "The Count of Monte Cristo."

By the way, I have not read "The Count of Monte Cristo." It was my father's favorite book, or so he often said, often conjoined with the opinion that he hated "The Return of the Native." I have read "The Return of the Native" and 4 other Thomas Hardy novels. My son Chris recently read "The Count of Monte Cristo," though his main reading project is biographies of U.S. Presidents.

This post was inspired by a comment from Jaq on my previous post, which is about the decline of childhood reading. Jaq wrote: "Just bought The Count of Monte Christo [sic] through your link, and there it sits, like a cinder block on my coffee table, will I finish it? Now I guess I’ll have to, but it will hardly fit in my hip pocket the way I always sported one as a teenager. You can’t blame kids though, we are the ones who invented the crack, I mean smartphones."

And here's the latest photograph from a presidential biography sent to me by Chris. The scene is JFK's reception for black leaders on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

Jackie's head in a hatbox.

My son Chris, who's nearing the end of his project of reading biographies of all of the American Presidents, sends me very well-chosen snippets of things now and then.

He's reading "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" by Richard Reeves (commission earned), and he sends this:

"By 1963 we had accumulated ten horses, eleven dogs, a donkey, two goats, pigs, my 4-H cow, chickens, pheasants, ducks, geese, forty closely related rabbits (I started with two)..."

"... and a coop of Hungarian homing pigeons, along with the hawks, owls, raccoons, snakes, lizards, salamanders, and fish in my personal menagerie. A pair of bush babies lived under the porte-cochère, a nocturnal honey bear slept away his days in the playroom crawlspace, while my coatimundi and my giant leopard tortoise roamed free in the house. A jill ferret fed her pups under the kitchen stove. The mailman, retreating to his car, might be chased by goats, geese, or an imposing pack of barking dogs, where he might find a sea lion lolling on the vehicle’s warm hood, playfully slathering the windshield with a fount of fishy saliva. Aunt Jackie captured this bedlam in one of her watercolors, depicting frolicking children pursuing a football among a herd of galloping horses, a worn-out cook leaving the driveway with her overnight bags as her replacement arrives similarly encumbered, while canines pursue an accountant, tearing at his clothes...."

Writes RFK Jr., in "American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family – An Intimate Memoir of Father and Son, the Kennedy Legacy, and Hope" (commission earned).

That's the only mention of raccoons in that book, which I've read and enjoyed and which I was searching this morning a propos of the new story "Kennedy Jr/RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals/Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to 'study them later'" (Guardian).

Here's Kennedy when he was asked about the raccoon penis yesterday. I love the reaction, a subtle chuckle as he walks away. I read his mind to say: If only you knew the life I've lived. Your windshield was never slathered with fishy saliva.

"But a recent tragedy-exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me."

Writes Daryl Hannah, in the NYT.

The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident. In discussing the show, “Love Story,” one of its producers explained: “Given how much we’re rooting for John and Carolyn, Daryl Hannah occupies a space where she’s an adversary to what you want narratively in the story.” Storytelling requires tension. It often requires an obstacle. But a real, living person is not a narrative device. 

There is also a gendered dimension to this thinking. Popular culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles or villains. Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?... 

I have never used cocaine.... I have never desecrated any family heirloom.... I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s....

"I really believe she wrote that" — I exclaimed when I read Melania's letter.

There are numerous signs of her authorship:

pic.twitter.com/IGIWzL6SMJ

— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) July 14, 2024

Here's the line — in paragraph 5 — that prompted my exclamation: "A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine." A native speaker of English would not have used the word "recognized" like that. I'm sure many people are mocking her for that now — yes, even monsters can see that Trump is an inhuman political machine — but to me, it means she wrote it herself.

Later, she repeats the idea of Trump as a "political machine," but the idea is that he is human: He has a "human side" — "core facets" that include "laughter, love of music, and inspiration" — but these things are "buried below the political machine." That's an individual, perhaps awkward, way to say that the would-be assassin saw only the political surface and not the real human being. 

Some other signs of her personal voice: 

"There’s breaking protocol and then there’s giving the Queen Mother an unwanted kiss on the lips, which is something President Jimmy Carter inexplicably did..."

"... during his May 1977 visit to Buckingham Palace.... [T]he Queen Mother later described the incident, which she found mortifying. 'Nobody has done that since my husband died,' she said. 'I took a sharp step backwards – not quite far enough.'"

From "Queen Elizabeth’s Awkward Visits With U.S. Presidents, Ranked" (NY Magazine).

The Carter visit is ranked #12 out of 13 ranked visits. The only thing worse was the Jackie-and-Jack visit that we saw dramatized on "The Crown." We're told that Jackie said the queen was "pretty heavy going," and when Gore Vidal related Jackie's complaint to Princess Margaret, she said, "But that’s what she’s there for."

You might guess that Obama would come out at #1, but he's only #3. #1 is Eisenhower, and #2 was Harry Truman, in October 1951 and when Elizabeth was still a Princess (4 months later she would be queen):

"I like the concept of red, white and blue. The baby blue doesn’t fit with us."

Said President Trump about his choice of a new color scheme for the Air Force One planes (that will be delivered in 2024, after he's gone from office (unless he does that thing some people furiously ideate about and stays though his term is up)).

I'm reading the quote in the NYT, which adds:

The current plane’s design is closely associated with John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, who chose the colors in consultation with the famed French designer Raymond Loewy.

The Kennedys both disliked the look of the plane under President Eisenhower, changing the paint scheme from orange to a lighter blue. They took care with the design because they wanted to present a less militaristic image to the rest of the world.

In their reimagining, “The United States of America” was emblazoned on the side of the plane, the font a close match to one used in the printing of the United States Constitution. The plane’s new look was unveiled in 1962....

And here's some classic Trump provocation:

“People get used to something,” Mr. Trump said, “and it was Jackie O.,” referring to Onassis, the last name Mrs. Kennedy took during her second marriage. “And that’s good,” Mr. Trump continued, “but we have our own Jackie O. today. It’s called Melania. We’ll call it Melania T.”

"The Radziwill-Capote friendship ended... They fell out when she refused to testify for Mr. Capote in a libel suit brought by Gore Vidal..."

"... over a Capote assertion, citing her as his source, that Mr. Vidal had been ejected drunk from the Kennedy White House. Mr. Vidal said he had merely been escorted to his hotel by friends after antagonizing Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Mr. Vidal won the suit and an apology."

From "Lee Radziwill, Ex-Princess and Sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Dies at 85" (NYT).

I've never been interested in Princess Radziwill, but I'm thoroughly intrigued by the news that Vidal sued Truman Capote for saying that he was drunk when what he was really doing was antagonizing Robert Kennedy.

Here's an article from People from 1979: "Sued by Gore Vidal and Stung by Lee Radziwill, a Wounded Truman Capote Lashes Back at the Dastardly Duo." That's the way we talked back then, 40 years ago — "dastardly duo."

Says Capote of Vidal: “I’m always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day.” Retorts Vidal: “Truman made lying an art form—a minor art form.”

Celebrities were so much better then — better at talking, I mean.

The spat, legal and otherwise, springs from a 1975 Playgirl interview in which Capote charged that Vidal had been bounced from a 1961 White House party because of drunken and obnoxious behavior. Should it ever come to trial, the case could feature cameo court appearances by such eminent eyewitnesses as John Kenneth Galbraith, George Plimpton, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.—and even Jackie O herself. Capote has given a preview of the fireworks-to-come in a withering blast at the guest of honor of that ill-starred Camelot bash—Jackie’s little sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, 46.f

It was Princess Lee, says Capote, who told him that Gore was tossed out of a White House function. Vidal’s alleged offenses: putting his arm around Jackie and insulting her mother, Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss. (Curiously, Gore’s mother was a previous Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss.[)]

Keeping up with the Auchinclosses.  By the way, "[)]" is not an emoji — what would it be an emoji for? — It's me providing the close-paren that People left out.

Guests at the party... deny that Vidal was forcibly ejected, though they confirm that he squabbled with Bobby. And Lee herself—on whose testimony Truman had counted—shocked him by signing an affidavit for Vidal. “I do not recall ever discussing with Truman Capote the incident or the evening,” she declared in the document. Replies Capote angrily: “She’s just a treacherous lady, and that’s the truth of it. She’s treacherous to absolutely everyone.”

What did the princess think of being caught in the quarrel? “We know what they are,” she told a New York gossip columnist. “They are two fags. It is just the most disgusting thing.”

Okay, the "treacherous lady" is dead now and so are Capote and Vidal, the men she called "two fags."  Capote fought back at the time:

“We all know a fag is a homosexual gentleman who has just left the room,” he said, and went on to define a Southern fag as “meaner than the meanest rattler you ever met.”... “I know that Lee wouldn’t want me tellin’ none of this,” he giggled, “but you know us Southern fags. We just can’t keep our mouths shut.”... 

“You know, she calls herself a princess,” he marveled in falsetto. “I always thought that a princess was the daughter of a king and a queen.” (Radziwill’s title dates back to her 1959 marriage to Polish Prince Stanislas Radziwill, whom she divorced in 1974.) ... He accused Lee of jealousy toward her sister (“The princess kind of had it in mind that she was going to marry Mr. Onassis herself”) and claimed she once tried to woo author William F. Buckley Jr. away from his wife....

“You know, I was placed in an impossible situation by this whole thing,” he says. “It wasn’t as though I sat down and was deliberately being vindictive. She simply didn’t tell the truth.” He accuses Radziwill of turning sister Jackie against him, then deserting him for Vidal during Capote’s lengthy struggle against liquor and pills. “I think she kind of thought I wasn’t going to pull myself out of that the way I did,” he surmises.

Analyzing idiolects.

So much great stuff in that, including John Wayne not even trying to talk like Genghis Khan but just doing what I assume is the only reason they made that Genghis Khan movie, being John Wayne. Virtually everything else is actors doing a fantastic job, and Erik Singer (a dialogue coach) talks about exactly what they are doing. Personally, I dislike biopics, and I find accurate copying of speech patterns too distracting. I'd rather see documentary footage of the real person. That is, I find it impossible to put up with more than a half minute of Natalie Portman talking like Jackie Kennedy. But I like when the actor chooses some things to copy and then brings something new to understanding the famous person — like Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan.

AND: Here's more of Singer doing his thing (haven't watched this one yet):



IN THE COMMENTS: Ken B said:

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought Eisenberg was the best there. The others, no matter how accurate, sound like mimicry. He was playing a character and bringing out the arrogance, assorificery, and brilliance very naturally and convincingly.

I agree.

I singled out Blanchett, above, but while writing about what she did I was also thinking about how Eisenberg did Zuckerberg. It's an even better example of of what I'm talking about. Maybe I'll watch that movie ("Social Network"). I've seen so few of the movies Singer analyzes, because I don't like biopics and I love documentaries.

"Demanding that women smile is akin to suggesting that women are not entitled to be in charge of their own emotional life."

"But for women who live the greater part of their lives in the public eye, smiling is a kind of code for being not only engaged, but also being engaging. For a woman who was once a model, who ostensibly is practiced in the art of nonverbal communication, the willingness to forgo a grin seems less like an accident and more like the tiniest declaration of personal control and rebellion. She is here for you, but she is not going to perform for you."

Writes Robin Givhan, about Melania Trump, under a headline that struck me as comical juxtaposed with the photograph:



I'm not sure where the "control and containment" is supposed to be — maybe in the constricting leather skirt or maybe it's something she's extracting from the President who scampers at her heel — but from the waist up, I'm seeing a more freewheeling style, an eschewing of a fully controlled structure. I'm not criticizing this choice, I'm just saying this isn't the Jackie Kennedy choice of clothing as armor, but a stretchy sweater over something less than the most rigid undergarments. I see an amusing combo of loose and tight.

The headline is probably not written by Givhan. I'm just poking fun at WaPo there. I mainly wanted to show you that part about women smiling, which is a long-term feminist issue. It's sexist to tell women to smile,* so what do you do when you want to comment on Melania's unsmiling face? Givhan reads it as "the tiniest declaration of personal control and rebellion," which sounds as though she — in her own little way — is part of the female resistance against Trump.
____________________

* See "The Sexism of Telling Women to Smile: Your Stories," "Why you shouldn't tell a woman to smile," "Telling a woman to smile may seem like an innocent request, but there's a darker undertone," "It’s Important For Men to Understand That They Need To Stop Telling Women to Smile," "The Sexism Behind Telling Women to Smile," "Why We Should Stop Telling Women to Smile," "'Stop Telling Women To Smile' Goes National," "'Stop telling women to smile.'"

Ivanka does her perfect-poise routine when Germans hiss and boo at her for talking about her father as a champion of women.

She was on panel — alongside Angela Merkel, Queen Màxima of the Netherlands, and International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagardeon — at the W-20 where the topic was women's empowerment and entrepreneurship at the W-20.

Video at the link.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt asked, "How could anyone not like her?," and I answered:

There's something robotic and trancelike about her demeanor. It's interesting to me that people don't dislike her for that glossy, plastic, stage-y quality, which actually reminds me of Hillary Clinton. I don't myself dislike her, but I'm fascinated that people don't call her out for the Stepford Wives aura that so many political women have been mocked for.

But Jackie Kennedy was a similar case. People loved it in her. I guess if you read as beautiful and you don't misbehave, people will accept a woman who seems anesthetized.

And AReasonableMan says, "Drudge's front page currently featuring Ivanka is pretty funny." Here's the part he means, with Ivanka in the middle — looking like a sensibly beautiful woman — flanked by Madonna displaying elongated Jayne-Mansfield-style breasts and some absurdly plastic-surgeried human Barbie doll. Click to enlarge:

Everyone was saying Melania got her inspiration for that blue outfit from Jackie Kennedy...

... but I'm seeing the tie to Laura Bush...



Here's how Melania showed up to appear with her predecessor:



Note the similarity in the sleeve length and the flapped over section at the top as well as the color. The colors are interestingly different, and — funnily enough — for all of Melania's matchy-matchiness* — Laura's color would have much more closely matched the Tiffany box...



... the box that led to so much awkwardness yesterday — laughed at by me here.

I ran across that picture of Laura because, in the comments at that last link, MadisonMan said:

The picture of the Obamas' arrival at the White House 8 years ago includes Michelle handing a package to Laura. Why should she have been surprised to receive something today?

I still haven't found a picture of Michelle arriving with a package for Laura. I have no idea whether bringing a gift is traditional and required or bizarre and rude or somewhere in between, but I do think there is a principle of etiquette that overrides all others which is that when someone else is trying to be nice but gets something technically wrong, you do what you can to smoothly erase the appearance that anything is awry. The classic trope is Drinking the Fingerbowl. Thus, if Melania committed a faux pas, Michelle committed a worse faux pas.
____________________

* "Matchy-matchy" has been a standard fashion insult for many years, but as Maureen Dowd said in her live-chatting of the inauguration:

Matchy-matchy used to be bad but Melania may make it a trend. Coats and dresses that match, like old Doris Day movies. Monochromatic outfits that make you look tall and slim, like Marlene Dietrich and Audrey Hepburn in the “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” scene where she’s all in fuschia.

ADDED: Here's the video showing that Michelle did in fact bring a gift and hand it to Laura. Watch how deftly Laura hangs onto it while keeping it out of the photo op:



Laura carries it as if she appreciates it and hands it off discreetly to an unseen person after she enters the house.

"a single baked potato, stuffed with beluga caviar and sour cream, eaten once a day."

The Jackie Kennedy diet — from "The Five Worst Celebrity Diets."

The woman who invented the blow-drying method of hairstyling.

You used to "set" the wet hair in rollers and sit under a big hair-drying dome...



... but Rose Evansky — who has just died at age 94 — figured out the new way:

“I’d been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man’s hair with a brush and a hand-held dryer,” she told W magazine in 2012. “And this image — of the barber with the dryer — flashed through my mind and I thought, ‘Why not for women?’”....

“I picked up a spiky plastic hairbrush and a hand dryer and started rolling a wet section of her hair around the brush, followed by warm air from the hand dryer held in my left hand,” she wrote in a memoir, “In Paris We Sang” (2013). “The more sections of wet hair I rolled over the brush, the easier it became, and soon part of [the customer's] curly hair looked smooth, as if it had been brushed through from a set. Exciting!”

One day by chance, Lady Clare Rendlesham, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, dropped by the salon and, witnessing a blow-dry in progress, stopped dead in her tracks. “What are you doing, Rose?” Mrs. Evansky recalled her shouting....

I'm sure blow-drying makes more sense than the rollers-under-the-dome approach, but I'm in love with the photos of women sitting under those absurd things. Here's an excellent collection — "a moment of reflection on our cultural loss: the importance of hair dryers in mid-20th century american life" from a blog called "finding jackie." In addition to pictures of ordinary women, we see Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren — each of whom reacts to the experience of going under the dome in precisely the manner we expect from her.

I couldn't figure out the name of the "finding jackie" blogger, but I got obsessed with finding a book I read long ago that I thought might have that title. Searching for a book on your shelves might be as passé as setting your hair in rollers and sitting under a dome dryer, but I discovered I am still able to do it....

"People seem to love [Trump’s family] in the same way the public loved the Kennedys."

Writes Scott Adams....

And notice how Donald Jr. and Eric both have the speaking cadence of John and Jack Kennedy. 

John and Jack, eh? I love Scott Adams... but he's not infallible. Here at Meadhouse, we were saying Donald Jr. is Bobby Kennedy. That's who he sounded like, and it's distinctive in a way that counting John twice doesn't equal.

Notice also how Melania reminds you of Jackie Kennedy – quiet, smart, and classy. These are coincidences, but your irrational brain doesn’t care. It sees a new batch of Kennedys and wants to see more of them. That’s powerful election magic for a nation that only pretends to care about policies.

A week ago you compared ugly Donald Trump with ugly Hillary Clinton and declared them a visual tie. That matters because our visual “brain” generally wins against whatever part of the brain is pretending to be logical that day. 

Ha ha. Perfect. All is forgiven. Whatever part of the brain is pretending to be logical that day. Love it.

[O]nce we got a look at the entire Trump family, acting as a group, our visual brains started seeing them as a package deal. And when you compare the entire Trump family’s visual appeal to the entire Clinton family’s visual imagery it’s a massacre.

Would you prefer seeing Bill and Hillary Clinton decompose in front of your eyes for eight years, or watch the Trump family develop their dynasty?

Let's play Scrabble.

Presidential summer vacations were different in the old days, no?

I found that photo because I was searching for pictures of how Mamie Eisenhower dressed as I was listening to Tom & Lorenzo's new podcast, which looks into Hillary Clinton's fashion and the fashions of various first ladies. They call Mamie "frumpy" and have a lot of other things to say, including that Jackie was actually not all that great — she wore Chanel knockoffs — and Nancy Reagan was perhaps better — though emblematic of a fashion decade (the 80s) that feels so alien to us today.

As for Hillary Clinton's $12,000 Armani jacket, they say women's clothes are expensive, you should expect a wealthy woman to wear expensive clothes, and Hillary would be criticized if she did not put plenty of attention into wearing the right clothes (with lots of shapewear underneath). Not that they like the cut of the jacket. They don't.

They also talk about Michelle Obama... and her famously bared arms. That's why I loved this picture of Mamie's arms.

Are Mamie and Dwight really playing Scrabble? I think they're just posing. Who starts off Scrabble with 5 words like that?

ADDED: Here's a collection of photos of Presidents on their vacations, beginning with Grant and including the Eisenhower photo above.  And here's a collection of Presidents in their swimwear. My favorite:

Sarah Palin's sweater — "a mini-black cardigan studded with what resembled needle-thin, glistening stalactites."

Yeah, endorsing Donald Trump, Sarah Palin did choose to wear what looked like a sweater full of needles!

Robin Givhan points — ouch — it out:

... the cardigan shimmered glamorously under the lights.... she picked at the wounds... The fashion industry may have long argued that spangles are not just for the cocktail hour and beyond, but that philosophy has made little headway in the world of campaign politics. So to see a politician — someone who is ostensibly not the star of the rally but a supporting player — dressed in such a bold manner, was to see someone who has come to steal the spotlight rather than share it.

Oh! The needles were out for Donald Trump? I would have thought they were armor against all her attackers. All the little pricks. The needle dicks.

Palin’s cardigan was not ugly — not exactly, not terribly — but it was distracting... Instead of listening to her, one tended to just look at her. 

That never happened to me, but I had YouTube playing on my iPhone which was lying on the counter as I did one thing and another, including taking a bath. Isn't that how you do video of political speeches? Also, I'm not a fashion critic, except when the spirit moves me.

The cardigan was flashy. It was proudly outside the realm of vetted political attire. It wasn’t safe and it wasn’t decorous. It was vaguely gaudy, with a hint of kitsch. And for a political affair it was inappropriate — which in the politically disruptive universe of Palin, made it perfect.

I agree! It was perfect. A sweater full of needles. What a message! Be the metaphor. But Givhan should have woven in Palin's use of clothing metaphor. In her million-pricks cardigan, she said:

[H]e’s got the guts to wear the issues that need to be spoken about and debate on his sleeve, where the rest of some of these establishment candidates, they just wanted to duck and hide. They didn’t want to talk about these issue until he brought ‘em up. In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest. 

So get out of that suit of opinions that's killing you and slip into something softly knitted on your side with thousands of needles sticking out at everyone else. You can do it, and it will look way cuter than that political correctness outfit you'd thought was de rigueur these past 20 seasons.

ADDED: Clothes as armor was a Jackie Kennedy idea:

This was a woman who, upon learning that her husband had won the presidential election, confessed: "I feel as though I had just turned into a piece of public property. It's really frightening to lose your anonymity at 31." And who, a few weeks later, in a letter to Oleg Cassini, the designer charged with furnishing her official wardrobe, was pleading: "PROTECT ME, as I seem so mercilessly exposed and don't know how to cope with it."

The solution was a closet full of body armor... [T]he result was a tour de force of optical illusion: These were clothes that recognized Jackie's central position on the national stage without ceding an iota of her privacy. These clothes were Parisian in inspiration and unfailingly Modernist in cut, but their starchy fabrics and formless shapes were designed to guarantee not front-page coverage in WWD... but protection from the insatiable hordes.

"Jackie O had nothing on this First Lady. Wow! Michelle can be a stunner (in addition to a very classy lady)!"

"You took my comment. I wholeheartedly agree. While Jackie Onassis was certainly beautiful, Michelle Obama outshines her easily."

Over-the-top comments at that WaPo on the Robin Givhan piece "Diplomatic fashion crisis averted: Michelle Obama wears Vera Wang to China state dinner." The "crisis" was that Mrs. Obama got criticized, at the 2011 China state dinner, for wearing a dress from a British designer and at this state dinner she was wearing a dress from an American designer. The designer Vera Wang responded (as quoted in WaPo):

“It is such a privilege, as an American of Chinese heritage, to have dressed first lady Michelle Obama for this state dinner honoring President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan, of the People’s Rebublic of China,” tweeted Wang.

The typo "Rebublic" may be funnier than the fawning Jackie-disrepecting in the comments. By they way, when everyone else just says "China" and you're operating within the 140-character limitation of Twitter, why would you even attempt to write "People’s Republic of"? I guess it's that theater of pompous dignity that people assume when accepting honors. I'm privileged at the honor and honored at the privilege... blah blah blah. If we were at the Oscars music would play to tell you that's enough, and I love that Twitter is right there from the very outset, saying, okay, you've said enough, now get out of here. Go rebubble elsewhere. Twitter is not a Rebabble-ic.

Unlike a blog.

It's not even 6 in the morning and I have 2 more things to say about that article.

1. Michelle Obama's 2011 dress was blazing, daring, almost wacky. The new dress was utterly sedate. As Givhan put it: "It exuded Hollywood glamour of the sort that has long defined the red carpet. And Obama’s hair, styled in gentle waves and cascading down her right cheek, underscored the dress’s mood of old-fashioned stardust." In other words, pointedly old-old-fashioned. Givhan swathes Mrs. Obama in praise. There's no commentary at all on what I would call the squelching of Michelle Obama's exuberance and modernity.

2. I enjoyed the picture — the 4th photo at the first link — of Michelle adjusting Obama's tie. He's got a very cute expression on his face. You could say he's affecting a little-kid attitude just as his wife is tending to him, causing her to look more like his mother than his wife. But I'm going to say: playful, adorable, charming. And it's true (Deal with it!): The man is the most charming person to arrive on the national stage since JFK. I won't say JFK had nothing on this President or While JFK was certainly charismatic, Barack Obama outshines him easily. That goes too far.

"Artist Anish Kapoor Slams France For Covering Up Anti-Semitic Vandalism on 'Queen’s Vagina.'"

"The 200-foot funnel-like sculpture (official name: “Dirty Corner”) [at the Palace of Versailles, near Paris] was defaced with white spray-painted hate words including, 'At Versailles Christ is King,' and 'the second rape of the nation by deviant Jewish activism.'"

The words were gilded over in gold leaf, under the artist’s direction, after local officials rejected his desire that they stay uncovered on the steel-and-rock piece as evidence of “the scars of the renewed attack.”

“We lost, can you believe it?” Kapoor told artnet News in Moscow, where he launched a new exhibit Monday. “Some very racist, in my view, deputy from parliament took me to court. We were forced to hide the graffiti. It’s a terrible, sad thing. You want me to pretend it didn’t happen?... It happened.”

ADDED: My first reaction was that of course the graffiti must be removed. My second was a memory of Jackie Kennedy: