By Bree Hocking
Memo to Obama: Stay away from the girls. And that goes for loose-lipped daughters, too.
When your opponent is a man’s man, an ex-government-sanctioned killer and a former POW, the last thing you want to do is surround yourself with too many women. You’ve already got youth and inexperience to contend with. Don’t be a sissy, too.
Every time you’ve stood patiently, hands clasped reverently before you, head crooked attentively as the smug Hillary prattled on condescendingly, I cringed a little inside. (Mark my words, if you make her VP, she’ll be measuring for new curtains in the Oval Office before the week is up.)
That flap over the extent of your “relationship” with the starlet Scarlett Johansson didn’t help either. She made you out to be her enamored little BlackBerry buddy, like she had you at her beck and call. You said it wasn’t true. But shucks, the damage had already been done.
Then your wife and daughters mocked your sartorial acumen and annoying habits in that truly awful Access Hollywood interview. (Reminder: you’re competing for the presidency, not first chair in the Oprah symphony, although I can see how it’s easy to confuse the two.) All the while, you sat meekly, shrinking in your seat, as your three female family members more than eclipsed you. We all know that’s true in private life (as it should be), but a little machismo for public consumption wouldn’t kill you, would it?
Oh, and please, please, stop calling Michelle “the rock” of the Obama family. If you aren’t the “rock” of your own family, how do you expect to lead the nation and the world? And I’m not even going to get started on the horrors of that “Obama Girl” musical train wreck.
I know it’s a difficult balance. You’re surrounded by an alpha female wife, a superstar in her own right, and two precocious daughters. You were raised by a single mother, another strong woman. Beyond that, though, I’m starting to think there’s something about the XX combination that has an inherently cowing effect on you.
This does not scream Jack Kennedy.
A girl almost trumped you in the primaries – first time that’s ever happened to a guy presidential contender. And she still thinks she should have won.
I hate to quote New Kids On The Block, but are you tough enough?
Yes, Bree. I think Barry is, in the end, gonna make it or not on the votes of white working class and middle class gals. I had supposed that being Alan Alda would serve him well. But you are right. He needs a shot of Marlboro Man. Bike helmets don’t make it in Arlington, Texas. Fortunately for the Dems, McCain’s Top Gun days are long over. Am I right in thinking he looks frail and in need of some mothering himself?
(Apropos of not much, I always believed that Clinton survived impeachment because of his wisecrack about his El Camino with the astroturf in the back.)
OH,PLEASE!!! Whether it is Hilary being too tough or Obama too weak, it all comes down to our inability to see strength in anything but a John Wayne image and our basic distrust of women, whether we see them as weak or strong. Maybe you need to read some feminist theory.