No, those aren't Michelle's, as far as I know. Sorry.
One of our correspondents writes:
I nominated Monica Lewinsky because the BJ she gave Bill led to the Clinton administration abandoning it's drive to privatize Social Security. All hail Monica! Truly a citizen hero.Our man is referring to a letter from Michelle -- which he got and I didn't, Lord knows why:
For over 40 years, the President of the United States has awarded the Citizens Medal -- the second highest civilian honor in our nation -- to Americans who have "performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens."Golly, she makes it sound a lot like an application essay for an Ivy League school, doesn't she? Dot those i's and cross those t's, folks.Now for the 2010 Citizen's Medal, the White House is opening up the process to include an exciting source of nominations: you.
... Past winners of this prestigious honor have included respected public figures like Colin Powell, Bob Dole and Rosa Parks... As you can tell, the bar is set pretty high -- only a handful of nominees will be chosen, so be sure to read the criteria closely and make the best case you can for your nominee.
Oh and don't you love the pedantic precision of "second highest civilian honor"? What's the first? And do military honors outrank civilian ones, or is there some intricate interlarded table of precedence?
Michelle's very grand email address, as it appears in this message, is
First Lady Michelle Obama <info@messages.whitehouse.gov>Her note -- in HTML, of course -- incorporates another grandiose little touch, this cartouche:
It's interesting to me how successive administrations have emphasized that temple portico, and photoshopped it forward about fifty yards in their representations of it, and put our POV about six feet below grade. Fall on your knees, peasants, before that mighty jutting pediment!
Admittedly, the actual portico, even without exaggeration, is grossly disproportionate and over-emphatic. We seem to have decided early on that Palladio was a little too restrained for our empire in embryo; US civic architecture from the first is Palladio on steroids, pimples and bad temper and all.
Comments (9)
Keerist. That goddamn' woman is like Hillary, only without the soul.
Oh, and btw, re: Monica Lewinsky: Y'know...? I mean, y'know...? Yeah, wow. That's an awesome angle. I never even thought about it like that. I know you're being sarcastic, or ironic, but... what the hell. I mean, wow. It really does make sense.
(professional designer hat ON)
So, yeah, the iconography -- the "branding". Iirc, I first started seeing those on TV back in the good old Clintontime, usually for the White House, but, often also for the War Department, showing a comparable view of the main entrance face of the Pentagon, done in the same style. I've not actually seen it on TV yet, but I'd bet that the Congress has one, too, with a solemn faux engraving of the West Front of the Capitol.
(professional designer hat OFF)
It's not just the White House, it's damn near every bit of public/Federal architecture in DC within about fifteen blocks of it -- especially the Federal office buildings between the Capitol West Front and the bridge, around the Mall. Melodramatic fake Roman crap crammed up next to 1930s imperialist modern accented with mind-numbing clunky faux-Soviet Social Realist sculptures crammed in next to a smattering of damn-near Albert Speer-looking shit. During her tenure at EPA, the DW went from one of the godawful early semi-pseudo neo-Classical Romanish bureaucratic fortresses to a then-brand-new and even more godawful modern semi-pseudo neo-Classical Romanish pile of restaurants and offices named -- without a trace of irony -- The Ronald Reagan Building And International Trade Center, or, as the DW and her co-workers at EPA called it, "Gippergate".
Now that you've stirred that aesthetics-in-politics business up, of course, you know you've got me realizing those things are ripe for parody. Shame people don't always remember arcane details like the design of the front of the hotel where Marion Barry was nabbed smoking crack and putting the make on some chick, or the Watergate Hotel, or that spot on the Reflecting Pool where that stripper dived out of Wilbur Mills' car...
Posted by Mike Flugennock | January 22, 2010 9:04 AM
Posted on January 22, 2010 09:04
Don't forget the gold leaf. You can never have enough of that stuff.
Posted by bob | January 22, 2010 11:37 AM
Posted on January 22, 2010 11:37
Second on Mike F's remarks. I never though of Lewinski as a...savior. But the logic is compelling. And to think I was burning candles to Obama in my bathroom windowsill.
Posted by Sean | January 22, 2010 1:13 PM
Posted on January 22, 2010 13:13
I have an enduring soft spot for parvenu pretense
washington delights me
our fathers had the inspired good sense to disneyland our federal figment
no nyc or phili
no actual earned commerce
pure celebration
concealing conspiracy and petty crime
a versailles for bureaucrats
and even bureaucrats lust for immortal mission
the conflicting cross purposing efforts
at fossilizing their churnings in stone
come off
like a young brides
first thanksgiving dinner for "the familly"
a sane place ??...no
but should it be ??
then again
Welthauptstadt Germania its not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Ae_4JRvKI
Posted by op | January 22, 2010 10:39 PM
Posted on January 22, 2010 22:39
Volkshalle
in this
dramatic realization
some how made me think
of cthulhu
http://legendsmagazine.net/100/cthulhu.jpg
http://api.ning.com/files/Mtcj6Uo0B8sOskypODDn9jGorwX-v7uh5PB53T4bdUQ_/cthulhu02.jpg
Posted by op | January 22, 2010 10:49 PM
Posted on January 22, 2010 22:49
Too bad Lewinsky couldn't save America from Clinton's "Welfare Reform" and "DOMA." Maybe then I would have been saved from forever rolling my eyes each and every time Democrats crow that their party isn't the hypocritical-about-sex party. Oh, no. That's the Republican party. [snort] Yeah, right.
Posted by ms_xeno | January 23, 2010 10:16 AM
Posted on January 23, 2010 10:16
welfare reform
was a necessary good bye to dole-o-nomics
we have a job ethic in this country
the living wage/min wage max movement has proven legs
of course
the hyper employment
job targeting
vs
inflation targeting
is absolutely necessary to making a jobfare system morally equivalent to dole-o-nomics
and job max minwage max
was exactly contrary to clinton era rubinomics
when it butted up against fiscal gap closing
an imperial dollar ready for export
and domestic "wealth appreciation"
the private account craze
btw even swept up the swedes back then
one bullet we norte amigo job smurfs dodged
Posted by op | January 23, 2010 11:04 AM
Posted on January 23, 2010 11:04
no no, nanette
i'm sorry
welfare "reform" wuz about
punishing women
mostly poor
for having the wrong kind of sex
with somebody
other than big dog clinton hisself
Posted by ms_xeno | January 23, 2010 2:23 PM
Posted on January 23, 2010 14:23
"welfare "reform" wuz about
punishing women
mostly poor.."
it certainly had that outcome
thus the burden is on the mes of this issue to prove you wrong
and not only can't i
i wouldn't even if i could
some noble truths transcend mere facts
Posted by op | January 23, 2010 3:00 PM
Posted on January 23, 2010 15:00