Betty Ford celebrates her 90th birthday today, and Wonkette offers up a hearty, nonalcoholic toast in her honor. For the 896 wonderful days of Gerald Ford's presidency, this sassy dancing divorcee brought outspoken feminism and frank talk to the White House. And the pills, dear God, the pills and booze!
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Ha ha, it turns out that Hillary Clinton even lies with her lying about her harrowing overseas adventures. First she says she once ran screaming through the streets of Tuzla smeared with the blood of Bosnian snipers as she singlehandedly brought peace to Northern Ireland; then she says she was the first president's wife to visit a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt. Wrong again, Pantsuit! That honor goes to Pat Nixon, who visited Vietnam with Sinbad way back in 1969.
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Wonkette’s own Nicolas Sarkozy corespondent has kept you all up to date on l’affaire Bruni, which may result in France having a supermodel/rock star/groupie first lady. Obviously this brings up an important policy-related question, keeping in mind Kissinger’s dictum on power being the ultimate aphrodisiac: Who is the hottest presidential spouse? This week, we start with the top four first ladies. But don’t call us sexist, just shallow! Next week we move on to the first gentlemen, assessing the field before before Bill Clinton’s sad eyes and bad-boy charm blow everyone else out of the water.
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Polite small talk over cucumber sandwiches and Earl Gray may work for some tea parties, but Janet Huckabee likes talking weapons. During a tea party at the South Carolina governor’s mansion, Huckabee told CNN she’s pretty good with a grenade launcher. “I have fired a grenade launcher and hit the target two out of three times, so I think that’s pretty good odds for me,” she said, noting that she had a special interest in military matters and has also jumped out of an airplane, flown in an F-16 and shot an MP5 submachine gun.
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Bored and frustrated by life in Sacramento’s golden cage, California First Lady Maria Shriver has decided to invite a bunch of potential first ladies to a big gabfest tomorrow! They’ll do their nails, talk about boys, and gamely try to promote their husbands’ candidacies while they die inside by degrees! So if that’s the sort of thing that does it for you, you’ll want to stop by the First Lady’s Conference on Women at the Long Beach Convention Center. Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, Jeri Thompson, Cindy McCain, and Ann Romney will be showing as many of their teeth as humanly possible while wearing some kind of pantsuit that looks professional but still feminine but not frivolous or lesbian-style professional. (Though we hope that the proximity to Hollywood will cause Jeri to forget herself and don some kind of red carpet-appropriate cleavage showcaser.)
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You’ll love this special limited edition Franklin Mint commemorative plate of Bill Clinton and a bunch of his womens. Oh wait, those are … uh, they are apparently a few random spouses of people running for president. And Bill, right, because he’s still married to Hillary. Jesus fucking christ, TIME, this is the most insane news magazine cover ever. It’s not on the TIME website (yet) but the article is real and the Evangelicals For Mitt apparently believe it’s real — would they fake an incredibly banal Joe Klein skybox blurb and a thing about 50 Cent wanting to be an actor? Then again, the Evangelicals For Mitt also believes (like Jonah Goldberg) that faxing a document involves sending actual sheets of paper through phone lines.
The US Mint, having already ensured that someday we will handle a dollar coin emblazoned with the face of Gerald Ford, is now giving in to whiny bleeding-heart types by putting all the Presidents’ wives on some coins. Half-ounce gold coins of no denomination that will not circulate. Fun fact:
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