In the midst of
popping firecrackers, eating delicious barbeque, and celebrating our
independence, checkout Feisty First
Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women! Part irreverent portrait gallery,
party exuberant expose, Autumn Stephens’ book introduces a remarkable array of
wild women, starting with Martha Washington, to Abraham Lincoln's spendthrift
wife Mary, to rebellious daughters like Patti Davis and Amy Carter who were the
tabloid fodder of their day. Filled
with amazing stranger-than-fiction facts from our American history, Feisty First Ladies
is sure to get you laughing!
Have a look:
THE CONSTITUTION IS CLEAR on the point:
Technically speaking, the president of the United States, and not the woman in his
life, gets to be the official Big Cheese. Yet from firebrand Abigail Adams, who
exhorted the Founding Fathers to “remember the ladies” (or else!) to career
woman Hillary Clinton, frankly advertised as part of the presidential package
in her husband’s “two-for-one” campaign, American wives, mistresses, mothers,
and even serving maids over the centuries have matched the mettle of the men in
the Oval Office—and, on occasion, the gall.
“The whole government is afraid of me, and
well they may be,” gloated early nineteenth-century reporter Anne Royall, who
held a naked president’s pants hostage until he granted her an interview. “Well,
Warren, I have got you the presidency…what are you going to do with it?”
inquired indomitable First Lady Florence Harding in 1921. And the words of
audacious phone freak Martha Mitchell, who didn’t hesitate in 1973 to tell
Watergate conspirator Richard Nixon (and every reporter in Washington) that she
had his number, still ring across the decades: “Mr. President should resign!”
Many a secret White House paramour, of
course, has held (or at least briefly handled) the reins of Executive power.
The careers of Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, and Dwight D.
Eisenhower, to name only a few, all once hung on the question of an
extramarital indiscretion (and also the forbearance of American voters).The
many madcap lovers of John F. Kennedy—among them Judith Campbell Exner, also
intimately involved with a Mafia boss during her two-year affair with JFK—probably
deserve a book (among other things) of their own.
Not every female who infiltrates the bastion
of patriarchal power, of course, revels in her role. Fiercely private Bess
Truman, plagued in the mid-twentieth century by unfavorable comparisons to her
larger-than-life predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt, termed the Executive Mansion “The
Great White Jail”; 150 years earlier, the much-scrutinized Martha Washington, Mother
of All First Ladies, grumbled that she was “more like a state prisoner than
anything else.” And to the present day, savaging the president’s spouse rivals
football as a beloved national sport.
But for every reluctant White House resident,
a dozen would-be denizens wait restlessly in the wings. Nowhere is it written,
all appearances to the contrary, that the individual who inhabits the Oval
Office must actually be a man: From self-proclaimed libertine Victoria Woodhull
in 1872 to black feminist leader Shirley Chisholm a century later to Hilary
Clinton in 2008, a host of bold trailblazers have not only fantasized about
becoming president, but seriously contended for the position. And overriding
the democratic process altogether, a brazen bevy of protestors, picketers, and
gate-crashers—not to mention rock star Grace Slick, who once plotted to spike
Richard Nixon’s tea with LSD, has simply tried to take the White House by
storm.
From feisty first ladies and mutinous
housekeepers to overt publicity hounds and behind-the-scenes dictators,
American women have left an enduring imprint in the annals of presidential
history. In the spirit of 1776, here’s to every White House revolutionary who
celebrated Independence Day her way and to the proposition that a nation of
enlightened voters will someday also “remember the ladies” at the ballot box.
No comments:
Post a Comment