Dan says…

“Power isn’t something you’re given. It’s something you take.” – Jock Ewing, Ewing Oil

I’m worried that our president doesn’t know how to seize power. That he’s a sheep in Armani clothing.

During the campaign run-up to the 2008 presidential election, somewhere on the pages of WellReadHostess.com, I commented about the candidate Barack Obama and what I felt was one of his shortcomings.

I said it had seemed that in positions Obama held leading up to and including public office, he was always feeling like he needed that next job up in order to make a difference. In order to have the power needed to really affect change, he needed to be one rung higher on the ladder. And my worry was that his lack of ability to make things happen in his other positions would occur in this one as well, as president, and there were no further rungs to climb on this ladder in the hopes of being more powerful before he could actually DO something.

Jock Ewing nailed it. If you can’t get things done as President, you can’t get things done. Power isn’t something you get from your position (though it can help). Power is something you create, straight out of thin air, from force of will, intelligence and a keen understanding of the motivations, strengths and weaknesses of those around you.

I’m worried that the man I voted for isn’t a powerful man. Clearly he’s a really bright man, but so what. I’m bright too, and here I am, an organ grinder monkey on a freakin blog.

Obama is also a good orator. I’m good with my mouth too, but, well, nevermind. It’s been suggested that I keep my mouth in my pants. Or something. I don’t recall. I like whiskey, remember? But Christ, it felt good when Obama stood in front of that podium and said “Universal healthcare in 12 months” didn’t it? Now it’s looking like he was more talk than action. The Bill Lumbergh of the White House.

Where was I? Right. Obama. He’s also good with PR. Like the Beer Summit. Live televised selection of his NCAA bracket on ESPN. Opining on Kanye West and steroids in baseball. Seriously? Fuck all that shit, Mr. President. You gave mansions full of money to prevent financial institutions from folding during the mortgage crisis, but it’s now looking like you were just a sucker with his money: soon parted. The financials knew you couldn’t allow them to fold, so they drove themselves Thelma & Louise style right off the cliff, and you caught them. And now they’re not behaving much better than they did before their rear wheels cleared the rock ledge.

And President Obama let weedhead Barney Frank off the hook for all of it. Why? Politics as usual. I guess that “hopey, changey stuff” was too much to actually hope for.

And what about the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohaironmyback? As recently as a few days ago the President was hard down on a civilian trial, and trying to make it sound like it was the more badass of the two options when compared to a military trial. And now? Reports are getting out that he might turn 180 degrees and push for a military trial.

What about Afghanistan? Iraq?

Without question, President Obama has inherited a hornet’s nest. But when I cast that vote, I thought I was casting it for a kick ass hornet-wrangler. Not someone that stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Listen. I can’t shoot thunderbolts out my arse and I don’t stand 7 feet tall, but I do feel like I’ve got blue paint on my face and am addressing the Earl of Bruce when I say “Now tell me, what does that mean to be president? Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country, but men don’t follow titles, they follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to financial freedom, justice and peace, they’d follow you. And so would I.”

The nickname for POTUS is NOT “Arbitrator of the Free World” or “The Most Powerful Go-Between in the World.” It’s leader. Of the free world.

So fucking lead, already.

…but Jane thinks…

Yes, he’s good with PR. But this isn’t exactly news, Dan. I would argue, though, that the beer summit didn’t really help him much. My biggest disappointment in Obama’s performance as POTUS so far is that he hasn’t made better use of those PR skills. He’s got an agile mind and he’s a fantastic orator. He’s been testing his voice again on the road lately to promote health care reform and I’m relieved. He won the hearts and minds of American voters because of his ability to connect and inspire, and he hasn’t been doing enough of that.

It is simply ignorant, how ironic given that “I” am nominally the ignoramus at the table, to say that he hasn’t come through and been able to get things done. The list of his accomplishments thus far is impressive. To say that he mishandled the financial crisis is laughable. Are we in a depression? No. Are housing starts up? Yes. Is unemployment, albeit slowly, on the decline? Yes. Are temp hires, an oft-cited indicator of economic recovery, on the upswing? Yes. The president, no matter who he is, cannot be charged with making corporations fall into line in terms of best practices. Commercial regulation is a legislative task.

And there’s the rub. It’s not that Obama isn’t making headway; he is. The appearance that not much is happening is a function of the smoke and mirrors in place at the other end of the mall in D.C. Congress sucks. As conservative commentator David Brooks said recently, “In a senseible country, Obama would be able to clearly define his modern brand of moderate progressivism without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don’t live in that country. We live in a country in which many live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect…a lot of liberals think Obama’s been very weak and he’s not forceful enough. I think he’s been amazingly tenacious on Afghanistan, on health care, on education. Pretty tough guy, I think. A lot of conservatives think he’s a socialist, trying ot turn us into Sweden. Give me a break! Is that what this health care is about? But people like that because they want all differences to be 190 degrees rather than 30 degrees. And so they get to pick that reality because it makes them feel good.” The current and tenacious partisan reality is “Block that Kick.”

And speaking of sports and David Brooks, the conservative pundit, on Meet the Press this week, he said this, “My favorite sport is home runs or singles. And they believe in home runs, or the long bomb (the people saying Obama isn’t living up to it). I, I’m more of a singles guy. I remember when the Mets had a guy named Dave Klingman who like 30 home runs a year and struck out like 500 times a year. I’m more – especially in a culture where people are so cynical about Washington, I think you hit a few singles, you go – you get that thing going so people’ll have some faith in government, and hten they can trust you a little more. I, I’ve just become very averse to this home run mentality.” My god. It’s David Brooks. It’s not even like I have to pull out Olbermann or Maddow or even Chris Matthews to get this perspective. And Dan, you can totally call me on not having my own arguments and using New York Times writers to make my case for me. I happily concede that David Brooks is way smarter than I am.

Look at what Obama inherited. Massive debt, two aimless and expensive wars, a disenfranchised and bewildered populace, a financial crisis unlike any seen in decades, a broken health care system, a rising tide of working poor and unemployed poor, and a Congress so dysfunctional they make the Botwins look like the Huxtables.

I think Jock Ewing had was a senile old fictional fart who’d inhaled too many petrochemical fumes. If you can lead with a quote uttered by a character from an 80’s television melodrama, I can certainly close with a quote from someone who actually exists and is attentive to the political process, all the while managing to look hot and make kick ass movies. On Charlie Rose the other night, when asked about his perception of Obama’s performance as president so far, Matt Damon said this: “Look, being American is not about leaving it up to your leaders, it’s just not. It’s about agitating at the bottom, because that’s when your leaders listen to you. Your leaders respond to you, not the other way around. And anybody who’s waiting for Barack Obama or George Bush or anybody to lead them to the promise land is going to be waiting a long time. You’ve got to be involved. And change comes from the bottom and not from the top.”

If you don’t think Obama is getting the job done, maybe you need to be doing more, not him.

Fortunately, my head is normal sized so I don’t end up looking like Rachel Zoe. And if you don’t know who Rachel Zoe is please don’t bother to look her up because it’s bad enough that someone thought she was relevant enough to get a tv show that we don’t need to prop her up with any google search stats. She’s a lollipop head, emaciated “stylist” who wears clothes that all seem to be recently shorn from a wooly water buffalo and the most godawful shoes the world has ever seen. Enough said.

I also wear regular glasses, at night and if I run out of saline, which is like once a year. The running out of saline happens once a year. Night happens slightly more frequently.

It’s convenient that I don’t wear my regular glasses often because I am not very good at taking care of them. Say, on a scale of 1 to 10 if 1 was “put them in the garbage disposal and then the toilet” and 10 is “keep them in a safe place,” I’m like a 2. Maybe a 3.

I wear sunglasses almost every day. Even when it’s not sunny, although sometimes I wear them as a headband which I realize I should have stopped doing sometime around 1986 but they don’t squish that spot behind my ears the way other headbands do and I like having my hair pulled back but not in a haphazard MomTail.

I can’t, therefore, buy nice sunglasses. If I were capable of taking care of them, I’d buy one of these Kate Spades:

Or these Kate Spades:

But I’m not. So instead, I buy about 10 pairs of $8 plastic sunglasses a year. These are the most recent. Other than what my husband said, which was something exactly like, “You look like an insect or a car with huge headlights,” and he didn’t mean “headlights” in a good way, I’ve had more compliments on these cheapies than any of their predecessors in years.

Best part…I bought them in a store I’ve never been in before in my life. NY and Company. Although actually, maybe it’s the worst part, because now when I trash these I’ll feel compelled to go back in there and I’m dangerously allergic to pre-ripped jeans and tackiness. Maybe if I bring an epi-pen?

Listen up, yo. None of what I write here in See Jane Shop is the consequence of any solicitation by any of these companies or products or services. This is just stuff I like. I haven’t made any deals to get compensated. Having said that, I like to consider myself a PR friendly person. If you have something you want me to review, I’m happy to do it. In that case, I’ll disclose that the review was solicited, and everyone will be happy.

Jane says…

At least eleven two times a day, I get an email forwarded by someone’s cousin to someone’s sister to someone’s coworker to everybody on someone else’s email list and then to my mother. Who then forwards said email to me. Inevitably, it’s something like this:

or these:

How are husbands like lawn mowers?
They’re hard to get started, they emit noxious odors, and half the time they don’t work.

What do men and pantyhose have in common?
They either cling, run, or don’t fit right in the crotch!

How many men does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One-He just holds it up there and waits for the world to revolve around him.

How many men does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Three. One to screw in the bulb, and two to listen to him brag about the screwing part.

My very formal research which included asking a few guys at lunch what kinds of jokes they send each other indicates that men do not get the same volume of “wife” jokes as women do about husbands.

Most jokes at wives’ expense go something like this:

“Whenever I go home after we’ve been out drinking, I turn the headlights off before I get to the driveway. I shut off the engine and coast into the garage. I take my shoes off before I go into the house, I sneak up the stairs, I get undressed in the bathroom. I ease into bed and my wife STILL wakes up and yells at me for staying out so late!”

His buddy looks at him and says, “Well, you’re obviously taking the wrong approach. I screech into the driveway, slam the door, storm up the steps, throw my shoes into the closet, jump into bed, rub my hands on my wife’s ass and say, ‘How about a blowjob?’ … and she’s always sound asleep.”

Or this:

“My husband is a fill-in-the-blank” jokes are way more socially acceptable than “my wife is a fill-in-the-blank” jokes. I’m not saying that this is necessarily how it should be, I’m just saying this is how it is. And why is it? Why is it OK to bash the husbands, but not so cool to bash the wives?

1) The content of the jokes is key. In general, jokes about wives are gripes about sex lives or nagging. The recurring “sex life” joke theme is that men aren’t getting it enough. Why is this not OK? We only need to look at the jokes women make about sex for our answer: you are lazy, hairy, beery, and we are tired of cleaning up after you so we’d rather just sleep.

2) Other types of jokes are about nagging wives. Jokes about nagging wives are stupid. Like the sex jokes, they only point back to your own shortcomings. Life imitates art, right? Are you surprised we nag? If you would do the shit that you are supposed to do, that you say you’re going to do, that we need you to do then we won’t nag. Furthermore, when you actually do all that stuff – try to do it the way we said to. Why do we get to say you should do things? Because women run the household. We keep the big calendar and message board in our heads. You don’t. This is why you call us to ask where the Advil is while we’re out enjoying our first family-free night out with the girls in months or you have to check in with us while we’re driving home from the grocery store because you have to know immediately how much the 7 year old weighs because some form needs the info. It’s not that you aren’t necessary and important, it’s that you aren’t as necessary and important as we are.

3) It’s OK to husband bash because we need the solidarity and the validation. Plus we need the laughs. Because some days, it comes down to two choices: laugh or pack a bag.

…but Dan thinks…

You know, I kinda get the need for the husband jokes. It’s like why everyone hates the United States. We own everything. We run everything. We know how everything works. We know how to fix everything.

And we can pee standing up. It’s natural to be jealous.

But I’m pretty sure that holding the title “cruise director” does not make women queens of all they survey.

The household you run? You’re welcome for providing that for you. The long hours we spent separating clients from their money, constructing their constructions, meeting with fart-breathing bosses and filling out TPS reports? Because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and that it wasn’t every bit as grueling as plopping the children in front of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while you run down the Energizers on your favorite toy. Oh, right. That actually ISN’T that grueling, is it.

You know what Rachel Rae does to prevent every calorie from going to her ass because you have the time. Time to watch television. Time to read gossip blogs. Hell, time to write your own damn blogs.

We’re just too busy to spend all our free time bitching to any other man that’ll listen about how unfair life is.

And the reason we can’t find the Advil? You keep fucking moving it. I get wanting to feel like you control your surroundings, but do you have to do it by constantly shuffling everything around in the house? The answer to “Where’s the Advil” should NOT be “Billy had soccer that one time and he hurt his knee and so we were sitting on the floor and I gave him the Advil while I held ice on his knee and then Miranda came in and distracted me and I needed to put away the Advil so it was out of reach of the kids and so I think I put it with the spices so check there.”

Um, no. The answer should be “It’s in the medicine drawer, where it always is.”

Ok, now I feel the need to wipe away the piggish veneer and be serious for a minute. In general I don’t think men mind that much that women get together and privately dish dirt on their spouses. Some men dish, too. But the thing that I feel is wholly unacceptable? Airing dirty laundry to the world. Like on a blog. I’m not going to name names here, only because Jane has been screaming and pleading that I don’t, for fear that it’ll mean disaster for this blog. But there are women with high profile blogs who write really insulting things about their husbands and family on a regular basis. Husband jokes, but in real life.

Maybe it’s a lack of maturity that makes these women do this. Or maybe it’s a lack of intelligence or foresight. Or lack of respect.

But one of the first rules you ever learn about interpersonal relations, even as a child, is that if you have an issue with someone, you take it up with that person, not everyone EXCEPT that person. Maybe those women who blog nasty on their husbands are really, deep down, unhappy and hoping for a divorce and this is how they subconsciously make that happen. Or maybe they have mice for men (at which point those men should get together for some chest-bumping bro-lidarity, or go buy a t-shirt that says “she may be the woman, but I’m the pussy”). Whatever the reason, it’s pretty much indefensible, and all the harm that gets rained down on that relationship because of that behavior is justified.

Husband jokes? Fine in moderation. Wife jokes? Assume the position more often and they’ll go away.

And? We help out quite a bit around the house. We just don’t fly a biplane dragging a message each time we empty the trash.