That Robinson Girl

You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but like most things, I think that's pretty relative. I can see how it applies to if maybe one of your co-workers drops dead, which presents a great time to NOT pass along the rumors about which part of his body he maybe tried to fit a whole Napa cabbage into one time at a teambuilding retreat. That person is allowed a private life. Maybe he has friends and family who don't need to know what it's speculated he'd gotten up to in a moment of acute boredom, weakness, curiosity or some admixture of all three.

I'm not sure the same admonition applies to presidents of the United States, however. There has been some back-and-forth on twitter and all the requisite, incessant, super-thirsty subsequent long-form* thinkpieces trying to gather all that sweet insta-gratifying twitter nectar into honey for their clickbait junkyards of aggregation, about whether or not it's OK to say George H.W. Bush kinda sucked. He probably did, I don't know. He mostly became a public figure in a way that a) I was too young to really pay attention to and b) included him being the vice president, the most invisible job in the world. Which is why Mike Pence is perfect for it considering he looks exactly like how a child would color in an invisible person if you asked them to draw one.

So I imagine he mostly sucked. I knew just enough about him to feel very comfortable making him the first person I ever voted against in a presidential election, way back in 1992. He struck me as a patrician** goober compromised into having no ideas of note and who never once played the saxophone. Fucking pass.

Saying you're not allowed to not like an ex-president out loud just because he's dead is stupid. Once you're shortsighted enough to get yourself stuck being president, you stop being a person in the limited, human sense that includes dignity and personal space. I mean, look at what we say about Donald Trump and he's still out there wheezing and sniffling away perfectly good oxygen.

Really though I don't want to talk about George H.W. Bush. He's got a fucking aircraft carrier and a giant-ass airport named after him. His legacy is going to be fine.

I really want to talk about the star of the George H.W. Bush funeral and that, of course is Michelle Obama. No, she didn't speak or wail or anything else of obnoxious noteworthiness really. It's just that she's Michelle Obama, so she was by default the best person at the thing.

She's gotten some attention these past few weeks for promoting a book about how she's definitely not going to run for office eventually.*** On the press tour, which included hundreds of hours of appearances and interviews, this is the only thing people remember:

“That whole ‘so you can have it all.’ Nope, not at the same time... That’s a lie. And it’s not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesn’t work all the time.”

ZOMG the former first lady said "shit!" Are they allowed to do that? Wait, does Laura Bush say "shit?" Mmm, probably, but more likely she draws out the "shhh..." sound and opts in the end for "sugar" as a minced oath. Total librarian move. I'm sure Hillary swore, I don't care how Midwestern Methodist she is. If you were married to that lumbering freight train of fuck-ups, you'd have a repertoir about as varied and vulgar as a full season of The Wire. And you know Barbara Bush laid it down. It was probably the kind of old-school swearing, like calling all her boys "panty-waists" or something when today she'd say "whiny little bitch," but the idea would have been the same.

I thought about what Michelle meant in the quote, beyond Dirty Word-gate (there are too many Trump scandals to make them all -gates, so we have to bring it back somewhere). And sure, I guess "you can have it all!" means fine, we can't stop you doing what you want to do, it's just that we've spent all this time and energy building a perfectly functional socio-political paradigm here over generations contingent upon your voluntary participation in your own gender-based subjugation and exploitation. Get a job sure, but you need to "have it all," which includes all the same housework and child-rearing too, whether you're co-habitating or not and whether or not there are enough hours in a week for that even to be achievable.

Subtext A: give yourself a fucking break.

Subtext B: smash the goddamned patriarchy.

And she's Michelle Obama, so you know she's not just talking about it, she's out there doing it. Staring right into the eyes on the head of the snake. And slaying it, just a little bit here and there, one raised-eyebrow at a time.

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*I think now this just means "not on twitter" anymore.

**So probably racist?

***That's sarcasm. I don't think she will and I don't think she should. Not because she couldn't, but because she doesn't have to retroactively legitimize herself on anyone's terms but her own. She's Michelle Obama.