An Everyday Icon, and an American Icon: choose wisely, weedhoppers
This is your weekly book report, from MOTUS, your cub book reviewer in training.
First up, from Kate Betts former employer of Harpers, Women’s Wear Daily and Vogue – so obviously she knows fashion forward when she sees it – Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style. You’ll get your money’s worth here, it’s packed with over 200 color photos! All of Lady M!
Butt let’s be honest, how many more MAO** fashion icon books can you really use? Also, as a stakeholder, I’m a little concerned that all this unbridled adulation might go to Lady M’s head.
“And whether she's rocking a designer gown, sporting a shirtwaist dress or kicking back in jeans and Converse sneakers, Obama, 47, is setting her own rules about what a first lady should wear…”
"She allows us to be frivolous and feminine," Betts says. "It's the idea that you can wear a bright color or wear a floral-printed dress. You don't have to wear a pinstriped pantsuit. That's a big step for a lot of women in the corporate world."
"She's particularly statuesque and beautiful, so we're definitely paying attention to what she's wearing."
Garden statuary
"breaking all these rules about what we think a first lady should look like."
FLOTUS as a pinup model: something needs pinning up
So if George W. Bush’s recession has left you with very few shekels for discretionary purchases, and you can only afford one book, I’m going to recommend Rummy’s new book, Known and Unknown, instead. It, too, will be out next week!
The second in a series of books by the three most-hated men in all of American history (George W’s book came out last November, and the Real Dick Cheney’s won’t be out until later this year), this one is especially good value, as it provides haters with 8 entire decades to get their hatin’ on! Even Sarah Palin can’t make that claim (she currently ranks #4 on the list, but has the potential for moving up much higher).
There’s one thing that everyone on the “Most Hated People of all Time” list has in common: an ability to look you right in the eye and tell you the unvarnished truth. Civilized people absolutely hate that.
I can’t promise you that they’ll all be in his book, butt here are some of my all time favorite Rummy quotes. I think they’ll remind you why you should buy his book.
"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."
(or doing the wrong things)
"Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up."
Especially if you insist on never letting a crisis go to waste…
or create Won of your own: (OINK!)
"Don't divide the world into "them" and "us." Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours."
Even if they get, or give, you tingles
"Too often management recommends plans that look like Bob Hope’s nose or a hockey stick.The numbers go down the first year or so and then up in the later years. If you accept hockey stick plans, you will find they will be proposed year after year."
Big Guy signing the biggest hockey stick plan of all time: Obamacare
"Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is "bold, exciting, innovative, and new." There are many ideas that are "bold, exciting, innovative and new," but also foolish."
"If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly."
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”
Some of the unknown things we may or may not know we don’t know
“Don't speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn't walk in their shoes.”
Buy the book; John Wayne would want you to.
**MAO: Michelle Antoinette Obama, per MaryOhSoContrary 10-7-10 “I Wonder, Woman?”