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The women in this photo could be models. The men in this photo are, well, typical schlubby D.C.-types. I’m sure they’re all crazy-impressive, but I wonder who sets the bar for women’s admission to the West Wing (or, perhaps, to the Times Sunday Magazine).

Regardless, this story is some great power porn and a nice source of tabloid ennui for anyone of a certain age and with a certain subset of college diplomas. Read it and self-flagellate.

# All the Obama 20-Somethings from the Sunday Times Magazine

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A fabulous, and not entirely disingenuous, bit of infographics which succeeds in making me feel better about the fate of the nation. Seen on the Slate Political Gabfest page in response to news of Tufte’s appointment to the administration, although it’s not clear he’s behind this particular graph. Still, great work.

# Road to Recovery

Edward Tufte Presidential Appointment →

Un-effing-believable. Edward Tufte is the high priest of information graphics, and this is just a kick in the pants – talk about the intersection of politics and design! Congrats.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint several individuals to serve on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel.

[via Gruber]

Marriage politics

I happened upon the Clintons’ June 1992 appearance on the Arsenio Hall show, and an exchange struck me:

Arsenio: Through all this controversy, have you ever found yourselves at home, fighting? Honestly?
Hillary: No.
Bill: Nuh uh.
Hillary: Not about anything important. We fight about what movie we want to see…
Arsenio: Because, you know… it’s hard to think that you never at some point said Who is Gennifer? I mean, who the hell is she? You know?
Hillary: I know who she is. I mean, I know who she is.

It struck me in light of this moment in Jodi Kantor’s piece on the Obama marriage for the Sunday Times magazine:

Two months later in the Oval Office, I asked the Obamas just how severe their strains had been. “This was sort of the eye-opener to me, that marriage is hard,” the first lady said with a little laugh. “But going into it, no one ever tells you that. They just tell you, ‘Do you love him?’ ‘What’s the dress look like?’ ”

I asked more directly about whether their union almost came to an end.

“That’s overreading it,” the president said. “But I wouldn’t gloss over the fact that that was a tough time for us.”

Did you ever seek counseling? I asked.

The first lady looked solemnly at the president. He said: “You know, I mean, I think that it was important for us to work this through… . There was no point where I was fearful for our marriage. There were points in time where I was fearful that Michelle just really didn’t — that she would be unhappy…”

“If my ups and downs, our ups and downs in our marriage can help young couples sort of realize that good marriages take work… .” Michelle Obama said a few minutes later in the interview. The image of a flawless relationship is “the last thing that we want to project,” she said. “It’s unfair to the institution of marriage, and it’s unfair for young people who are trying to build something, to project this perfection that doesn’t exist.”

Of course, that was candidate Clinton in the final run-up to November, but to see how readily Hillary answers the question in that clip, the difference is striking.

It reveals as much about divergent political sensibilities as it does about very different marriages. With the Obamas in mind, it’s hard not to look back to 1992 and see a missed opportunity. But if they had answered otherwise, it wouldn’t have been the Bill & Hillary we know, would it?

I asked last month, “can the times really be changing, even if only a bit?” Cornel West, it should come as no surprise, has a mellifluous word on the subject, and he offered it to Stephen Colbert last week:

Thank God we’ve got white brothers and sisters who are a little bit less racist than they were in the past – that’s a beautiful thing. But it doesn’t mean that just because you’ve got a black face in a high place, racism has been eliminated. It just means we’ve made some progress – thats a beautiful thing.

Like Whac-a-Mole, I think I never feel satisfied with the dismantling of white supremacy because there’s always some other manifestation of it I hadn’t happened to notice before. I’ve been grappling with the complementary questions “What just happened?” and “Now what?” for a year come Wednesday morning. Graduate school hasn’t afforded much time to puzzle out an answer, and I’m no further along than I was on that glorious and hopeful morning after.

Say what you will about Brother Cornel, but he is a sort of cultural seer and must have a point here. All I meant to say was: this interview is hi-larious, much better than his first appearance last year. Check it out.

"In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House."

—

Sends shivers up my spine to read that line. Coincidentally, I re-listened to Zadie Smith’s extraordinary lecture at the NYPL from the last winter – both pieces call me to reassess, somehow, my understanding of how race is constructed in America. Can the times really be changing, even if only a bit?

# In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery - NYTimes.com
# Speaking in Tongues – Zadie Smith live from the NYPL

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Only in this moment do I realize how much I missed the internet while I was gone. [via Kottke]

"The Obamas gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod loaded with songs and videos — this after weeks of grief from the British press over the 25 DVDs that the couple gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain when he visited Washington. (The Browns gave the Obamas an ornate penholder made from the timber of a Victorian antislave ship.)"

— Okay, I recognize this doesn’t look good for American savoir faire, but what DVDs were they? A box set of The Wire is totally equal to an anti-slave ship penholder, amIright? (from the Times.)

Missteps involve walking

• WaPo comment thread on Obama's Leno appearance,
• afmo:  wow...what kind of monster mocks the Special Olympics? Disgraceful.
• davenp35:  Obama is disgusting! Imagine what all the papers and channels would be doing tomorrow if Bush had said this?!?
• josephkenny:  Bush did not speak about the Special Olympics at all. In fact, he forbid his Surgeon General to endorse or attend the Special Olympics, due to the fact that they were supported by the Shrivers.
• ...oh.