first ladies

a companion to the presidents thread. i still very much want to be eleanor roosevelt when i grow up. minus the squeaky voice that seemed to be a roosevelt trademark. but yeah.

She is my favorite first lady too. I'm guessing you picked up your affection for Eleanor from your parents.

of course. my mom was my enabler there. :) all those trips to hyde park and val-kil growing up have had a definite influence on me.

you know that cartoon, from right after she died? where the angels are saying, "it's her"? and it's making me cry just writing about it here? yeah. i want to leave that kind of legacy. on however small a scale.

I live so close to Hyde Park and never went there. Which is really strange as my parents worshipped FDR and going to historical homes was always something we did. I went to TR's home on Long Island.

my mom is a huge FDR fan, but i never really picked up on Eleanor's amazingness from her. It's something I discovered independently and decided she was a brilliant, enormously dedicated and courageous role model.

I have least favourites. :)

ehem. Laura 'Killer' Bush. pure evil. horrible role model. she's setting an example that may have been appropriate in the 1950s (actually, it really wasn't appropriate then, either, but it was 'accepted'), but not in the 21st century. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was the opposite, and therefore was great.

Don't know as much about First Ladies as I should, but my wife likes Eleanor Roosevelt even though her husband was a blight on the country.

The only ones I have real memories of are Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton (my least favorite by far), and Laura Bush.

I'd say that Nancy is probably the best out of those with Laura Bush finishing a distant second. Other than that I don't know enough about the other First Ladies to really say anything about them.

my most vivid memory of Nancy Reagan is her apperance on Diff'rent Strokes when she was touting Just Say No.

But Betty Ford was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and it was just for laughs.

No so much that I like her, but we are related...distantly.

Although, if I remember right, her and I are the same generation.

I actually liked Hillary, because she turned her enforced celebrity into activism.� Rather than being a mouthpiece and a photo op for a pet cause, she actually had ideas and spoke about them on their merits.

But I understand politics like most Americans understand hockey.� I know the names and the eventual goal, but beyond that, it's just a big fight.