New at Huffington Post: At Last

Betty has a new piece up at the Huffington Post that looks at the macho cowboy image of past presidents and the new model set forth by President Obama and his wife, Michelle:

Here’s an excerpt:

The Inauguration of our new Chief this January has miraculously, it would seem, inaugurated a shift in movie genre. Instead of watching a loner whacking brush at the Crawford Corral, most of the nation watched endless reruns of a couple in black and white dancing. Slow dancing. “Old-style,” as President Obama said. In their formal wear, Barack and Michelle looked “like a wedding couple,” as many said.

They looked like Fred and Ginger, who first sang “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off” in Swing Time in 1936 to lighten our hearts in the middle of the first Great Depression. Maybe the true reason movie musicals took off in the Depression was not that they provided escapist fantasy but rather something real — an assertion of values based on neither power nor money but on the hope of togetherness, two by two.

Musicals depended on a romance between men and women, not just the buddyhood of guys with guns. Musicals were by definition inclusive of the very things Westerns typically excluded — gender other than male, race other than white, a community larger than a man and his horse.

Go read the rest!

Chowbama

Sarah Boesveld of the Globe and Mail writes about the fascination with President Obama’s food choices and quotes a few food experts …

But Mr. Obama - however svelte - has a way of making food about community and connection, foodie watchers say.

“One thing everyone cares about is: ‘What does the president eat?’ ” says Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine.

“Food has always been part of politics - eating hot dogs in one place and tacos in another. Food is a very emotional and approachable topic.”

Mr. Obama appears to connect with the masses by sharing his gastronomic tendencies, says Betty Fussell, a New York-based food historian. He has meetings while dining, and the world has seen a few televised breakfast campaign stops during which he revealed his affection for waffles.

“A lot of our personal identity is wrapped up in food, and everybody knows that instinctively,” she says. “[Mr. Obama] seems to be endorsing real food. We won’t see him plowing into a dozen doughnuts,” she says, or, God forbid, wolfing down McDonald’s fare à la Bill Clinton.