john thain owes me (and you) $1.2M

last week i turned into some sort of crazy obsessive maniac who couldn't stop looking at photos of malia and sasha (pronounced rick warren style, of course). i thought i was being a touch more creepy than what would be considered normal, then i read the comments on the slideshow, mostly from people who wanted to take the girls home and buy them ice cream, misery-style. now that's creepy.

anyway, where did you watch the inauguration? was it you arriving in DC in your private jet? my office set up giant tvs in the cafeteria, which was pretty thoughtful of them since cnn.com just wasn't cutting it. and yes, i can confirm that a room chock full of corporate lawyers found the sight of dick cheney in his wheelchair completely, utterly hilarious.

everyone celebrated differently. this guy decided to bake the most, uh, offputting cookies ever (you've got to watch the video, seriously), some wept, and one person decided to let her hat do the talking. we've heard a lot about how michelle obama chose immigrant designers, like taiwan-born jason wu or cuban-american isabel toledo, but dudes, foreal, a korean-american milliner from detroit--hockeytown!!--made aretha's hat!

despite this incredible moment in history, the deprecession continues. and the princes of wall street again prove to us that they are complete failures in PR and they could care less about winning over the american people since they already have all of our money anyway. john thain attempted to break the bonehead mold by apologizing for his inappropriate decorating expenses:

The final topic is the expenses related to my office. The $1.2 million reported in the press was for the renovation of my office, two conference rooms and a reception area. The expenses were incurred over a year ago in a very different environment. Nonetheless, they were a mistake in the light of the world we live in today. I will therefore reimburse the company for all of the costs incurred.

finally! taxpayers, $1.2 million. thain, at least $3.2 million...and counting...

Cute-off

Seriously, if you could Madonna only one of these two children, which one would you choose? Trying to measure and compare the relative cuteness might burn your synapses.

On a less cute note -- and I'm just sayin' -- but is it possible, maybe, just maybe, that the Obamas, who've steadfastly refused to exploit their little girls through election season, who've emphasized that they want these kids to be kids, made a strategic choice to, umm, straighten out their hair in anticipation of the big stage? In other pictures, the little ones rock braids, curls, faux-dreads, and tied-back naturals (see here, here and here), but now they're hair's decidedly less, shall we say, ethnic.

I'm not prepared to actually do a timeline analysis of pictures of the girls through the last couple of years and trace their hairstyles, so maybe I'm way off base here, but given the fact that in her speech Michelle Obama announced her unqualified patriotism, defined herself as wife/mother/daughter/sister (not as lawyer and community leader), and made every effort to counter, if implicitly, all charges of militancy unfairly lobbed at her, I think it's fair to say that last night she was concerned primarily with stagecraft, with presenting herself as a First Lady and the girls as potential First Daughters. We the electorate are dumb, we are lazy, and we are subconsciously racist -- we don't think it's inappropriate for our President's blonde underage daughter to cavort drunkenly at Smith Point, but we will not allow human sunshine herself to play double dutch on the South Lawn if she does so with black people's hair.

Now, if the Obamas made a strategic decision to straighten the girls' hair, I don't fault them for it -- I think it's sad and I feel bad for them that they have to, but they're right to do it. You make moral compromises if you want to be President. This is just one of them. Michelle, Sasha, and Malia Obama will be iconic stereotype-defying black women one day, but they live in a country that won't let them go overboard with the blackness before getting there.