Dostoevsky, Twain and the First Lady
Laura Bush was in town this week doing the first lady thing, which means sandpapering any splintery edges of the administration du jour, and varnishing it with some home truths of her own.
First ladies, like Miss Americas, choose themes, and Laura Bush, the former teacher and librarian, is pedal-to-the-metal for teachers and teaching, for books and literacy.
When she hunkers down with schoolkids, as she did in North Hollywood, it is the real thing. When Nancy Reagan did it, you got the sense that the kids were dress extras, there for only as long as the script called for them to be there.
On Monday, Laura Bush got top billing--above Britney Spears--on Jay Leno’s show. She gave him the supposed attack pretzel and creditably delivered a quip about “safe snacks.”
The Olympics have altered the Leno format, yet he didn’t ask Laura Bush what I did the next day, which is whether she ever wanted to be in the Olympics.
When she answered “Yeah, right,” in the sardonic West Texas tones of a girl who would choose Dostoevsky over ice skates any day, I figured we were off to a good start.
Now, I’ve met a few first ladies, and my idiosyncratic criterion for judging them has nothing to do with her causes, or her husband’s causes, or her Mater Dolorosa role as mother to the nation.
My rule is this: Is she good girlfriend material? How would she hold up on a shopping trip? A slumber party with wine and Twinkies? A long, late weepy confessional dinner?
Example: Betty Ford-- definite girlfriend material. She could talk about anything, and did, from breast cancer to premarital sex. Rosalynn Carter--there’s always one girl who brings dental floss to a slumber party, and I suspect Rosalynn is one of them. Barbara Bush--too bossy. Nancy Reagan--just too-too. I’ll get to Hillary Clinton presently.
I had 15 minutes with Laura B. Anyone is hard to size up in 15 minutes. Give me three hours, or just make me holler from behind the ropes. “Mrs. Bush”--(Barbara)--”are those real pearls?” “Mrs. Reagan, what did your horoscope say today?”
Laura Bush’s speech at Town Hall here Tuesday rounded the bases of a revived national spirit, volunteers and teachers, and most particularly children’s reading and education.
Then, bolder than her husband in the White House press room, she took questions. One woman asked about TV morality, and Mrs. B got a laugh. Her daughters watched “that very popular California show ‘90210’” and while it was on, “I would walk through the room and say, ‘These are not our values.’”
Afterward, Mrs. B took a rotation of quarter-hour interviews, her voice raspy with Beltway winter overlaid with Santa Ana wind scratch.
Did you meet Leno’s wife, Mavis, champion of Afghan women when most Americans still thought an Afghan was grandma’s blanket? “I never have talked to her,” though Mavis gave her husband a note for Mrs. B. “He’s very proud of her, and he should be. I mean, all Americans really should be proud of her, she’s talked about it so long and the great news is we actually get to see it change” in March, when Afghan girls go to school--some for the first time.
So what books influenced you? “I have a huge list,” starting with ‘Little Women,’ the first book she remembers her mother reading to her. And then “I would say certainly ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ has been very influential. I just have read a whole lot of Russian novels at various times ... all one summer when I was a schoolteacher in Houston, I read ‘em around the swimming pool, so even though they’re set in very cold Russia, they have this sort of bio-humidity about them that I remember.”
You’ve praised Mark Twain, but some people want to ban Twain and books like “Catcher in the Rye” from libraries, even “The Hobbit.” “Well, I certainly don’t think any of those books should be banned from libraries. I understand why people feel slightly uncomfortable with Mark Twain, because that was his point--he was making Americans really uncomfortable” about their moral dilemmas.
What about your mother taking a small bath on Enron stock? “Fortunately for my mother she’s a very small investor.... Who we need to think about are people who had their entire life savings, the former employees, and didn’t have any information beforehand so they could’ve diversified themselves. That’s the really, really sad part.”
So, on the Patt Standard: Hillary, whom I covered for about a week in 1992? Good girlfriend material, just so long as she doesn’t think her husband will make a pass at you.
Laura Bush? Possible girlfriend material, just so long as she doesn’t think you’ll make fun of her husband.
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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@ latimes.com
