Gay marriage has jumped out of the closet on to the front page. Everyone from the president of the U.S. to retired four-star general Colin Powell is embracing the issue, now supported by most Americans. Still, a few people, like former First Lady Laura Bush appear to be conflicted.
I'm not wild about the term first lady. I'd just like to be called Laura Bush.
Happy birthday to former First Lady Barbara Bush, who turned seventy-seven this week. Unfortunately, where her granddaughters helped blow out the candles on her cake, it exploded.
Laura Bush has the face of my mother when my mother was young. The face, the body, the voice. The first time I saw on TV Laura Bush, I got frozen because it was as if my mother was not dead. 'Oh, Mama,' I said, 'Mama.'
I think about Laura Bush every once in awhile. She is a great supporter of the arts. I did a show at the Eisenhower Theater, and she would make a point of coming backstage. The relationship between Laura and George Bush was always that way where you felt like he was at his best behavior when he was in her company.
Hillary Clinton was the first professional First Lady, the first feminist First Lady, the first First Lady from the '60s generation, the first First Lady who was the breadwinner in the family. A lot of America liked and admired that. Some other parts of America found that unappetizing and even kind of threatening. So she became a flashpoint simply for who she was.
I think for Laura [Bush] it was kind of a sense of remorse because she is very close to the girls. They're busy little souls, and so we don't see them as much as we'd like to. But Laura talks to them all the time.
I first heard Laura Branigan sing live in my brother Nesuhi's apartment, where we had gone because he had a very good piano. I immediately realized that she had a great pop voice, in the classical sense. Laura had an instinctive feel for music and melody, and her delivery was sensational. Everybody at Atlantic knew that we had a winner in this young lady, and she came through with great hits that will be remembered for many years to come. I consider Laura to be one of my best signings, and I am proud to have had such a great singer in my career in the record business. We miss her dearly.
We are all encouraged that Bush appears, really for the first time in his experience on the stage of presidential politics, relaxed. His comfort is our comfort.
Between the fictional Laura of the books and the even more heavily fictionalized girl of the TV show, we've tended to lose sight of the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder was a real person who was complicated and intense.
Being a former first lady doesn't prepare you to be president.
George W. Bush was good as his word. He visited the Gulf states 17 times; went 13 times to New Orleans. Laura Bush made 24 trips. Bush saw that $126 billion in aid was sent to the Gulf's residents, as some members of his own party in Congress balked.
It's false advertising to call Mrs. Obama the First Lady. First Woman, maybe, but certainly not a lady. Ann Romney is an actual lady.
[Strong marriage] starts with being married to a remarkable person. And I am. I jokingly say that I stood up in front of a crowd once and said, "Laura's the greatest first lady ever," and then realized my mother was in the audience.
I grew up feeling voiceless and powerless as a kid. I turned to books - fantasy books in particular - to give me comfort. As I grew up, I realized I could find that sense of power and voice if I simply started writing.
Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don't care what they say, they like it.