Michelle that is. The FFL (future first lady) fine, maybe, will be posting regularly on Blogher about her experiences working on her husband's campaign. What can say, I mean genius obviously, on the part of Michelle in terms of strategic political spouses and on the part of those insanely effective ladies over at Blogher.

Her first post is already up, and I am looking forward to seeing how Blogher and Obama use the leverage this partnership is going to give them. Also interesting is that Blogher has just announced a partnership with two grand old dames of gender specific web portals, iVillage and Oxygen. So as they add a strong political voice to their roster they've also made strategic alliances with major web properties. Interesting times, and holy kudos to the ladies of Blogher your activities aren't just inspiration they are (and I mean this as a compliment) pretty damn intimidating too. Do not fuck with the fairy godmothers.

And when I use leverage here, I really mean, holy shit this is like Wonderwoman giving Catwoman the use of her invisible jetplane and magic lasso in exchange for a few of those nine lives. For life. What's the old saying: "Behind every great man is an even greater woman." What if it were "Beside every great person is usually someone who's pretty cool too. - So let's make acknowledging that part of our political system."

I can see how a single person like myself would be temped to say but wait, if every person who wanted political power had to be successful at a monogamous relationship (Please note I haven't said anything about straight monogamy) doesn't that reify an institution that fails like, 50% of the time.

Yes it does. BUT I would like suggest to success that marriage is not necessarily about romance, if you or your spouse is into politics. It's about using social capital to gain support. So as a culture let's be clear about that. If you marry a politician - be prepared to use your marriage as a vehicle for their work, be prepared to make a few pragmatic choices that may help your career and perhaps also mean keeping a marriage alive literally at all costs. If you get really into it, be prepared to maybe go into politics yourself ibid Hil's transition from first lady to Senator.

So yeah, today is someone were to ask me what feminism has changed about North American life, I'd say; let's take a look at political spouses.

note: Once I put up those pictures of Wonder Woman and Catwoman, I realized *both* of them have ropes that they use for exerting power over people... weird...Any ideas why sexy women who have super-powers and kick-ass also have rope type objects? I have a few ideas of mine own here but this is a post about political spouses and not about SM power dynamics and gender roles, so I guess I'll have to save it for another day :)