Gail Collins has a nice op-ed piece in the New York Times celebrating the imminent wedding of Chelsea Clinton and some guy. She also takes the opportunity to survey the population of other First Daughters, and finds them to be a pleasant, accomplished bunch.
Chelsea, Jenna and Barbara Bush, Amy Carter … it may be a long way to go for a moment of bipartisan harmony, but let’s take it. Here’s the nut graf: “Virtually everyone in America loathes either George W. Bush or Bill and Hillary. Yet every sensible person, no matter what political stripe, would have to admit that both families produced really good kids.” Amen. And that’s not even counting Sasha and Malia Obama.
However: What’s this thing America has about fathers of daughters? Is there some reason we can’t have a president who has a son? By my count, the last president with any male children was George H.W. Bush. If the Obamas have no more kids, that will make a stretch of at least 20 years with no boys in the White House, and a lot longer than that since there were any young enough to peek out from under the president’s desk or do any of that boy stuff. It’s starting to look like a pattern of discrimination. Let’s fix this before somebody gets sued.