Every week, the crew responds to a bonus question in chat form.
Dear How to Do It,
I’m a married man in my 40s, and I have a small penis. Not on the line, “maybe”—just small. I struggled most of my life with how it affected how I interacted with others. I am aware it has had too much of an influence on who I am. I have taken the issue head on recently and discussed it with a psychiatrist. She did not directly point me in the direction of “small penis humiliation,” but said it helped other people embracing the issue. After exploring it, I found I am very fond of it. It is completely detached from my personality in normal life, which may be part of the point. I normally loathe attention and humiliation. I have addressed it with my wife, and she says knowing the pain the penis has caused me, she has trouble picturing humiliating me, which is understandable. But now I worry that my wife’s lack of interest in it is causing it to bleed into my everyday life with friends and family. I have no understanding of it and it is difficult for me to find a steady place for it. The rush that comes with tapping into this part of me scares me. How do you reconcile a part of your sexuality you have no understanding of and lack control of?
—Big Little Problem
Stoya: So the writer says it is completely detached from his personality in normal life, and also that he worries that his wife’s lack of interest in it is causing it to bleed into his everyday life with friends and family. I think that would be of interest to his therapist. And I’m curious what he means by “bleeding into everyday life.” Is he telling friends and family members about his genital dimensions? Is he finding himself feeling small and laughable in the middle of the workplace?
Rich: Or is it just generally causing distraction?
Stoya: If that’s the case, meditation or some cognitive behavioral techniques seem like a probable solution.
Rich: I’m also a little unclear as to what extent small-penis humiliation has been “explored” if our writer’s wife is unwilling to partake—whether he’s actually taken part in some sort of play with someone else, or if he’s just explored it philosophically.
Stoya: I was imagining maybe looking at small penis humiliation videos.
Rich: That would make sense. I think reconciling his general distaste for humiliation and his desire for it here just requires a suspension of logic. Sometimes what turns us on doesn’t make sense! And he can’t do anything about his small penis, not really, but he can find power in the way he regards it during sex.
Stoya: I’m not sure any of us really understand the whys of our sexuality. When we’re talking about a specific that’s usually seen as a fetish, it can feel othering.
Rich: The best we can do is draw associations.
Stoya: But I’m not sure even the most vanilla person could articulate what is compelling about breasts or buttocks.
Rich: It’s all theoretical.
Stoya: That inability to pin down in language can be one of the beautiful aspects of sexuality. To go beyond words.
Rich: For me, it is a haven. I spend my days ensconced in words; it’s nice to leave that realm for a bit. I think our writer could really just lay this out to his wife: “Look, I know it might not make sense to you—I’m not sure that it does to me—but I think this sort of play would help me process something that has given me a considerable amount of shame, and turn it into a positive.” She may still turn him down—and that’s her right—but maybe appealing to her compassion, which she already is evincing, could do the trick.
Stoya: And if the wife passes, he might gently inquire as to whether she’d take issue with him video-chatting with a professional.
Rich: Yes, this very specific play doesn’t even need to involve any sort of sex, in the conventional, penetrative sense.
Stoya: I welcome online clients who are exploring and communicative. And I’ve seen enough of them that I imagine many digital experience providers know how to help someone explore their desires gradually.
Rich: At the very least, I would love our writer to take away from us that he doesn’t need to feel shame for wanting something that might ameliorate shame. No sense in piling on.
Stoya: He’s got a small penis, and that’s OK. He likes to hear humiliation about it, and that’s OK. It makes him feel better about his body, and that’s wonderful.
More How to Do It
I’m a married woman. I had a three-month affair with an old boyfriend, “Jim,” that ended abruptly two weeks ago when I got an email from a friend saying “Check this out!” with a link to CNN. I clicked and a page with a video player showing a picture of the guest bedroom in my house opened. (I later noticed my friend’s email name had an 8 changed to a 3, and the CNN link was fake too.) I clicked play, and a message popped up: “I know you’re watching.” I had a full-blown panic attack as I watched a 53-minute high-resolution, clear-sound video featuring Jim and me having sex. No one besides “Will,” my husband, could have been in the house. There’s an alarm system. He’s also a computer engineer. He’d know exactly how to do all of this. I gave Jim the link. He’s married and panicked too.
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Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote in favor of impeaching Donald Trump, has launched a political action committee to challenge the former president’s continuing influence on the Republican Party. Kinzinger talked about the new Country First PAC in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press as well as a campaign-style video posted online. “This is not a Trump-first party. This is a country-first party,” Kinzinger said. “This is a time to choose.”
In the video, Kinzinger said there is a direct relationship between the “poisonous conspiracies and lies” that the Republican Party has embraced with the riot on the Capitol earlier this month. “The Republican Party has lost its way,” the Illinois congressman says in the video. “Republicans must say enough is enough. It’s time to unplug the outrage machine, reject the politics of personality, and cast aside the conspiracy theories and the rage.” With the PAC, Kinzinger wants Republicans to take a step back. “Let’s take a look at the last four years, how far we have come in a bad way,” he said on Meet the Press. “How backward-looking we are, how much we peddle darkness and division. And that’s not the party I ever signed up for. And I think most Republicans didn’t sign up for that.”
During the interview, Kinzinger also described the blowback he has suffered for voting to impeach Trump. “Look it’s really difficult. I mean, all of a sudden imagine everybody that supported you, or so it seems that way, your friends, your family, has turned against you. They think you’re selling out,” he said. “I’ve gotten a letter, a certified letter, twice from the same people, disowning me and claiming I’m possessed by the devil.” Kinzinger said that while he was optimistic that Republicans appeared ready to turn the page after the riot, it seems that was short-lived. “I was disappointed over the last few weeks to see what seemed like the Republican Party waking up and then kind of falling asleep again and saying, ‘Well, you know, what matters if we can win in two years and we don’t want to tick off the base,’” Kinzinger said.
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It’s rare that you can pinpoint the exact inception point of a Saturday Night Live sketch, but this week’s episode included an exception: A sketch that was almost certainly inspired by a tweet from podcasthost Drew Mackie. Mackie’s tweet came on Jan. 8, after watching this appearance from former senator Bob Corker on MSNBC. Give it a look and see if anything catches your eye:
Here’s what Mackie noticed:
And here’s Saturday Night Live’s take on creepy Zoom background art, with this week’s host John Krasinski totally blowing a CNBC appearance:
First of all, “Centipediatric” is an exemplary piece of horrifying sculpture, and the propmaker responsible should be very proud, and also should burn it with fire before it scuttles off into the vents. Second, “You’re indulgent with the mustard” is grade-A creepy dialogue, perfectly delivered by Kate McKinnon. Third, and most importantly, Mackie’s original question, “WHAT THE FUCK IS BEHIND BOB CORKER?” still needs an answer—to which I’d add a question of my own: “HOW CAN WE SEND WHATEVER THE FUCK IS BEHIND BOB CORKER BACK TO WHEREVER IT CAME FROM?” As readers who watched the MSNBC segment above will soon come to realize, once you’ve noticed the thing behind Bob Corker, you start seeing it everywhere: CNBC, Fox News, behind you in the bathroom mirror, and so on. The only cure, I’ve come to believe after rewatching The Ring, is convincing other people to notice the thing behind Bob Corker before it becomes strong enough to manifest itself in physical form, so I’d like to extend a hearty “Thank you, and good luck,” to Slate’s readers. As for Mackie, the first victim of the Corker Curse, he seems to be doing fine:
If you know what that thing behind Bob Corker is, please do not email us here at Slate with the answer. Some things it’s better not to know.
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A man who used to be a follower of the far-right QAnon group and the conspiracy theories the movement has spawned apologized to CNN’s Anderson Cooper for once believing that he ate babies. In a special report about QAnon that aired Saturday night, Cooper talked with Jitarth Jadeja, who said he was a full-on believer until last year. Cooper confronted Jadeja about some of the most outlandish QAnon theories. “Did you at the time believe that high-level Democrats and celebrities were worshipping Satan? Drinking the blood of children?” Cooper asked. “Anderson, I thought you did that, and I would like to apologize for that right now. So, I apologize for thinking that you ate babies,” he said.
Cooper seemed to find it difficult to believe the person he was talking to would think that was true. “You actually believed that I was drinking the blood of children?” Cooper asked. When Jadeja said yes, Cooper pressed on: “Was it something about me that made you think that?” Jadeja went on to explain that it was “because Q specifically mentioned you and he mentioned you very early on.” QAnon believers still talk about Cooper. “I’m going to be honest, people still talk about that to this day,” he said. “There were posts about that just four days ago.” And it wasn’t just about eating babies. “Some people thought you were a robot,” he added.
Cooper said the special report was “something of a personal project” because he knew that some of the conspiracy theories espoused by QAnon followers targeted him and other journalists. “The QAnon fringe has previously focused on me and a bunch of other reporters, as well as many other public figures, as somehow being responsible for some of their more outlandish, should we say, and bizarre, conspiracy theories,” he said. “It’s all made up of course. But QAnon supporters seem to believe it, or at least use it to try to harass me.”
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A group of 10 Republicans has launched an effort to try to force President Joe Biden to negotiate a bit on his planned $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. The senators are asking for a meeting with Biden to negotiate on the measure as Democratic leaders are getting ready to lay the groundwork so they can pass the package with only Democratic votes. In a letter to Biden, the senators, led by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, say they are putting forward the plan “in the spirit of bipartisanship and unity” that the president has called for.
Although the package will be unveiled Monday, one of the GOP senators has said that what they’re putting forward is a proposal that would be less than a third of the size of Biden’s desired package. Republicans have said Biden’s bill involves too much money considering Congress has already committed $4 trillion to fight the pandemic, including $900 billion in December.
The move by Republican senators involves an effort to prevent Democrats to pursue what is known as budget reconciliation. The procedural tactic would allow Democrats to pass the bill without negotiating with Republicans because they would only need a simple majority in the Senate. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who is one of the Republicans who signed the letter, said that pursuing that tactic would “set President Biden down a path of partisanship that will poison the well.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also signed the letter, said on Fox News Sunday that their proposed package would total some $600 billion. “We’re targeted to the needs of the American people, treating our tax dollars as if they’re our tax dollars not just money to spend,” Cassidy said.
The proposal that the 10 Republican are putting forward would include $160 billion for vaccine development and distribution as well as testing, tracing, and other supplies. It also calls for direct payments directed at “families who need assistance the most” and an extension of federal unemployment benefits. “We have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the senators wrote to Biden. “We request the opportunity to meet with you to discuss our proposal in greater detail and how we can work together to meet the needs of the American people during this persistent pandemic.” In addition to Collins, Cassidy, and Portman, the letter is also signed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.
For now the letter doesn’t seem to have swayed many Democrats to change their plans. And while the Biden administration said it was willing to talk, officials also made clear that speed is key. “We’re certainly open to input from anywhere where we can find a constructive idea to make this package as effective as possible, but the president is uncompromising when it comes to the speed that we need to act at to address this crisis,” Brian Deese, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said on CNN. Jared Bernstein, a top economic adviser, said that Biden “is absolutely willing to negotiate” but also made clear that any negotiation would have to come quick and Americans don’t much care about how it happens as long as they get the aid they need. “Look, the American people really couldn’t care less about budget process, whether it’s regular order, bipartisanship, whether it’s filibuster, whether it’s reconciliation,” Bernstein said on Fox News Sunday. People “need relief and they need it now.”
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Tens of thousands of people across Russia took to the streets on Sunday for protests demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Security forces came out in full force for what was the second straight weekend of protests, detaining more than 4,700 people as they put on a show of strength unlike any in recent history. Among the approximately 1,500 people detained in Moscow was Navanly’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who had also been briefly arrested last week. “If we keep silent, they will come after any of us tomorrow,” she wrote on Instagram before the protest.
In an effort to keep numbers low, police paralyzed several of the country’s largest cities to try to prevent people from getting to the protests after last week saw some of the largest anti-Kremlin street demonstrations in years. In Moscow, for example, security forces shut down seven subway stations and blocked off streets. What followed was a “cat-and-mouse game,” as the Guardian puts it, with police chasing after protesters through the streets.
The violent actions by the police that often detained people with force coupled with the blockades seems to have at least partially work to dissuade some people from joining the demonstrations that seemed to be smaller than last week. “Moscow looks like a fortress today,” a protester said.
Law enforcement officers block protesters during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Saint Petersburg on January 31, 2021.OLGA MALTSEVA/Getty Images
Despite the violence from police forces, thousands still marched through Moscow streets for hours, often chanting, “Putin, thief!” and “Putin, resign!” So many people were arrested in Moscow that there was no more room in the detention facilities across the city, according to Amnesty International. Despite the threat of arrest more people turned out in some Russian cities than last week leading to hope among the opposition that the protests could be sustained.
Footage from protests from other parts of the country showed security forces were also aggressively detaining people who participated in protests. In the Siberian city of Nobosibirsk, for example, police detained drivers who were honking their car horns to show solidarity with the protests. “Russia without Putin!” protesters yelled. In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, police made a strong show of force and more than 1,000 people were arrested.
Police detain a man during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Saint Petersburg on January 31, 2021.OLGA MALTSEVA/Getty Images
The United States criticized the detentions of protesters and called on Moscow to release Navalny. “The U.S. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for a second week straight,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter. Russia’s Foreign Ministry pushed back, calling Blinken’s statement a “crude interference in Russia’s internal affairs.”
Navalny’s aides have called on Russians to again take to the streets on Tuesday, which is the date of a scheduled court hearing in which the opposition leader could be sent to prison for years. Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport earlier this month right after he returned to Russia from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
People talk to riot police during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Moscow on January 31, 2021.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/Getty Images
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After four long years, we finally have a new president and, more importantly, new presidential pets. Usually the thrill of pets arriving at the White House is tempered by the sting of old presidential pets leaving the White House, but this year is different: Donald Trump is the first president in more than 100 years not to have a pet of any kind, so we can say goodbye to his rotten administration without stray sympathy for any blameless dogs, cats, or possums getting evicted alongside their captors.
This also means that the incoming presidential pets—the Bidens have two German shepherds and a cat, the former two of which arrived to the White House this week to great fanfare—won’t be able to rely on the outgoing presidential pets for advice or support during the transfer of power. So to help the new national mascots find their footing, Slate has decided to break what many regard as the most important commandment in journalism (“all presidential pets are equally good and any journalist who says otherwise should be summarily killed”) and firmly grip Washington’s most dangerous third rail, ranking the presidents’ pets from worst to best. As you’ll see, some of them were terrible. Except in cases where particular pets were double acts (e.g., Benjamin Harrison’s possums, Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity), we’re only ranking one pet per administration, with preference given to animals that made enough of an impression that there are contemporary accounts of their exploits.
44. A Bunch of Unnamed Silkworms Belonging to Louisa Adams
John Quincy Adams didn’t seem to have any pets in the White House—unless you believe the probably apocryphal story that he briefly kept a pair of alligators in the East Room—but his wife kept silkworms. According to one of Adams’ diary entries, she had several hundred that she raised herself for their silk. Silk is nice, but let’s face it: Silkworms make terrible, terrible pets. They are, after all, worms. Worms! WORMS! (Technically, they’re caterpillars. Caterpillars! CATERPILLARS!) These are the worst presidential pets in the history of the United States of America.
43. James K. Polk’s Absence of Pets
James K. Polk didn’t have any pets, which kind of sucks, but at least he didn’t bring a bunch of goddamned worms with him.
42. Donald Trump’s Metaphorical Dog
Donald Trump had no time for anyone but Donald Trump, but if he had a dog, that dog would rank very highly on this list simply because of the sympathy vote. Trump’s tweets are no longer with us, but when he was still on Twitter, he was always tweeting things like this:
Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again—just watch. He can do much better!
Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist—but I am least racist person there is.
Ted Cruz lifts the Bible high into the air and then lies like a dog—over and over again! The Evangelicals in S.C. figured him out & said no!
Wow, great news! I hear @EWErickson of Red State was fired like a dog. If you read his tweets, you’ll understand why. Just doesn’t have IT!
Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!
Lyin’ Brian Williams of MSDNC, a Concast Scam Company, wouldn’t know the truth if it was nailed to his wooden forehead. Remember when he lied about his bravery in a helicopter? Totally made up story. He’s a true dummy who was thrown off Network News like a dog. Stay tuned!
Dogs, according to the former president, are known for cheating, choking, and lying, which is why they deserve to be fired, dumped, and even thrown off network news. If Trump’s dog actually existed, it would doubtless deserve our sympathy and probably an anonymous call to the ASPCA. But since it’s only a metaphor, 42nd place.
41. Sukey, William Henry Harrison’s Cow
William Henry Harrison only lasted a month in office before dying, which didn’t leave a lot of time for his pets to make an impression. But where presidents fail, apocryphal storytellers succeed, and over the years, two pets have become associated with Harrison: a goat named either Old Whiskers or His Whiskers, and a Durham cow named Sukey. William Henry Harrison may have had a pet goat, but if so, I couldn’t find it in contemporary sources, and it’s well documented that his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, who was also a president, had a pet goat named Old Whiskers. As for “Sukey,” she appears in print for the first time in the Washington Evening Star on March 4, 1889, nearly 50 years after Harrison’s death, in a story credited to “a native and old resident of Washington.” The story is not really about the cow; it’s about Harrison buying a cow from a Maryland drover who was unaware he was talking to the president. So how did this sketchily sourced cow outrank Louisa Adams’ silkworms, who have the advantage of definitely existing, and James K. Polk’s absence of pets or Donald Trump’s metaphorical dog, who have the advantage of definitely not existing? Simple: Although William Henry Harrison, the president of the United States, has no verifiable connection to any pet cows, a different William Henry Harrison, an unrelated British author, published a satirical poem in 1831 entitled “The Cow Doctor,” which included this engraving of a sick cow.
A very sick cow.Thomas Rowlandson
That is a very silly engraving that would never have resurfaced in 2021 without Harrison’s apocryphal cow, and it’s inspiring to see two William Henry Harrisons working together. That’s enough to move Sukey up to 41st place.
40. Loretta, William McKinley’s Parrot
Like presidents themselves, presidential pets have had some of their rough edges sanded off in the interests of national mythmaking, and no pet benefited more from this than Loretta, William McKinley’s parrot. Modern accounts say that McKinley’s bird, a Mexican double yellow-headed parrot, was named “Washington Post,” could whistle “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and had a habit of saying “Look at all the pretty girls!” when women neared his cage. Catcalling aside, this “Washington Post” seems like a reasonably charming parrot who deserves to be at least a footnote in American history.
Looking back at contemporary references to McKinley’s parrot, however, reveals no signs of a bird named “Washington Post,” and several accounts of a different Mexican double yellow-headed parrot named Loretta, who lived at the White House during the McKinley administration. This bird could also reportedly whistle “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” but her signature trick was much less charming, per a 1904 report from the Boston Globe:
Whenever any of the colored help came into the room, the parrot would sing out, “All C‑‑ns Look Alike to Me,” and this tickled Mr. McKinley immensely.
It would be quite a coincidence if McKinley had two Mexican double yellow-headed parrots, both of whom could whistle “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” only one of whom was a virulent racist. Occam’s razor says that Loretta and Washington Post were the same bird, which would mean that subsequent efforts to transform Loretta from a minstrelsy enthusiast into a lovable pet—going so far as to change her name!—are part of a cynical public relations maneuver known as the “Reverse Milkshake Parrot.”
39. Vulcan, George Washington’s Dog
George Washington had several dogs with memorable names—Sweetlips, Drunkard, Tippler, and Tipsy, to name a few—but only one dog who stole an entire ham, making Vulcan the obvious leader of the pack. An account of Vulcan’s heist is found in the memoirs of George Washington’s son George Washington Parke Custis.
It happened that upon a large company sitting down to dinner at Mount Vernon one day, the lady of the mansion (my grandmother) discovered that the ham, the pride of every Virginia housewife’s table, was missing from its accustomed post of honor. Upon questioning Frank, the butler, this portly, and at the same time most polite and accomplished of all butlers, observed that a ham, yes, a very fine ham, had been prepared agreeably to the Madam’s orders, but lo and behold! who should come into the kitchen, while the savory ham was smoking in its dish, but old Vulcan, the hound, and without more ado fastened his fangs into it; and although they of the kitchen had stood to such arms as they could get, and had fought the old spoiler desperately, yet Vulcan had finally triumphed, and bore off the prize, ay, “cleanly, under the keeper’s nose.” The lady by no means relished the loss of a dish which formed the pride of her table, and uttered some remarks by no means favorable to old Vulcan, or indeed to dogs in general, while the chief, having heard the story, communicated it to his guests, and, with them, laughed heartily at the exploit of the stag-hound.
So why is Vulcan, by all accounts an excellent ham thief, in the cellars of the presidential pet rankings? First, technically Vulcan did not steal this ham while George Washington was president. More importantly, Washington himself was a real bastard about other people’s dogs, writing in a 1792 letter to his overseer at Mount Vernon that “if any negro presumes under any pretence whatsoever to preserve, or bring one into the family, that he shall be severely punished, and the dog hanged,” then going on to opine that “it is not for any good purpose Negroes raise, or keep dogs; but to aid them in their night robberies.” It’s not fair to punish Vulcan in the official presidential pet rankings because of Washington’s bigotry, but it also isn’t fair to hang a dog because it belongs to a person you have enslaved. So shed no tears for Vulcan, who at least got to eat an entire ham.
38. Andrew Johnson’s Mice
Andrew Johnson did not arrive at the White House with any pets, nor did he officially acquire any while he stayed there. However, his private secretary, W. G. Moore, kept a diary in which he recorded a petlike incident: One weekend afternoon during Johnson’s impeachment, he found the president marveling over a basket of flour he’d shipped from a mill his family owned. Moore observed that some of the mice infesting the White House at that time had gotten into the flour; Johnson told him that he was planning to leave flour and water out for them going forward. Johnson scholars will not be surprised to hear that these were white mice.
37. Rex, Ronald Reagan’s Dog
Jellybean enthusiasts.National Archives
Rex, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel belonging to Ronald Reagan, was famously badly behaved, constantly barking and pulling Nancy Reagan all over the White House lawn. You can see him in action at 6:10 in this video—and you can also see why people joked that the Reagans preferred not to train Rex, because he was always dragging them away from reporters before they could face any questions.
Rex apparently ended up at the White House because Nancy Reagan liked William F. Buckley’s dog and Ronald tracked down one of its siblings and gave it to her as a present. Rex lived in a custom-built doghouse designed by Theo Hayes—the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes’ great-great-grandson—which was decked out with parquet floors, curtains, and a framed photograph of the Reagans on the wall. Perfectly ghastly.
36. Chester A. Arthur’s Pet Rabbit
Chester A. Arthur is rumored to have had a pet rabbit, but I couldn’t find a source for this story and suspect it’s yet another example of pro-rabbit disinformation from Big Rabbit. 36th place.
35. Mason and Dixon, Millard Fillmore’s Ponies
Millard Fillmore reportedly had two ponies named Mason and Dixon. Unfortunately, those two ponies appear to have vanished from history without leaving much of an impression, except for their names. A clever name will only get you so far, and this is exactly how far a clever name will get two ponies in a ranking of the presidents’ pets: 35th place.
34. Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity, Benjamin Harrison’s Possums
The slogan that launched a thousand possums. Or at least two.Cornell University/Wikimedia Commons
A clever name will only get you so far, but if you combine that clever name with being a dang possum, you can get a little further. In 1892, Benjamin Harrison expressed a desire for some “possums as soon as frost sets in,” and soon thereafter, a box was delivered to the White House containing two live possums, with a note reading: “To the president. Two citizens of Maryland—Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity—with the compliments of John R. [Howlett], 1411 N Street, Northwest.” Sending someone a box containing two live possums is not necessarily a friendly gesture, but Protection and Reciprocity were campaign slogans of the Harrison-Reid ticket, so Howlett probably meant well.
Although they show up on most lists of presidential pets, occasionally accompanied by a story about Harrison giving them to his grandkids, Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity probably didn’t fare very well at the White House: One story about their arrival was headlined “’Possums for Harrison’s Sunday Dinner.” As the Library of Congress has noted, a newspaper in Kentucky wrote an “Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs”–type article arguing that Harrison was pandering to Black voters—possum was then a staple in Black southern cuisine—writing that “when the president orders ’possum and sweet potatoes, every negro voter is expected to forget all grounds of disaffection and come cheerfully to the support of the ticket.” Even so, while Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity most likely received neither protection nor reciprocity from Harrison, they had very clever names; plus, they were possums. Eat their dust, Mason and Dixon!
33. Franklin Pierce’s Teacup Dogs
The teacup dogs belonging to Franklin Pierce are a real cursed frogurt-type situation. Brought to the United States from Japan by the Perry Expedition, they were probably Japanese Chins. There’s a detailed account of one of them, named Bonin, who was “a little creature with a head like a bird with a blunt beak, eyes large and popped, and a body like a new-born puppy of the smallest kind … prettily marked with a band of white about his otherwise jet-black body.” (That’s good!) The description was written by Jefferson Davis’ second wife, Varina; Pierce gave the dog to his friend, the future president of the Confederacy, as a gift. (That’s bad!) Bonin became, in Varina’s words, “the scourge of the servants and of the family” for being always underfoot. (That’s good!) Over the years, however, he reportedly became less annoying. (That’s bad!) In 1861, Davis left the dog in Washington in order to found a new nation built on slavery (that’s really bad, but maybe OK for the dog), and sometime shortly thereafter, he was “fed … with so many dainties that he died of indigestion.” (Can I go now?) It’s unclear what became of the other dogs, but if the most notable thing any of them achieved was “being given as a gift to Jefferson Fucking Davis,” how great could they have been, really?
32. Millie, George H.W. Bush’s Dog
George H.W. Bush, presumably telling Millie and her puppies about Oliver North.National Archives
Millie, an English springer spaniel belonging to the Bushes, was one of the few presidential pets to write a bestselling memoir about her time in the White House. What’s more, she was one of the only vice presidential pets to write a bestselling memoir about her time at Number One Observatory Circle: She joined the Bushes on Feb. 13, 1987. That means she was with the Bushes when Reagan gave his Oval Office address about the Iran-Contra affair in May. She was with them during the congressional hearings that spring and summer. She was with them when Bush gave his notorious interview to the Washington Post claiming he was “not in the loop.” This dog was literally in the room where it happened. But anyone who bought Millie’s Book expecting juicy details about the debacle was disappointed. Although Millie admitted that she was usually present at Bush’s morning briefings, she declined to provide the American public with the full accounting of their government’s perfidy that they were owed, and instead wrote about chasing squirrels, bragged about her friendship with Henry Kissinger, and recounted in loving detail the story of the time she met Benji. We deserve better from our presidential pets.
31. Barney and Miss Beazley, George W. Bush’s Dogs
Barney and Miss Beazley, Scottish terriers belonging to George W. Bush, were more interested in show business than politics, starring in a series of short films. The highlight was A Very Beazley Christmas, a canine riff on All About Eve with a holiday theme:
Barney and Miss Beazley’s dedication to the craft of acting was unparalleled in the history of presidential pets, but their love of Italian neorealism led them to work primarily with nonprofessional actors from the Bush administration. That dull backdrop made their own performances stand out, but it also kept them from growing as artists over time, and as a result, modern critical reevaluations of their oeuvre have not been kind. What heights might these dogs have soared to if they’d collaborated with artists worthy of their talents—an Uggie, say, or even a Cosmo—instead of their comfortable clique of pasty war criminals? Sadly, we’ll never know.
30. Gabby, Dwight Eisenhower’s Parakeet
Gabby, a blue parakeet kept by the Eisenhowers, was chiefly notable for two things: not talking—the joke was he’d only communicate through White House spokespeople—and being buried under an adorable minigravestone on the White House lawn. Mediocre!
29. Dick, Thomas Jefferson’s Mockingbird
Thomas Jefferson was the first president to declare his independence from the tyranny of cats and dogs, choosing instead to keep mockingbirds. His favorite lived in a cage in his cabinet and had apparently been trained to take food from Jefferson’s lips, which is one of the grossest things you can do with a bird and speaks well of Dick’s quality as a pet. Margaret Bayard Smith, who knew Jefferson socially, gave the following account of Dick’s exploits in an 1843 article for Godey’s Lady’s Book:
On Mr. Jefferson’s return from his daily ride, it was his habit to take an hour’s repose on a couch in his chamber—before he did so, he would go into his cabinet, open the cage, call his bird, who would follow, hopping up the stairs after him, and then placing itself on the head or feet of his couch, would regale and soothe him with its sweetest and most varied strains. How he loved this bird!
How he loved that bird!
28. Johnny Ty, Julia Tyler’s Canary
John Tyler was the first president to lose a wife while in office and also the first president to remarry in office. His new bride, Julia Gardiner Tyler, was 30 years his junior and brought a pet canary named “Johnny Ty” with her to the White House. The canary had a slightly scandalous pedigree: Julia acquired it during an 1841 trip to Europe, where she’d been shipped off by her parents after causing a high-society scandal at 19 by appearing in an ad for a department store. Fast living and fast canaries: That was Julia Tyler, apparently. Johnny Ty’s most notable adventure came after the Tyler presidency, when Julia attempted to find the bird a mate. She apparently misjudged the sex of either Johnny Ty or his mate; the two birds wanted nothing to do with each other, and Johnny Ty died of a heart attack shortly thereafter.
27. Juno, John Adams’ Dog
John Adams was not only the first president to live in the White House and the first president to bring pets to the White House, but he went on to become the first president to be portrayed by Paul Giamatti in an HBO miniseries. Wow! A presidency that exceptional naturally included some exceptional pets, most notably a mixed-breed dog named Juno. Abigail Adams, in an 1811 letter to her granddaughter, gave the following account of Juno in her old age:
As if you love me, proverbially, you must love my dog, you will be glad to learn that Juno yet lives, although like her mistress she is gray with age. She appears to enjoy life and to be grateful for the attention paid her. She wags her tail and announces a visitor whenever one appears.
There’s less record of the life of the Adams’ other dog, Satan, who also accompanied the couple to the White House, but his name suggests he was not known for his good behavior. Isn’t that always the way?
26. Pauline Wayne, William Howard Taft’s Cow
Pauline Wayne outside what is now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.Library of Congress
Taft’s daughter had a dog named Caruso, a gift from Enrico Caruso, who was apparently concerned that cows didn’t make good pets. That’s nonsense. Pauline Wayne, who arrived at the White House in 1910 after a previous cow, Mooly Wooly, unexpectedly died, was not only a beloved pet but produced 7.5 gallons of milk daily. Unfortunately, the anti-cow forces of Enrico Caruso ultimately triumphed: Pauline Wayne was the last cow to live at the White House.
25. Sebastian, James Monroe’s Dog
A mysterious figure in American history, “Sebastian,” if that was indeed his real name, was a Siberian husky said to belong to James Monroe. According to the Presidential Pet Museum, however, “sources are scarce and most of the sources that do reference the animal also list Maria Monroe as James Monroe’s wife, not his daughter, and thus are likely untrustworthy.” In other words, Sebastian was almost certainly a Russian spy, much like the dogs in the 2001 movie Cats & Dogs, except with old-timey technology, plus Russian. Молодец, Sebastian!
24. Rob Roy, Calvin Coolidge’s Dog
Pure elegance.Howard Chandler Christy
The Coolidges had a lot of pets, although not all of them stuck around for very long. At various points during his administration, they owned: 12 different dogs, two raccoons, a donkey, seven different birds (one of whom was a goose), a pigmy hippo, a bear, a bobcat, two house cats, two lion cubs named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau, and 13 ducklings. (Most of the exotic pets ended up in zoos pretty quickly.) The most famous resident of the Coolidge menagerie was Rob Roy, a white collie who ended up immortalized in Howard Chandler Christy’s portrait of Grace Coolidge.
Coolidge described Rob Roy in his autobiography as “a stately gentleman of great courage and fidelity,” a fine tribute to a good dog, but his attempt to describe his grief at Rob Roy’s death was less successful:
His especial delight was to ride with me in the boats when I went fishing. So although I knew he would bark with joy as the grim boatman ferried him across the Styx, yet his going left me lonely on the hither shore.
Just say you miss your dog, Calvin Coolidge! Jeez!
23. Poll, Andrew Jackson’s Parrot
Andrew Jackson distinguished himself as one of the United States’ most genocidal presidents, despite stiff competition, which makes him one of history’s greatest villains. His pet parrot, Poll however, outlived him, then made a decent effort to ruin his funeral, which makes her one of history’s greatest heroes. The Rev. William Menefee Norment, who at the age of 15 attended Jackson’s funeral, gave the following account of Poll’s exploits in a 1921 letter: “Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.” The only thing more American than swearing at Andrew Jackson’s funeral would be dancing at his funeral, but the golden age of dancing cockatoos was still years off, and as the saying goes, you ruin Andrew Jackson’s funeral with the parrots you have, not the parrots you want. Still, the historical record is ambiguous enough that it’s possible Poll was cursing because Jackson was dead, rather than cursing Jackson, so until further evidence surfaces, Poll is in the middle of the pack.
22. Liberty, Gerald Ford’s Dog
Liberty, in her high-society days.National Archives
Gerald Ford had a golden retriever named Liberty (full name: Honor’s Foxfire Liberty Hume) who was a charming and friendly White House dog throughout Ford’s presidency. In 1975, she was bred with a high-class golden retriever from Oregon and gave birth to nine puppies in the White House. Here, ladies and gentlemen, are those puppies:
Adorable! In her post-presidency life, however, Liberty broke bad: The Fords tried to breed her in Oregon again, but Liberty wanted nothing more to do with the uptight high-society dogs she’d been surrounded by in the White House. Ford’s chief of staff, Robert Barrett, had the idea of introducing Liberty to a dog from the wrong side of the tracks: Bart, a pedigreed golden retriever who belonged to Packy Walker, an eccentric hotelier in Vail, Colorado, whom the local newspaper referred to as “the Clown Prince of Vail” when he retired in 2015. Bart was plenty eccentric in his own right: He was known for drinking beer, so much so that there’s still a bar named after him. Probably not first dog material, but Barrett made an irresistible pitch on behalf of this alcoholic canine ski bum to Mrs. Ford:
When Liberty first sees Bart, Bart will be wearing a maroon satin robe with a white ascot, with a monogrammed “B” on the pocket. Bart will enter carrying two glasses of champagne in his left paw and have a cigaret holder in his right. The cigaret should have a dangling tip.
In fairness to Bart, Liberty should be wearing a sheer negligee and have a right paw draped demurely over her chest.
There’s no record of whether Bart actually put on the robe and ascot, but he and Liberty hit it off immediately and had puppies together, scandalizing upper-crust pet society.
21. Veto, James Garfield’s Dog
Veto with James Garfield.St. Nicholas Magazine
Veto was one of the first presidential pets to become a celebrity during his own lifetime, getting favorable national press before Garfield took office for what turned out to be an extremely brief presidency. There are a lot of stories about Veto, an enormous Newfoundland, who was unusually smart and very uneasy about the strangers visiting Garfield’s farm during the presidential campaign, but the best is this account of Veto ruining a letter of apology Garfield was writing one late night during the campaign, as recounted in the Chicago Tribune:
… he took his pen, weary as he was, and began to write her a letter of explanation. He had written nearly the whole of the first page, when “Veto,” who had been standing by wagging his tail for some time, and trying to get some attention from his master, at length became impatient, and placed his big, dirty paw upon the page still wet with the ink, and made an unreadable and unsightly scrawl of the whole. “O you good-for-nothing old fellow!” said the General, patting the dog’s head, “you have made me a good deal of trouble and labor by your over-familiarity.” He then quietly tore up the sheet, and began his letter again.
When it comes to dogs, “you have made me a good deal of trouble and labor by your over-familiarity” is pretty much a best-case scenario. Veto did not accompany Garfield to the White House, so he never got the chance to veto any actual legislation, but given the mess he made of that letter, he would have been a natural.
20. Hector, Frances Cleveland’s Dog
Grover Cleveland was the only president to get married at the White House, and also the only president who bought his future bride a baby carriage when he was 27 and she was an infant. Frances Folsom married Cleveland at the age of 21, and the press could not get enough of the youthful, charming first lady and her creepy marriage. The new bride brought a full-on menagerie to the White House, per the Chattanooga Daily Times, including a “big St. Bernard dog, five canaries, four cats, the fawn, the Jersey heifer, Gracie, presented by George W. Childs; a dozen white mice, two peacocks, two guinea pigs, two alligators, a large assortment of blooded fowls, and the tender recollection of the dead monkey, which was Mrs. Cleveland’s chief source of consolation and enjoyment while it lived, and whose untimely taking off by a severe cold was a great blow to the charming lady of the White House.”
With all due respect to the dead monkey, Hector, a French poodle, gets pride of place here, for two reasons. First, he seems like he might have been the basis for Disney’s Tramp; the newspaper described him as “a great reprobate” who “wanders all over town at all sorts of hours of the night, disturbing the choice canine circles of society of Washington.” Second, he had a tragic life, for a dog: According to a profile of Mrs. Cleveland in the Epoch, the Saint Bernard eclipsed Hector in his owner’s affections, as she had more interest in “the newly arrived and nobler dog.” Was this what led Hector to prowl all over Washington, drowning his sorrows in canine revelry, or did Hector’s Falstaffian excesses force Mrs. Cleveland’s hand? Either way, not cool, Frances.
19. Miss Pussy, Rutherford B. Hayes’ Cat
Miss Pussy was a gift to first lady Lucy Webb Hayes from David B. Sickels, a diplomat at the Bangkok consulate, and possibly the first Siamese cat in America. As Sickels explained in a letter to Mrs. Hayes, he had seen in an American newspaper that Mrs. Hayes liked cats and took it upon himself to ship her a Siamese, who he referred to as “Miss Pussy.” (Other sources suggest this cat was renamed “Siam,” but we’re going with “Miss Pussy” because why on Earth wouldn’t we?) Miss Pussy traveled to Hong Kong, crossed the Pacific on an Occidental and Oriental steamship (in the care of the purser, according to Sickels), took a train to Washington, and spent about a year roaming the White House before falling ill and dying in the fall of 1879. Supposedly, the cat’s body was preserved by the secretary of agriculture, but it’s never turned up. So if you have the taxidermized corpse of a Siamese cat that looks like it died about 141 years ago, contact the Smithsonian Institution at (202) 633-1000, and they’ll immediately dispatch the Rutherford B. Hayes’ Cat Verification Squad to your home or place of business.
18. Polly, Dolley Madison’s Macaw
Polly presided over what can only be called a reign of terror at the White House during the James Madison administration. A gift from a South American diplomat, Polly roamed the White House freely and, not to put too fine a point on it, routinely attacked visitors. Archivist Hilarie M. Hicks has collected some first-person accounts of Polly’s exploits for the website of Madison’s residence, Montpelier, from the time she chased the secretary of the navy’s daughter around the White House to the time she bit one of President Madison’s fingers to the bone, and there’s only one conclusion to be drawn: This bird was a revolutionary. We’ve all dreamed about biting one or all of the president’s fingers off, but only Polly was brave enough to actually make the attempt. Polly was rescued from the burning White House during the War of 1812 and returned to private life with the Madisons but met a tragic end when she was left outside on a porch overnight and a hawk killed her.
17. Apollo, Zachary Taylor’s Trick Pony
Americans love a good rags-to-riches story, and Apollo, a trick pony belonging to Zachary Taylor, has a great one. According to his onetime owner Simon Pollak, he was purchased “at a sheriff’s sale of a wrecked circus company” sometime before 1840. Apparently owning a circus pony, even from a bankrupt circus, was the 1840s equivalent of owning a flashy sports car; Pollak wrote that Apollo was responsible for his social success, because the horse was “in constant demand by the young ladies.” When a flood wiped out Pollak’s Louisiana farm in 1844, he sold his horses and mules, and although he had not planned to sell Apollo, he was convinced to give her as a present to Betty Taylor, Zachary Taylor’s daughter. And that’s how Apollo went from the wreckage of a failed circus all the way to “a triumphal entry into Washington” as part of Taylor’s inaugural parade. Of course, Taylor’s presidency only lasted 16 months, but hey! Trick pony!
16. Bo and Sunny, Barack Obama’s Dogs
No business like show business.Pete Souza/National Archives
Like Barney and Miss Beazley before them, Bo and Sunny, the Portuguese water dogs belonging to the Obama family, dabbled in show business. Unlike the Bush dogs, whose single-minded pursuit of cinematic excellence blinded them to their administration’s excesses, Bo and Sunny at least gave the public the impression of civic-mindedness, appearing in public service announcements like this short film about disaster planning for pets:
Look a little closer, though, and it’s clear that Bo and Sunny were just as self-obsessed as any Hollywood superdog. Bo in particular was notorious for using the holiday season as an excuse to festoon the White House with statues of himself, a trend that reached its sad apotheosis in 2012, when Bo made a holiday film that primarily depicted him inspecting his own statue with self-satisfied pride:
“Miss Pussy” is a pretty good name for a cat, but it’s got nothing on “Misty Malarky Ying Yang,” a Siamese cat belonging to Amy Carter. In sharp contrast to the modern Democratic Party’s strong stance against malarky, Democrats of the 1970s were thrilled by Misty Malarky Ying Yang’s malarky, particularly an incident in which journalists waited for President Jimmy Carter and Mexican President José López Portillo to descend the grand staircase at a state dinner, only to have Misty Malarky Ying Yang descend instead. The name alone would be enough for Misty Malarky Ying Yang to edge out Miss Pussy, but there’s more: Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó released a song titled “Misty Malarky Ying Yang” on his 1977 LP Faces. (So far, no one seems to have recorded a song called “Miss Pussy,” but it’ll probably happen sooner or later.) Check out Misty Malarky Ying Yang’s signature tune, but be prepared for an extremely smooth groove:
A suave, sophisticated reminder of the golden age of White House malarky … misty malarky.
14. Pushinka, John F. Kennedy’s Dog
Charlie and Pushinka.National Archives
Pushinka, a gift for the Kennedy children from Nikita Khrushchev, was undeniably of Soviet origin, but unlike James Monroe’s mysterious Siberian husky, she was not a spy. Pushinka’s parents, Pushok and Strelka, were both highly decorated veterans of the Soviet space dog program—Strelka was one of the first animals to go into orbit and survive—and almost certainly hard-line communists. Despite her upbringing, however, once she’d gotten a taste of American life, Pushinka adapted the decadent Western ways of the Kennedy family and eventually settled down to raise puppies with Charlie Kennedy, a local dog. Did this canine romance bring about the end of the Cold War? No, it did not, but that’s hardly Pushinka’s fault.
13. Martin Van Buren’s Tiger Cubs
Many lists of presidential pets include the amusing tale of Martin Van Buren’s pet tiger cubs, a gift from the sultan of Oman. Van Buren supposedly wanted to keep them in the White House—and in some accounts, briefly did—but was rebuffed by Congress, who forced him to give them to a zoo instead. That story does not seem to be true, but the real events were even weirder. The sultan of Oman did give Van Buren a gift that caused a debate in Congress: On Christmas Day 1839, the sultan sent Van Buren a letter announcing that he would be sending along a few “trifles,” including two Arabian horses, a carpet, a string of pearls, and four cashmere shawls, but no tiger cubs. When the sultan’s gifts arrived, Van Buren asked Congress what was to be done with them; eventually the horses were sold and the other items were given to the National Institute gallery, a precursor to the Smithsonian.
So where do tigers enter the story? Probably from a similar incident from around the same time, involving a gift from the emperor of Morocco and an extremely bad day at the office for the staff of the American Consulate in Tangier. Thomas N. Carr, the consul, had attempted to explain to Moroccan officials that neither he nor his government could accept gifts, but the message apparently didn’t get through. As he relayed to the State Department in one of the all-time great “I screwed up at work” letters, the nephew of a local official unexpectedly arrived at the consulate one day with “an enormous magnificent lion and lioness” from the emperor and convinced Carr to accept them:
I told him that I would not receive them—that my mind was fairly made up. Then, said he, my determination is as strong as yours—I am ordered to deliver them to you—it will cost me my head if I disobey—I shall leave them in the street. The street upon which is the American consulate is a narrow short cul-de-sac. … Preparations were made for placing the guard at the open end, and turning the lions loose in the street. Seeing further resistance hopeless … I was compelled to surrender to this novel form of attack, and to open one of my rooms to the reception of the animals, where they now are.
The next time you’re having a bad day at work, remember: If you’ve never had to ask your boss what to do with the fully grown lions you’ve accidentally agreed to keep in the office, you’re a better employee than Thomas N. Carr, and that guy was a high-ranking diplomat. (The lions were eventually shipped to the United States and sold.) So it turns out Martin Van Buren’s pet tiger cubs were not tigers, nor cubs, nor pets, nor Martin Van Buren’s, which would ordinarily hurt them in these rankings. But the story of the hapless Moroccan consul and the two fully grown lions that were his guests at the consulate is hilarious enough to push these entirely fictional presidential pets into the top tier.
12. Laddie Boy, Warren G. Harding’s Dog
Laddie Boy celebrates his third birthday, 1922.Library of Congress
Laddie Boy, an Airedale terrier belonging to Warren G. Harding, was the first presidential pet to get wall-to-wall press coverage, leaving earlier celebrity pets like James Garfield’s dog in the dustbin of history. Newspapers loved this dog, devoting thousands and thousands of words to his antics under headlines like “Laddie Boy Makes Self Indispensable to Administration,” “First Dog of Land Is Real Humanizer,” and “Laddie Boy, White House Pet, Interviewed,” an imagined interview from the New York Herald in which Laddie Boy complained about the paparazzi:
I’ve posed for that gang in every conceivable attitude except standing on my head. And there hasn’t been a picture published yet that does me justice. Had they let me stay in Toledo, where I belonged, my pictures wouldn’t be in a single newspaper—and yet I’m just the same dog as I was in Toledo, except that I’m more disgusted.
In the most baroque and bizarre example of Laddie Boy’s press blitz, the Washington Evening Star gave about half a page to a story about Laddie Boy hosting a GamemasterAnthony-style reception for the stars of the Washington Evening Star’s comics pages, hanging out with everyone from long-forgotten characters like Radio Ralf to heavyweights like Krazy Kat and Mutt and Jeff. Of course there’s an illustration:
Shake!Washington Evening Star
After Harding’s death, Laddie Boy stepped back from the spotlight and moved to Boston, where he lived out his days in the care of a Secret Service agent named, and this is true, “Harry Barker.” He died in 1929, a very good boy.
11. King Timahoe, Richard Nixon’s Dog
King Timahoe at play.National Archives
Checkers was Richard Nixon’s most famous dog but died before Nixon reached the White House, making him ineligible for inclusion in these extremely official rankings. Checkers’ claim to fame was saving Nixon’s political career, a controversial legacy to say the least. King Timahoe, an Irish setter who was a gift to the president from his staff, was famous for not liking Richard Nixon very much on a personal level, which is the kind of thing all Americans should be able to agree on. Traphes Bryant, who kept the White House kennels, describes Nixon and King Timahoe’s relationship in his memoir:
At first the President was even shy with King Timahoe, and didn’t know how to handle him. I could see he wanted very much for the dog to love him best, and be a real companion, but when the presidential chopper would arrive and King Tim would be there to greet the President, Tim would go to everyone else first, and finally come up to the President. The President would look a bit sheepish.
Even with more time together at Camp David, King Timahoe didn’t warm up to Nixon; Bryant writes that he “was always running away from Nixon.” Truly, a king among dogs.
10. Punch, James Buchanan’s Dog
James Buchanan’s pets included a menagerie of animals, including a pair of bald eagles, that were sent to him by citizens worried that, as the nation’s first bachelor president, he’d be lonely. Buchanan’s loneliness was hypothetical and does not seem to have been allayed by the eagles, which didn’t make the news at the time and are never mentioned in correspondence from his presidency. The loneliness of his dog, Punch, however, was very real. In a letter to his niece Harriet Lane, who’d served as a sort of substitute first lady during his term, sent on Oct. 21, 1865, Buchanan answered Lane’s inquiries about his dog like this:
Among your numerous friends you ask only for Punch, & this in the Postscript, which is said to contain the essence of a lady’s letter. He is a companion which I shun as much as possible, not being at all to my liking. I believe, however, his health is in a satisfactory condition.
Well, la-dee-dah, James Buchanan, first you fail to prevent the Civil War and then you decide you don’t like your dog. Absent some evidence of doggy perfidy, it seems like Punch is blameless here and should probably have lived out his post-presidential dog life with Harriet Lane. Ranking Punch near the top of the presidential pets seems like a small step toward righting this historical injustice. You were probably a good boy, Punch.
9. Socks, Bill Clinton’s Cat
Socks takes questions from the press.Barbara Kinney/Wikimedia Commons
Cats are always aloof, but no cat has guarded his private life as zealously as Socks, the black-and-white tuxedo-coated cat who accompanied the Clintons to Washington. Earlier presidential pets protected their privacy by avoiding the public, but Socks took the opposite approach. A master of propaganda and misinformation, Socks used the mass media to construct a glittering Citizen Kane–style hall of mirrors, creating so many different personae that it quickly became impossible to separate cat from fiction. There was Socks the tour guide, an animated cat that guided children through the White House website. There was Socks the memoirist, author of Socks Goes to Washington: The Diary of America’s First Cat. There was Socks the Clinton spokescat, a puppet cat that Kermit the Frog interviewed that time he hosted Larry King Live. There was Socks the other memoirist, author of Socks Goes to the White House: A Cat’s-Eye View of the President’s House. There was Socks the TV star, sharing the screen with Candice Bergen in the classic Murphy Brown episode “Sox and the Single Girl.” There was Socks the commando, who singlehandedly saved Washington from terrorists in the canceled Super Nintendo game Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill:
There was even Socks the other puppet cat, who was assassinated by Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes in a music video for “Blister in the Sun” made when the song was featured in Grosse Pointe Blank:
Was there ever a “real” Socks at the center of this maelstrom of contradictory public images? By the end, even Socks didn’t know.
8. Feller, Harry Truman’s Dog
Poor little guy.Presidential Pet Museum/Wikimedia Commons
Punch got a raw deal, but Harry Truman’s dog, Feller, had it worse. Presidential pets can be a useful public relations tool, but only if the president genuinely likes pets. Truman did not, so when a supporter sent him a cocker spaniel puppy for Christmas of 1947, it turned into a public relations disaster. Not right away: Newspapers initially fawned over the puppy, predicting that, although Truman was not known as “a lover of dogs,” “the individual who does not fall for the appeal of a canine is rare.”
Things didn’t work out that way. Feller arrived in D.C. with great fanfare and got a round of adoring press coverage, but by January, the Washington Post noted that he had “been seen but briefly about the White House, and usually on occasions when he is being photographed by the press.” Margaret Truman, Harry’s daughter, told the press the first lady didn’t want to raise the dog. Then a March of Dimes poster boy asked to see Feller while visiting the White House and was told he was at the vet. It eventually came out that Truman, who’d never wanted a dog to begin with, had given Feller to his personal physician, enraging the nation’s dog lovers. By April, when a reporter asked the president, “What happened to Feller?” Truman’s initial answer was “To what?” before claiming Feller was “still around.” Feller, an innocent dog, eventually left the cruelty of politics behind him and retired to Ohio.
7. Jonathan Edwards, Theodore Roosevelt’s Bear
Theodore Roosevelt and his family essentially bought a zoo: They brought a badger, guinea pigs, actual pigs, a macaw, a rabbit, a hyena, several dogs, and a pony with them to the White House. But none of Roosevelt’s pets were quite as notable as Jonathan Edwards the bear, whom he wrote about in his memoir Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter:
… a queer-tempered young black bear, which the children named Jonathan Edwards, partly because of certain well-marked Calvinistic tendencies of his disposition, partly out of compliment to their mother, whose ancestors included that Puritan Divine. … The bear added zest to life in more ways than one. When we took him to walk, it was always with a chain and club, and when at last he went to the Zoo, the entire household breathed a sigh of relief, although I think the dogs missed him, as he had occasionally yielded them the pleasure of the chase in its strongest form.
Jonathan Edwards the bear, like Jonathan Edwards the Puritan, seems to have carefully weighed humanity’s worth and found us lacking. Unfortunately, Roosevelt donated the bear to the Bronx Zoo before the ursine preacher could mete out his harsh, cleansing justice.
6. Him and Her, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Dogs
Jesus, Lyndon.Cecil Stoughton/LBJ Presidential Library
Several presidential pets have moved up in the official presidential pet rankings because of the difficult circumstances of their lives, but no presidential pets deserve the sympathy vote as much as Him and Her, Lyndon B. Johnson’s beagles. Him and Her were pretty run-of-the-mill dogs, and if they’d been owned by a different president would probably have landed right in the middle of the presidential pet rankings. They were catapulted into fame in 1964, when LBJ inexplicably picked them up by their ears while posing for photos on the White House lawn. Everyone was baffled by this strange turn of events and even more so by Johnson’s explanation:
He said he did it “to make him bark.” “It’s good for him,” Johnson said, “and if you’ve ever followed dogs, you like to hear them bark.”
A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals spokesperson rejoined that picking up dogs by the ears was not good for them, adding, “If somebody picked you up by the ears, you’d yelp too.” Columnist Ralph McGill did his best to make the incident a referendum on American masculinity, railing against the “effete dog set, which keeps the animals perfumed and sprayed, and even sends them to canine psychiatrists” for criticizing Johnson, but at the end of the day, it was just too difficult to convince the public that dogs enjoyed being picked up by their ears. Sadly, neither Him nor Her made it out of the Johnson White House alive: Her choked to death on a stone she’d swallowed the day after Thanksgiving, 1964; Him was run over by a car on the White House lawn in the summer of 1966. But they’ll live on forever in our hearts, as the sixth best presidential pets in history.
5. Butcher Boy, Ulysses S. Grant’s Horse
Ulysses S. Grant was an excellent horseman, a certified speed demon, and the only president to be arrested while in office. (His crime was careening recklessly around Washington in his horse and buggy, and he was taken into custody by the same policeman who’d let him off with a warning the day before.) Butcher Boy was a horse after the president’s heart. In some accounts, Grant purchased the horse after losing a street race to the butcher’s cart it pulled, but in this account from A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant, an 1885 biography by Albert Deane Richardson and R.H. Fletcher, Grant was just impressed with the horse’s speed:
One day, riding from his office to dinner, he noticed a homely little white steed in a cart, pacing so fast that it was quickly out of sight. All he observed was, that it was driven by a boy without a coat. The diminutive animal so captivated him, that he talked of it continually, until some friends ascertained that it was the property of a butcher, who had bought it for seventy-five dollars. The man of blood, learning who wanted it, resisted all pecuniary blandishments until they reached three hundred dollars. The General purchased the white pacer, named it “Butcher-boy,” and for many a day might be seen whirling along behind it on the way to the office.
If they ever introduce time travel to the Fast and the Furious franchise, they’ve gotta get this man behind the wheel of a Bugatti Veyron. Better yet, let the horse drive.
4. Fido, Abraham Lincoln’s Dog
A professional portrait of Fido the Lincolns had made before leaving Illinois for the White House.F.W. Ingmire/Wikimedia Commons
Fido wasn’t technically a White House dog, but only because Abraham Lincoln didn’t want to subject him to the hustle and bustle of Washington. After Lincoln’s election, Fido was frightened by the increase in visitors, attention, and noise around the family’s home in Springfield, Illinois, and spent election night cowering under his favorite sofa. Despite protests from Lincoln’s sons Tad and Willy, Fido didn’t accompany the family east, staying instead with the Roll family in Springfield. (The Rolls also bought the sofa, so that Fido would have a familiar hiding place at his new home.) Sadly, Fido’s story, like Lincoln’s, ends in tragedy. In the 1950s, Dorothy Kunhardt tracked down John Roll, one of the surviving Roll children, and he gave the following account of Fido’s 1866 death to Time magazine:
… the dog, in a playful manner put his dirty paws upon a drunken man sitting in the street curbing [who] in his drunken rage, thrust a knife into the body of poor old Fido. So Fido, just a poor yellow dog, met the fate of his illustrious master—Assassination.
Just when you thought the story of Abraham Lincoln couldn’t get any more tragic, whammo!, some drunk comes along and stabs his dog.
3. Old Ike, Woodrow Wilson’s Ram
Woodrow Wilson purchased a flock of 12 sheep in 1918 and set them loose on the White House lawn, where they trimmed the grass for free. Wilson donated their wool to the Red Cross, which local chapters auctioned off to raise funds. An ill-tempered ram named “Old Ike” led the herd, which had grown to more than 40 by the time Wilson gave the sheep away and returned to more conventional landscaping methods in 1920. Here are two facts about Old Ike: He loved chewing on tobacco and would eat any cigar butts he could get his hooves on, and—according to Robert E. Long, a D.C. theater manager hired to project movies for Wilson at the White House—he “would butt anybody he could reach, and he once knocked a policeman so cold that other policemen had to rescue him.” For his incomparable achievements in the fields of cigar chomping and aggravated assault, we’re pleased to name Old Ike the third best presidential pet.
2. Fala, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Dog
Fala and friend.National Archives
Fala, a Scottish terrier who was given to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a gift by his distant cousin Margaret Suckley in 1940, was one of the most famous presidential pets in history. People knew about previous presidential pets, and Laddie Boy had become a celebrity, but Fala was a star: MGM put him in two short films, Fala: The President’s Dog in 1943 and Fala at Hyde Park in 1946. That’s right: Fala commanded enough star power to land a lead role at MGM even after FDR’s death. Fala’s Hollywood work isn’t available online, but you can get a sense of his charm and charisma from the footage in this brief British Pathé newsreel:
Fala was so well-known that American soldiers used him as a shibboleth during World War II, asking the name of the president’s dog in an attempt to identify German infiltrators. In 1944, Fala set another presidential pet milestone when a Republican representative gave a speech on the House floor alleging that Roosevelt had left Fala behind while visiting the Aleutian Islands and dispatched a destroyer, at taxpayer expense, to pick the dog up. The story was QAnon-level nonsense, but it got a lot of press. A few weeks later, FDR addressed the accusations in a speech to the teamsters, using some jokes that had been written for him by Orson Welles:
That was probably the first time a presidential pet was enlisted in this kind of defensive political maneuver, but Nixon must have studied it closely. After FDR’s death, Fala retired to Hyde Park, dying in 1952. He’s buried next to Franklin and Eleanor, and is the only presidential pet to date to have a statue on the National Mall. Also, his full name was “Murray the Outlaw of Falahill,” after a 15th-century bandit, which is a wonderful name for a dog. Great work, Fala!
1. Billy Possum, Herbert Hoover’s Possum
Billy Possum with Officer Snodgrass of the Capitol Police.Library of Congress
No pet in presidential history embodies America in all its disgusting glory quite like Billy Possum, Herbert Hoover’s possum. A few years before Hoover’s arrival in D.C., pet superfan Grace Coolidge saved a raccoon on its way to the Thanksgiving table, named it Rebecca, and built it a treehouse, where it happily lived out the Coolidge administration. When the Coolidges left the White House, so did their pet racoon, leaving an empty racoon-sized treehouse on the White House lawn.
Enter Billy Possum. In some accounts, he was caught by White House staff on the grounds and then deliberately allowed to live in Rebecca’s treehouse; in others, he just asserted squatter’s rights, possum style. Here’s a dramatized recreation of the moment Billy met President Hoover:
Billy’s name came from another storied American tradition: the knockoff cash grab. In 1908, during the early years of the Teddy Bear craze, some ill-fated toymakers in Georgia decided that the next big thing would be stuffed possums. Teddy Bears were inspired by a story about Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear; Billy Possums were inspired by a story about William Howard Taft requesting and eating an enormous meal of roast possum and potatoes at a Republican function in Atlanta, which wasn’t quite as endearing. Here’s an ad showing Billy Possums for sale at Kann’s in D.C.:
“And then we have the ‘Trick Possum.’ ”Washington Times
Billy Possum the toy was a complete flop, to approximately no one’s surprise. As for Billy Possum the possum, he kept himself busy during Hoover’s presidency. When news broke that a possum had taken up residency at the White House, students at nearby Hyattsville High School asked if it was by any chance their school mascot, a possum who had recently escaped. It wasn’t, but Hoover sent Billy Possum on a mission of mercy to serve as an emergency replacement mascot. Here’s Billy hanging out with his disreputable-looking high school friends:
Up to no good.Library of Congress
To sum up, Billy Possum was a screeching trash monster with ties to a dubious and poorly conceived get-rich-quick scheme who moved into someone else’s home uninvited and refused to leave—the very spirit of America manifested in one ghastly marsupial. So congratulations, Billy Possum, you are the greatest presidential pet in the history of the United States of America!
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An anti-vaccine mob managed to shut down one of the largest vaccination sites in the country for almost an hour Saturday afternoon. A maskless horde of some 50 people gathered at the entrance to Dodger Stadium and the Los Angeles Fire Department closed the entrance for about an hour. That, of course, angered and frustrated people who had been waiting in line for hours for their turn to get a shot. Although several police officers went to the scene, no arrests were made. Despite the delay, everyone who was in line eventually got vaccinated.
The mob was made up of people who were part of both anti-vaccine and far-right groups. They carried signs against the vaccine and questioned the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. “TAKE OFF YOUR MASK,” read one of the signs. “COVID=SCAM,” another said. One person wore a grim reaper costume and some even went up to people who were waiting in line to criticize and mock them for getting vaccinated. “You are becoming a lab rat,” one person said in a video posted on Twitter. “I’m doing this for you, not for me.” Another person told a driver who was waiting in line: “Have fun being a byproduct of Bill Gates.”
A post on social media that called for people to join described it as the “Scamdemic Protest/March” and described it as “a sharing information protest and march against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc.” Organizers asked supporters to “refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Video posted on social media shows the anti-vaccine horde thanking police officers as they leave.
Some public officials appeared flabbergasted at what took place. Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Jeff Gorell, for example, tweeted a face palm emoji. “Unbelievable,” Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez tweeted. “If you don’t want the vaccine fine, but there are millions of Angelenos that do. 16,000 of your neighbors have died, so get out of the way.” More than 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 and 16,647 deaths have been reported in Los Angeles County. One in every 1,000 Californians have died from COVID-19, which has spread to more than 3.2 million people in the state. The city of Los Angeles has one of the highest vaccination rates in the county as almost 83 percent of the doses the city has received have been administered, according to the New York Times.
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Former President Donald Trump has suddenly been left without a legal defense team a little more than a week before his impeachment trial is set to begin. It seems the lawyers parted ways with Trump over disagreements about strategy, with the ex president insisting that his lawyers focus on baseless claims of voter fraud and push the lie that the election was stolen from him. His lawyers reportedly wanted to focus instead on whether it was even legal to convict a president after he has left office, according to CNN, which was first to report the departures that were later confirmed by others.
A source close to Trump disputed the characterization to the New York Times, claiming the departure was not due to Trump’s insistence on pushing the election fraud narrative, but did acknowledge that it had to do with a difference of opinion on strategy. The former president is apparently convinced the defense should be simple and he has allegedly told allies he could represent himself and save money, although his aides insist he isn’t actually thinking of being his own attorney.
The biggest name to leave the team was Butch Bowers, who was the lead lawyer on the team. His hiring was announced last week with Sen. Lindsey Graham characterizing the South Carolina attorney as the “anchor” of Trump’s legal team. Graham was the one who helped get Bowers into Trump’s team in the first place. The decision for Bowers to leave is being described as “mutual” as he apparently never clicked with Trump. One thing the former president never really liked was how Bowers was not fond of going on television to defend him.
Deborah Barbier, another lawyer from South Carolina who was a top member of the defense team has also left. Two other lawyers from South Carolina, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris, are also stepping down from the team as is Josh Howard, a lawyer from North Carolina.
Trump’s spokesperson said that the former president’s new legal team will be announced shortly. “We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly,” Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said. But the clock is ticking. Trump has until Tuesday to file a response to the impeachment charges put forward by the House of Representatives, where 10 Republicans joined all the Democrats in saying Trump helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol. The former president’s second impeachment trial is scheduled to begin on Feb. 9.
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When I had my 3-year-old, my husband and I found ourselves very alone. Our parents and siblings weren’t involved due to abuse/neglect and substance issues on their part, and most of our friends didn’t have kids yet and didn’t know how to integrate our new lifestyle into theirs. I’ve always been more of a “guy friend” kind of person, but I tried to embrace the solidarity of other moms when I became one. However, I find playground talk extremely thorny and tiresome. It felt like I was walking into a trap whenever I was asked directly about life with my infant, like how breastfeeding was going, or how my baby was sleeping.
Besides, I resent how much time I already have to spend thinking about this stuff. I don’t want to talk about it during the rare moments of conversation with other adults. Frankly, sleep schedules and picky eating are boring subjects to me, and an exchange of complaints is not really my thing. I mean, I have my bad days or weeks too, but overall I enjoy being with my son and feel like parenting has changed my life and perspective in a positive way.
Honestly, social distancing for the past year has been good for my mental health. My husband is working from home and loving it, our longtime guy friends are more on our schedule and make time to message us about TV shows or riff on dumb ideas and jokes, and I never go anywhere where I might get trapped with a whiny mom with whom I have nothing in common but a kid the same age. So I find myself dreading the return of play dates, birthday parties, kiddie classes, and playground encounters. Will this get better as my son grows up? Is there something wrong with me that I can’t seem to get anything out of these encounters with other mothers? It feels like my blood pressure skyrockets whenever I get a text from someone moaning about “pandemic parenting”: Alllll the screen time and wine lol, so sick of my kids, miss day care and grandparent time and playdates soooo much. I don’t relate at all. Is there a way I can just opt out of having mom friends when I return to giving my son a social life?
—No More Mom Talk!
Dear NMMT,
I will confess: I didn’t care for most of the mom talk either. I wasn’t as distressed by it as you are, granted—there were a few subjects I was grateful to have a chance to talk about, but I was very fussy about which mothers of my acquaintance I talked to about them, and I was lucky enough, when my daughter was young, to have one wonderful friend who happened to have a son exactly my daughter’s age, with whom I felt in complete sync. On the playground and at play dates and school pickups, etc., I avoided those sorts of conversations, which too quickly devolved—it seemed to me—into judgment or competition. And no, I don’t think this stuff (comparison, judgment, competition) does get any better as the kids get older. (I remember too well some aggravating conversations with other mothers when our kids first went away to college.) Some people—maybe lots of people—find comfort in what they see as commiserating. But for those of us who prefer friends we’ve chosen for reasons other than having kids around the same age, these “friendships” can indeed feel like a burden.
There’s not much to be done, short of being outright rude, when one’s children are babies or toddlers and one is trapped at the playground, pushing side-by-side swings. But once the children are a little older—once you aren’t pushing a swing or sitting on the edge of a sandbox, once you don’t have to keep your eyes on your kid every single second—you can bring a book to the playground or the pool and opt not to participate in any conversations you’d rather not be part of. And play dates, soon enough, will not have to be supervised by more than one parent. I was well-known (and appreciated!) in my day for sending off the mothers of my daughter’s friends when they turned up at the door, telling them to go take some time for themselves—drop your kid and go, please! When we had birthday parties, I was explicit in my request that children be dropped off (though I made sure to have plenty of my actual friends on hand to help me wrangle a backyard full of 6-year-olds). So while the nature of these conversations with people you don’t really know or share interests with is not likely to become more appealing, various ways to avoid it are just around the corner. And for now: I am a great proponent of finding silver linings in our isolation, and lord knows there are precious few. Enjoy yours.
• If you missed Friday’s Care and Feeding column, read it here.
Am I a terrible parent for wanting to throw a sex reveal party? Nothing big (or COVID-dangerous)! We’re approaching the mark where we should be able to tell the baby’s sex on an ultrasound, and my husband and I were thinking we might order a cake and do the reveal with close friends over Zoom. I hasten to say that if, as our child grows up, they come out as LGBTQ+, we would completely support them no matter what, and we don’t want to shove them into a gender role, but is that what a sex reveal party does? I mean, this is happening before baby is born, and it would mean a lot to my parents and in-laws. I also want to celebrate our child and this particular milestone. On the other hand, I don’t want to pigeonhole my child before they are born, and this kind of party might contribute to that—and I don’t want the identity of my child to just be blue or pink. Do you think it’s OK to have a low-key party to celebrate our child, or is this an antiqued ordeal that needs to go?
—Pink or Blue or Purple or Green …
Dear PoBoPoG,
Celebrate what particular milestone?
For that matter … how is a sex-reveal party, low-key or high-key, a way to celebrate your child? As you seem to have already intuited, a “reveal” party celebrates whether the baby you are carrying has a penis or a vagina. The reason you suspect this sort of celebration might be antiquated is that this is a strange thing to “celebrate.”
Especially since, as you very carefully acknowledge, the baby’s biological sex might not match the child’s gender. (But honestly, even if it does, I can tell that you feel squirmy—as I do—about the idea of making a big deal about the baby’s sex organs.)
I’m not sure which part of this idea would “mean a lot” to the future grandparents. Finding out the baby’s sex in advance of the birth? Seeing the ultrasound for themselves? Or just, you know, being invited to a party that celebrates the newcomer’s entry into the world. If the latter,
why not have some other kind of party? A virtual baby shower, maybe (in which case: let someone else host, please). A virtual let’s-all-share-how-excited-we-are-about-this-baby party, in which everyone can convey their fondest wish for the child or offer a blessing (like in a fairy tale!). Or, better yet, wait till the baby is born and have a virtual party to introduce them to their extended family. If the thing that would mean so much to the grandparents is learning, before the birth, what the biological sex of the child will be, then go ahead and tell them all if you want to (I myself am an advocate of keeping such information—and the name you choose—a secret until the birth, but that’s just me). You might keep in mind, too, that an ultrasound is not an absolutely foolproof way of determining the whole penis vs. vagina thing. So if the grandparents get excited one way or the other, they might end up disappointed. Which might end up upsetting or angering you.
Lastly: If you don’t want a deluge of pink or blue baby clothes, blankets, and decorative items, I suggest you tell your families that. If they are the sort of people who are inclined to think along those lines, that’s what they’ll be sending you, even if you wait until after the baby makes an actual appearance.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m currently 13 weeks pregnant with our fourth child—a long-awaited and planned pregnancy. We’re over the moon with joy, but we haven’t told any family save one of our grandmas and a cousin who happens to be due the same month. This is because I’m pretty salty about how they reacted to my third pregnancy when we told them about it (more “oh” than “oh, yay!”). I hated the things they said, too—like, “Oh, you finally got your boy, so you’re done now, right?” (extra gross) and “Three kids! You’re really pushing into big family territory!”
We’ve always said we’d like four kids and maybe even more if we decided we could handle it. And our kids aren’t close in age or unplanned, either (they’re so evenly spaced you’d think we had a subscription with the stork). We’ve never shared that we’re trying, because frankly it’s nobody’s business but our own, so one reason for the reactions we’re getting could be people’s assumption that our use of natural family planning is unreliable (far from it! And since we chart, I’ve got receipts!). In any case, I’m unwilling to share our joy this time with anyone who might crush it. And it’s fairly easy to do that in a pandemic since we don’t see anyone in the family. (I have told people at work, because it’s already obvious.) But it’s unlikely I’ll keep it totally off social media. While I don’t plan to make a special announcement, I’m bound to end up posting something about being uncomfortable as things progress, or about something cute we pick up for the wee one, which would let the cat out of the bag. Is it justifiable for that to be how Grandma finds out, when she has already made it clear that this child will be one too many?
—Pregnant and Perturbed
Dear Pregnant,
You know, generally speaking, I would say the choice about when to tell people—family or otherwise—that one is pregnant is absolutely up to the pregnant woman, period. And I sympathize with your irritation and hurt feelings (it’s not just thoughtless but unkind—downright mean—to say anything other than “congratulations!” when someone announces a pregnancy and makes it clear they’re happy about it). And I’ll even ignore my sense that there’s a disconnect between my advice that you get to decide whom and when to tell … and the fact that everyone in your family is aware of your chosen method of birth control (I am rather sternly telling myself that it’s not that you’ve shared this intimate detail of your life with all your relatives but that “natural family planning” is a commonly accepted method within your family). But where you lose me, I’m afraid, is in your noting that you are “bound” to share something on social media—as if you have no control over your own social media posts!—that will alert the family to the pregnancy before you have made the decision to tell them about it.
Either tell them or don’t tell them—that’s your choice. But if you’ve decided—without admitting it to yourself—that you are going to get back at them for hurting your feelings by letting them “accidentally” find out when you complain about your aching back or feet or post a picture of some adorably tiny cowboy boots on Facebook, then shame on you. You know perfectly well that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Keep your pregnancy a secret from Grandma and the rest of the family who won’t be happy about it if you want to, right up until the baby’s birth (although I’m guessing they won’t be any more diplomatic then than they would be now, and at least one of them will say, “You’re kidding me! Another one?”—not to mention that their dismay over the size of your family will be compounded by their displeasure at being kept in the dark for so long). You have every right to guard your happiness. But don’t be a jerk about it and announce it to everyone you know even slightly, leaving your family to learn your big news in this impersonal—and casually cruel—way.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 8-year-old daughter has become obsessed with hypnosis and it’s weirding out my wife and me. Ever since she saw The Jungle Book she is always drawing or coloring girls with their eyes all swirly. Or writing stories in which a child is hypnotized by Kaa. We let our kids print coloring pages from Google and she regularly searches things like “Ariel hypnotized by Kaa coloring page.” To make matters worse, sites like DeviantArt seem to cater to every possible obsession, including various Disney princesses being hypnotized by Kaa. Many of these drawings have sexual undertones. I know I need to more closely supervise her internet activities and use better filtering, etc., but honestly I’m a bit worried about this strange obsession itself. We’ve tried talking to her about it but we haven’t been able to get to the bottom of things. And I worry I came across as being too judgmental when we talked, because now she’s definitely aware that this is odd. She’s become secretive about it. I don’t want her to feel shame even if I’m uncomfortable with this fixation of hers. But I also would be happy to see it dissolve. What can we do? How do we talk to her about it? Should she be in therapy?
—HypnoDad
Dear Hypno,
Eight-year-olds are weird. They get obsessed with random things. And while I am a fan of therapy (therapy for everyone! Therapy improves people’s lives!), your daughter does not need to see a therapist because she is currently in a hypnosis phase. It will pass. Stop trying to get to the bottom of it. Put some restrictions on the laptop to make sure she doesn’t accidentally end up seeing something she shouldn’t online. Otherwise—in the immortal words of another Disney princess—let it go.
—Michelle
More Advice From Slate
Apparently, it’s well-known among the parents in our child’s circle of friends that one mother is a pill pilferer (OxyContin, Xanax). She is going through a divorce and home-schools her children. I’ve only recently become privy to this information, and I’m at a loss about what to do.
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