Madame Presidents: The Case of Edith and Ruucy

This morning while I was putting my head down to take a nap, I turned my tele on to the history channel. I thought I would leave the tele on and try to sleep (I tend to sleep faster with the tele on, and I may as well be learning something as I sleep), so I leave the tele on and turn my head to face away from the tele - like to listen not watch.

Well, I am slowly drifting into my nap, half listening to the program on tele, the dude was talking about some first female president of America, my synapses start snapping, what is this dude talking about? there has never been a female prezo, so I am like I must have heard wrong. So I ignore the dude.

Then he starts on how Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and for a coule of months his wife - Edith Wilson - was in essence the president, controlling who saw the president and what information he received. He also spoke of her ostracizing the presidents closest advisors (personal secretary and long friend), as well as, blocking cabinet secretaries from seeing the preezo.

At this point I could not take it, I shook the sleep out of my head (akin to Jon Stewart shacking his head in bemusement: "Whaaaat?") and sat up to watch the rest of the show. The reason this show really caught my ear was in part due to Tuesday's edition of Palaver on the EA Standard:http://www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=14904&date=8/3/2005
I swear the similarities are amazing. History does surely repeat itself. This time 86 years later, and in a different continent.

Some info on Edith Wilson:

http://www.thehistorychannel.com/perl/print_book.pl?ID=225959

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/ew28-2.html

http://www2.worldbook.com/wc/popup?path=features/presidents&page=html/wilson_edith.htm&direct=yes