Tag Archives: Twitter

Meet Doug Emhoff – The First Second Gentleman

By Sabrina Völz

Usu­al­ly, the spous­es of vice pres­i­dents of the Unit­ed States don’t attract much pub­lic atten­tion. Many Amer­i­cans prob­a­bly can’t even name more than two or three sec­ond ladies, but that is just a guess. Yet Doug Emhoff is the hus­band of Kamala Har­ris, the first female African Amer­i­can, South Asian Amer­i­can Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. He’s becom­ing a house­hold name and break­ing down bar­ri­ers as America’s first Sec­ond Gen­tle­man as well as the first Jew­ish spouse of any vice pres­i­dent. Does that real­ly mat­ter, you might ask your­self? It shouldn’t, but it does. Let’s take a look at a clip from an inter­view tak­ing social media by storm that gives us insight into his popularity:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeF8_UcrDz0

So is he ‘just’ a father as well as a charm­ing and sup­port­ive hus­band of a ‘Pow­er­frau,’ as we would say in Ger­man? Or will he play a real role in Amer­i­can life and pol­i­tics? What can we expect of a man in the role of Sec­ond Gentleman?

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We Were Trumped!

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Amer­i­cans do not vote direct­ly for their pres­i­dents. We vote for the peo­ple who will vote for our pres­i­dents. Each state is assigned elec­tors, based part­ly on pop­u­la­tion, but each state is assigned an addi­tion­al two elec­toral votes, regard­less of its size. Con­se­quent­ly, a vote from a per­son in a rur­al state has more influ­ence than a vote from an urban­ized area. This sys­tem has giv­en us five pres­i­dents who came in sec­ond in the people’s vote with mixed results. Three have made us ques­tion this sys­tem. With Ruther­ford Hayes, we got Jim Crow law that denied African Amer­i­cans their civ­il rights for more than 100 years. With George W. Bush, we got the Iraq war. With Don­ald Trump, well, we got – Trump!

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A New Millennium?

By Michael Lederer

“MCU035” by maxxtraf­fic is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Jan­u­ary 1, 2000. Not just a new cen­tu­ry, but a new mil­len­ni­um. Spot­less, for the briefest moment, though far from emp­ty. Arriv­ing so brim­ful of promise and hope. “What will it be like?” we won­dered, star­ing almost child-like at the clock as it approached the new era. A brand-new, unopened, ready-to-use mil­len­ni­um! And this time, with all we’d learned over past mil­len­nia, we would get things right.

Knock on wood.

 

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