Doreen Michele

Article  showing a photo of Elvis, "The King", absolutely looking like a king, shaking hands with some ugly loser in a business suit named Nixon. Who is president in 1985? Ronald Reagan  The ACTOR? -- Back to the Future   The US seems to largely miss the significant impact Reagan's acting career had -- and still has -- on the presidential image. His presidency marked a sea change in how our presidents get depicted in photos and video clips because Reagan was always keenly aware of what was behind him and how that would impact the impression made upon the public. Historically, nobles, celebrities and others in the public eye had a more curated public image than they do today. Trump looks like such an idiot so much of the time because that's no longer true and he obviously doesn't know how to effectively navigate that issue. I imagine his "just plain folks" schtick goes over well in person and then bombs much of the time in the media. I'm twice excepti...

My mother's mother came from a low level German noble family. Mom was born and mostly raised in Danzig, a very cosmopolitan freistadt (independent city state), except for the years that the family spent in the country during World War II to try to safeguard everyone as best they could. When the war ended, she found herself in the newly created communist East Germany where she was required to take Russian in school, which is why I know a few words of Russian. She left East Germany to return her sister's baby to her , so she was a young illegal immigrant in West Germany when she met my father at a party. She spoke extremely proper High German. His American accent plus the fact that he mostly learned German from farmers, meant she couldn't understand a word he spoke and she asked someone what language he was speaking. My older sister was born in Germany. Her first language was actually German and she translated for my parents while she was a toddler. So I grew up in a bilingua...