BABE HUGGETT: In celebration of the National Association of Education’s yearly “Read Across America” project, which started Tuesday, March 2, First Lady Michelle Obama appeared at the Library of Congress and read to a select group of youngsters Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s story, The Cat In the Hat. Her choice was appropriate enough considering that Tuesday also marked the good doctor’s birthday, who would have been 106 if still alive.

The Cat In the Hat was written by Dr. Seuss, (pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel), in 1957 as a response to a challenge by the Life magazine writer, John Hershey, who specifically mentioned Geisel as an ideal illustrator for modern children’s books in a May 25, 1954 article titled “Why Do Students Bog Down on First R? A Local Committee Sheds Light on a National Problem: Reading”. Geisel’s publisher, Random House, asked him to write a new style of engaging children’s literature using a limited vocabulary of only 400 words, which the publisher’s estimated school children were learning at the time. Geisel cut the suggested list down to 223 and added 16 of his own.

Using the pseudonym of “Dr. Seuss”, Geisel’s The Cat In the Hat proved an instant hit and the story of the two rainy day bored young children first enjoying then panicking over the crazy, chaotic antics of a floppy red-and-white stripped hat wearing tuxedo Cat accompanied by his eagerly undisciplined partners-in-crime, Thing One and Thing Two still resonates with young readers 53 years later. Read more…

BABE HUGGETT: Over the years I’ve always made sure to purchase the September issue of Vogue and did so for more decades than I care to admit. I finally dropped Vogue in favor of Harper’s Bazaar when women of my age started disappearing from Vogue’s acknowledgement as savvy fashion consumers to be replaced with fashion-masquerading pro-leftist commentary. The conspicuous consumption and luxury-addicted Vogue never did catch on that the romance of revolutionary thought was just a façade to hide a grasping, murderous and rapacious political system based on greed and envy. In fact, the editors of Vogue still haven’t figured it out and even Harper’s Bazaar is guilty of it although to a lesser degree. At least with Harper’s, I can still find “women of a certain age” held up as fashionable icons but that’s about it.

However, women’s magazines in general and fashion commentary in particular are a surprisingly accurate means of forecasting who will be the winners in political elections. I’ve often written that if you want to know who will win American elections, look to the catwalk and check out the zeitgeist of the collections. When I saw even Madonna picking up the Wild West vibe of the runways by sporting her cowgirl hat and boots before the November 2000 elections, I knew George W. Bush would win despite the frantic efforts of the Al Gore camp to continue challenging the results until enough fraudulent votes could be manufactured by Democratic operatives.

It didn’t take a genius to discover that Obama was destined to win the 2008 elections either. All you had to do was see all the pro-Obama message tees on the runway to figure that one out. It was so blatant, it was depressing. The runways right now for Fall 2010 are full of Post-Apocalyptic wear featuring rips, tears, disjointed and mismatched patterns, and hard, funnel-necked leather jackets vying with cantilevered, architectural reinterpretations of the human form in such a way that has not been seen since the Mannerist fashions of the first Queen Elizabeth. Read more…