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"...Wait, does FML mean Fuck My Life?"
Pg. 1-2:
JEAN: How public? Who exactly was there?
[...]
HARRIET: New York Times, BBC, and three Chinese diplomats.
As Harriet points out, the Chinese diplomats all speak English, although if she's lucky, "cunty" may be a niche word that they don't understand. It's significant that they are dealing with Chinese diplomats, because rules of Chinese etiquette are formal and polite. Offending a diplomat - especially when the offender is the POTUS - can cause an international issue.
(Source: ediplomat)
Pg. 2
JEAN: I think there was one last year who struggled with idioms, you know, like, slang, so it might have gone over his head.
Idioms aren't slang any more than sharing grapes is feminism. Idioms are figures of speech, like "it's raining cats and dogs" or "I could eat a horse."
Pg. 3
HARRIET: He was standing, so the diplomats felt like it would be rude to sit, so they were all standing, they were all standing in front of her, blocking his view and she was sitting.
It is proper etiquette and protocol to stand up when POTUS enters the room and remain standing until he sits.
(Source: WHCA)
Here's a video from The West Wing in which President Martin Sheen goes on a tirade against a right-wing religious woman, not because he takes issue with the beliefs she professes - although he clearly does - but because it irks and distracts him when he enters the room and she is the only person to stay seated.
This is a legitimately hilarious joke in the play. No one wants to sit down while the president is standing, even though he stands for the entire meeting. They're afraid to breach presidential etiquette, but POTUS just has an oozing pustule on his ass. Notably, FLOTUS sits down and stays seated, a snub that reflects her "cunty" morning. Of course, unlike the press and diplomats, she knows perfectly well why POTUS can't sit down.
Also, while we're here on the president's ass, here's how you pronounce "pustule," since it comes up a few times:
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Okay, here we go with this one. The shit I Google for you guys...
Pg. 5
JEAN: What the fuck does Jerry know?
HARRIET: He said he should rub tea tree oil on it.
JEAN: How does a person even get an anal abscess?
HARRIET: Jerry told him it can happen sometimes from ass play.
Listen, don't doctor yourself, especially when you're the president of the United States and can afford actual medical care. This goes double for a man who has already seen his doctor and was recommended surgery.
According to WebMD, which is America's doctor, "Prompt surgical drainage is important, preferably before the abscess erupts." The surgery is minor, and it is often done under local anesthesia. Tea tree oil has some antiseptic properties, and it might be helpful in controlling acne, but an untreated anal abscess can progress to perianal sepsis, or even a necrotizing infection that starts to kill off the soft tissue around one's butthole. Both of these are life-threatening. (Source: WebMD)
This would definitely be the dumbest way in history for a president to die in office, including Zachary Taylor, who died from eating too many cherries with too much cold milk on a hot day.
Pg. 6
HARRIET: Because it's HIM and it's HER and it's their weird marriage with all their weird "arrangements."
This comment is probably one of the reasons that conservatives see Bill Clinton in the play's POTUS. In America's collective memory, Bill Clinton's reputation as a philanderer is arguably only matched by JFK's. Bill and Hillary have spoken about their political arrangement, in which Bill had his time to pursue his presidential ambitions with his wife's support, and then Hillary would take her turn with Bill in the passenger seat. Although the Clintons don't talk about their unconventional marriage, given Clinton's rampant infidelity that turned into the largest political scandal of the nineties, the fact that they're still together and professing marital bliss suggests that they could have other arrangements that aren't shared with the press - but that's just speculation. (Source: Time)
Pg. 10:
MARGARET: Dammit, Harriet, you cannot prevent me from having a marital discussion with my husband!
HARRIET: I absolutely can, on any day during his term in office, but especially today, when he has a nuclear non-proliferation meeting in half an hour, a gubernatorial candidate endorsement in two, and an oozing pustule on his anus.
Nuclear proliferation refers to "the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons technology, or fissile material to countries that do not already possess them. Therefore, non-proliferation is about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. This is high-stakes stuff, as nuclear war would mean mutually assured destruction all over the planet and the death of the human race. (Source: Britannica)
*Pronunciation of "proliferation":
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A "gubernatorial" candidate is running for governor, and a political endorsement is a public declaration of support for a candidate from the POTUS. Endorsement can raise the profile of a lesser-known candidate, and an endorsement from the POTUS is a big deal. He's officially telling his voters to vote for this candidate.
*Pronunciation of "gubernatorial"
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Pg. 13:
JEAN: I don't think a government as cozy with Saudi Arabia as Bahrain's can really pass judgment on ours.
CHRIS: I don't think a government as cozy with Saudi Arabia as ours can really pass judgment on Bahrain.
JEAN: We're in bed with their oil, not their gender politics.
Saudi Arabia is well-known for their laws that persecute women. In March of 2022, the country passed a Personal Status Law, which, according to Amnesty International, "codifies discrimination against women." Now according to this law, women need permission from a male guardian to get married. They are forced to "obey" their husbands, and they are not entitled to financial support from those husbands unless they do. Under the law, only men can initiate divorce, and although the mother automatically receives custody of any children, the father is their only legal guardian, giving her the work of raising the kids while he has the power to make all decisions. That's only the beginning of the ways women are legally oppressed. (Source: Amnesty International)
It seems like the United States ought to condemn a country that is violating the human rights of half of its citizens. But Saudi Arabia owns the second-largest oil reserve in the world. Therefore, the United States maintains a positive relationship with the country. Saudi Arabia is also the U.S.'s number one customer of foreign military sales. (Source: U.S. Department of State)
Bahrain is a tiny group of islands in the Middle East that add up to about 274 square miles. They are friendly with Saudi Arabia, and the majority of Bahrain's trading is with the Saudis. They are also close neighbors, and Saudi Arabia has invested a significant amount of money in the country. A 2023 Human Rights report by the U.S. Department of State states that Bahrain, like Saudi Arabia, perpetuates significant human rights violations. The play raises the question as to whether it's possible to just be "in bed" with a country's oil without considering their human rights record.
*Pronunciation of "Bahrain"
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Pg. 4
JEAN: I'm not going to tell my kid to be less generous because your kid has trouble saying no. I'm raising a feminist.
CHRIS: Yeah, foisting his agenda onto someone who is too polite to refuse sounds super feminist.
There is no definition of the word "feminist" by which it can reasonably be used to describe one little boy who wants to share his grapes with another little boy. Feminism is the fight to abolish the patriarchy, while two boys sharing their grapes with each other is more in line (ideologically at least) with bolstering the patriarchy with mutual male support. This begs the question as to whether Jean really understands feminism, or if she has compromised so much to hold up an incompetent man that she doesn't believe in it. Or it's just sarcasm.
Pg. 21
JEAN: [Bahrain] thought [cunty] was disrespectful.
HARRIET: Oh did he? Did he take a break from imprisoning journalists to issue that statement?
Bahrain is notorious for imprisoning journalists. There is no freedom of expression or freedom of the press there. The royal family keeps a tight rein on news outlets, and the only television and radio stations are, as of 2017, controlled by the Ministry of Information Affairs. In 2024 alone, ten journalists have been incarcerated so far, often for very long sentences in prisons where they are abused and mistreated.
(Source: Reporters Without Borders)
Pg. 33
BERNADETTE: Very Jackie O. meets Carl Sagan.
The humor here is definitely in the contrasts. Bernadette is... complimenting (???) Jean's suit, and she pairs up Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, a former First Lady who is known for being feminine and fashionable, with Carl Sagan, a brilliant and famous astronomer who, like, Jean, did enjoy a good turtleneck.
Pg. 42
DUSTY: What? No, 'cause then I also sent him my favorite Rilke poem and a picture of my nipples.
With all of these smart, accomplished women around, Dusty, an outsider, is discounted at first as a naive idiot who thinks she's going to marry the married president. But her intelligence comes out in surprising snippets, as Dusty, notably, doesn't need to cut any throats or prove her worthiness, unlike the others.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an Austrian poet who wrote in German, and he (don't let the "Maria" fool you - Rilke was a man) used writing as a way to seek meaning in life. After his death, Rilke's brilliance became widely recognized as a significant stand-out among 20th century poets. (Source: The New Yorker)
*Pronunciation of "Rilke"
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Pg. 46
MARGARET: That is notable suffragist Alice Paul!
Source: (History)
Alice Paul (1885-1977) grew up in a Quaker family and left to study social work, earning an MA and a PhD. As a suffragist, Paul was a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, or the right to vote, in both in England and the United States. Notably, Paul believed in using what most articles describe as "militant protest strategies, including breaking windows, hunger strikes, forming picket lines, and other tactics and forms of civil disobedience." She was arrested and imprisoned three times, where she was beaten and abused. She continued her hunger strike and was "painfully force-fed for weeks through a nasal tube." Later, after the passage of the 19th Amendment granted women's suffrage, Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which was often proposed but never passed.
It seems pointed that a "militant" feminist is the instrument of POTUS's near-death. The POTUS is the ultimate symbol of American patriarchy, as the highest office in the country that remains above a glass ceiling that women have yet to crack. She'd probably appreciate the gesture.
Pg. 48
Chris: I'm going to go away for life they're going to send me to Guantanamo
Guantánamo Bay, also known as Gitmo, is a detention camp located in southeast Cuba. In 2002, the land was leased from Cuba by the U.S. Government as a prison camp that exists "outside the law," since Cuba doesn't fall under the United States Constitution. And yes, this is absolutely as menacing as it sounds. Starting by incarcerating suspected al-Qaeda members after September 11th, Gitmo became a place where people could be held indefinitely without being charged, where torture and human rights violations could happen under the radar. (Source: ACLU)
Pg. 59
CHRIS: You look just like Reagan.
HARRIET: Noooo trickle-down economics are the worrrst
Ronald Reagan was a republican president who was in office from 1981-1989. In 1981, he proposed his economic plan, nicknamed Reaganomics. Televised from the Oval Office, Reagan explained that if the country cuts taxes for the wealthiest people and big corporations, those rich people will stimulate the economy. According to Reagan, the wealthy would then pass their savings on to the consumers, and therefore wage inequality would be solved as wealth trickled down.
This... has never worked. When the 1% get savings or tax cuts, they keep it and accumulate even more wealth.
(Source: Investopedia)
Pg. 63
CHRIS: If I had it my way, that preppy little WASP would be strung up by his
"WASP" is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. They're rich, repressed, republican (or "fiscally conservative but socially liberal"), and the whitest of the white. As in: a raisins in the potato salad, sweet sixteens at the country club, unseasoned chicken, rice-is-too-spicy, always-claps-off-beat level of whiteness. This privileged little dipshit is edging in on Chris's territory.
Pg. 63
CHRIS: Hey, in this post-feminist world, women can run off with the nanny too, ha ha
ARE we living in a post-feminist world?
Post-feminism isn't a new term. It has been tossed around in the media as early as the 1980s. When second-wave feminism, which began in the 1960s, was fading in the 1990s, some feminists decided that women had achieved equal rights, making feminism no longer necessary. Others took this idea further, believing that feminism had overshot its goal, wanting to recapture some of the traditional gender roles that feminism fought against. In the last decade or so, countless women have posted photos of themselves holding signs that explain why THEY believe they don't need feminism.
Frustratingly, these declarations tend to be based on gross misconceptions of what feminism is and what it means to be a feminist. They accuse feminists of hating men, wanting gender supremacy, and they seem concerned that men are becoming oppressed.
But we DEFINITELY still need feminism.
There are a LOT of reasons for this, but to put it simply,
In 2024, we STILL have not elected a female POTUS.
Pg. 72
JEAN: The poet laureate just tweeted a haiku titled FML
The poet laureate is a poet who has been appointed by the government to write poems to be read at events and special occasions.
Here is Amanda Gorman, the youngest poet laureate in American history, reading a poem at President Biden's 2021 inauguration:
*Pronunciation of "laureate"
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And if anyone gives you shit, just tell them:
"There's a cunty dawn coming."
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