Can you imagine a first lady campaigning for justice for the underdog today? Boy, have we changed!

Instead of traveling the country to learn what the grass roots’ concerns are, our leaders today are more apt to travel from fund raiser to fundraiser, saying ‘give me’ instead of asking ‘what do you need?”

I, too, think Eleanor was a feminist, in the pure sense of the word. The latter day off-shootls distorted the meaning of feminisim beyond recognition. And we still have not solved the child care problem. With more and more families needing two working parents, it cerainly isn’t less urgent now. We could use her advocacy today.

She did have a blind spot, however. After the end of WWII, and before Stalin became our enemy instead of our ally, she misjudged the nature of the SSR terribly. She traveled from DP camp to DO camp, urging those displaced because they were fleeing Stalin’s wrath to return home, where everything was milk and honey, as she assured her audiences.

American s understand WWII in terms of Hitle. In terms of Stalin, very little. Eleanor was no different.