Yesterday, Politico’s Becca Milfeld posted a Valentimey collection of the first-date stories of Washington “power couples.” Al Hunt and Judy Woodruff were escorted on their first date by friends, Joseph Lieberman’s wife asked him to move her furniture, and John Dingell brought Deborah to see “Giselle.” What, no ill-advised drunken hook-ups that led, unexpectedly, to high-profile romance? I call bullshit. Let’s read between the lines, shall we?

POWER COUPLE: Al Hunt (Washington editor, Bloomberg News) and Judy Woodruff (senior correspondent, PBS)

ON THE RECORD HOOKUP: “Hunt had long suffered from migraine headaches and had one when they went out on their first date, a meal with friends at an Italian restaurant in Washington, on March 19, 1977. But he hasn’t had a migraine since.”

REALITY: What, no wine with dinner? Woodruff must have served up some kind of medicine!

—

POWER COUPLE: Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Hadassah Lieberman

ON-THE-RECORD HOOKUP: “Lieberman called her up and said that they could either go out that day or would have to wait until after the election. . . . Hadassah said that day would be perfect, since she needed her new dining room table and chairs moved in. Lieberman got in the car and drove down to Riverdale, N.Y., and at the door knew that it was love at first sight or, as he put it, an ‘oh-bah-bah-boom moment. . . . And that dining room furniture? She had her superintendent move them in before he arrived.”

REALITY: Ugh, because you know that the Liebermans’ first-date story is really boring enough that having “her superintendent move them in before he arrived” has to count for steamy foreplay.

—

POWER COUPLE: Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Deborah Dingell (vice-chair of the General Motors Foundation, senior executive at GM)

ON-THE-RECORD HOOKUP: “He asked her out 15 times, she turned him down 14. They finally went to see Giselle at the Carter Barron Amphitheater on ‘one of those soft June evenings’ in Washington in 1980.”

REALITY: And then, the “soft June evening” turned into a “soft June morning after.”

—

POWER COUPLE: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and John Marshall Collins (attorney)

ON-THE-RECORD HOOKUP: “’We met at an election party of a candidate who lost,’ Lofgren recalled.”

REALITY: . . . Then they got drunk and hooked up.

—

POWER COUPLE: Rep. Eric Cantor and Diana F. Cantor

ON-THE-RECORD HOOKUP: “Cantor met his future wife on a blind date while he was a student at Columbia. The mutual friends who hooked the couple up went with them to a restaurant in Soho called ‘New Deal,’ hardly a serendipitous name for a Republican love match. ‘I remember it vividly. This was 20 years ago,’ he said. ‘I fell in love very quickly.’ He added, ‘Falling in love in New York is a great thing.’”

REALITY: I think we all know what “I fell in love very quickly” means.

—

POWER COUPLE: Attorney General Eric Holder and Dr. Sharon Malone

ON-THE-RECORD HOOKUP: “A mutual friend told a reluctant Holder about a woman he should meet, on the condition that if they got on, the friend could spend a week at Holder’s parents’ house in Barbados. When the two finally met, it turned out they had already hit it off at a fundraiser. Needless to say, the friend went to Barbados.”

REALITY: Hold on. All I need to do is introduce my friend to someone he’s already met, and I get a free trip to Barbados? Something—and I’m not sure what—is foul here.

—

POWER COUPLE: Chef Geoff Tracy (owner, Chef Geoff’s) and Norah O’Donnell (chief Washington correspondent, MSNBC)

ON THE RECORD HOOKUP: “‘Norah and I had our first night that involved a smooch or something like that’ during their freshman year at Georgetown University in 1991, Tracy recalled. They were out with a group of friends at The Dubliner when an ‘old guy with no teeth’ began to hit on O’Donnell, and Tracy offered to make him go away if O’Donnell would go along with what he said. She agreed, and he declared he was going to ask O’Donnell to marry him. The bar made an announcement with the happy news, the toothless guy took a hike, and ten years later he asked again, for real this time.”

REALITY: Probably pretty much just like this. Drunken college hookup: Huzzah!

Photo by Thirteen of Clubs

I’ve written pretty extensively on how pharmacists can exert power over their customer’s contraceptive use. I’ve reported on pharmacists who restrict birth control by hewing to Catholic tradition; by refusing to talk; by extolling the virtues of “natural family planning”; and by writing absurd run-arounds into their policies.

Now, Shark-Fu of Angry Black Bitch and Shakesville details a more nontraditional method employed by some pharamcists in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri: the “stank eye.”

“A bitch is concerned about the impact of stank eye,” writes Shark-Fu. “Specifically, I’m concerned by the stank eye many people are subjected to when they buy condoms at their local pharmacy.”

Shark-Fu was in line at Walgreens on Valentine’s Day when she noticed a young man preparing to purchase “two packs of condoms.” When he placed the condoms on the counter, “the woman behind the counter leveled the most intense stank eye on him that I’ve seen in a long time. . . . I’m talking the same level of stank coming from the eyes that this bitch gets from those wooden cross dragging protesters outside of Pridefest each year…mmmhmm, STANK!”

The man completed his purchase, but who can say whether the stank eye will discourage him and countless other victims from buying condoms in the future? And how might a concerned citizen combat the pharmacist’s stank eye?

Shark-Fu says: Fight stank eye with stank eye. “[W]hen I came up to purchase my juice I gave Ms. Thang some stank eye right back. . . I stared hard…hard as hell…so hard and so filled with angry disgust that when she lifted her eyes to me she physically jerked. And then she flushed and looked away.”

Balloons in train

Letters, numbers in row

Porn in street

Woman on wall

Drink by drink

The display is called “My Funny Valentine. It’s inspiration? Not so funny:

A Macy’s rep told Gothamist that “The spray painted bicycle your reader is referring to is one of many elements that make up our current visual display in store and in the windows that have been painted white,” adding, “Unfortunately, your reader is drawing an unintended association from a visual display in our store.”

And Valentine’s Day marketing jumps from obnoxious to offensive.

Macy’s display via Brand Flakes for Breakfast; ghost bike photo by Darrow Montgomery.

Your Valentine’s Day plans are like that totally crazy dream you had last night where your boss was in front of you on a water slide, but then your boss turned into Dick Cheney and when you reached the bottom he captured you and tried to waterboard you, but then a dragon came down and brought you out for Mexican and that kid you had a crush on from high school physics was there: I’m sure it was great for you, but fuck, man, I don’t really care.

Now, the U.S. Census Bureau has chimed in to make Valentine’s Day even more boring with a special press release full of boring numbers. Did you know that in 2006, 1,170 locations produced chocolate and cocoa products in 2006? Or that in the same year, 473 locations produced “nonchocolate confectionary products”? And that there were 3,563 “confectionery and nut stores” in the United States Alone? How about the “total value of shipments in 2006 for firms producing chocolate and cocoa products”—$13.9 billion! Fuck, I can’t take this anymore. Below, the full census presser.

Valentine’s Day 2009: Feb. 14

Opinions abound as to who was the original Valentine, with the most popular theory that he was a clergyman who was executed for secretly marrying couples in ancient Rome in spite of Emperor Claudius II, who felt that marriage weakened his soldiers. In any event, in A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 as Valentine Day. Through the centuries, the Christian holiday became a time to exchange love messages, and St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. Esther Howland, a native of Massachusetts, is given credit for selling the first mass-produced valentine cards in the 1840s. The spirit of love continues today as valentines are sent with sentimental verses, from and to young and old romantics.

Candy is Dandy

1,170
Number of locations producing chocolate and cocoa products in 2006. These
establishments employed 39,457 people. California led the nation in the
number of such establishments with 128, followed by Pennsylvania with 116.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
>

473
Number of locations that produced nonchocolate confectionary products in
2006. These establishments employed 18,733 people.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
>

$13.9 billion
Total value of shipments in 2006 for firms producing chocolate and cocoa
products. Nonchocolate confectionery product manufacturing, meanwhile, was
a $7.2 billion industry. Source: Annual Survey of Manufactures <
http://factfinder.census.gov/>

3,563
Number of confectionery and nut stores in the United States in 2006.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
>

24.5 pounds
Per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2007.
Source: Current Industrial Reports <
http://www.census.gov/cir/www/311/ma311d.html>

Flowers

$416 million
The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut flowers in 2007
for all flower-producing operations with $100,000 or more in sales. Among
states, California was the leading producer, alone accounting for about
three-quarters of this amount ($320 million). Source: USDA National
Agricultural Statistics Service

$29 million
The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut roses in 2007 for
all operations with $100,000 or more in sales.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service <
http://www.nass.usda.gov>

20,227
The number of florists nationwide in 2006. These businesses employed 98,373
people.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
>

Jewelry

28,300
Number of jewelry stores in the United States in 2006. Jewelry stores offer
engagement, wedding and other rings to lovers of all ages. In February
2008, these stores sold $2.6 billion in merchandise.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
> and Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services <
http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/mrts.html>

The merchandise at these locations could well have been produced at one of
the nation’s 1,777 jewelry manufacturing establishments.
Source: County Business Patterns <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/county_business_patterns/012181.html
>

Be Mine

2.2 million
The number of marriages that took place in the United States in 2007. That
breaks down to a little more than 6,000 a day.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics <
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr.htm>

126,354
The number of marriages performed in Nevada during 2007. So many couples
tie the knot in the Silver State that it ranked fifth nationally in
marriages, even though its total population that year among states was
35th. (California ranked first in marriages.)
Source: National Center for Health Statistics <
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr.htm> and population
estimates,
<
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/007910.html
>

57% and 60%
The percentages of American women and men, respectively, who are 18 or
older and married (includes those who are separated).
Source: Families and Living Arrangements: 2007 <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/012437.html
>

72%
Percentage of people 30 to 34 in 2007 who had been married at some point in
their lives — either currently or formerly.
Source: Families and Living Arrangements: 2007 <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/012437.html
>

73%
Among women who married for the first time between 1985 and 1989, the
percentage who marked their 10th anniversary. This compares with 87 percent
of women who married for the first time between 1955 and 1959.
Source: Marriage and Divorce: 2004
www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/010624.html>

6%
The percentage of currently married women who have been married for at
least 50 years. A little more than half of currently married women have
been married for at least 15 years.
Source: Marriage and Divorce: 2004
www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/010624.html>

*The Census Bureau data in this section do not include same-sex marriages;
the National Center for Health Statistics data do.

Looking for Love

904
The number of dating service establishments nationwide as of 2002. These
establishments, which include Internet dating services, employed nearly
4,300 people and pulled in $489 million in revenue.
Source: 2002 Economic Census <
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/guide/SUBSUMM.HTM>

Try Looking Here . . .

Romantic-sounding places to spend Valentine’s Day:

Roseville, Calif.
Rose City, Mich.
South Heart, N.D.
Loveland, Colo.
Darling township, Minn.
Loveland, Ohio
Romeo, Colo.
Sacred Heart, Minn.
Loveland Park, Ohio
Lovejoy, Ga.
Heart Butte, Mont.
Love County, Okla.
Loves Park, Ill.
Valentine, Neb.
Loveland, Okla.
Lovington, Ill.
Lovelock, Nev.
Lovelady, Texas
Romeoville, Ill.
Loving, N.M.
Loving County, Texas
Rosemont, Ill.
Lovington, N.M.
Valentine, Texas
Romeo, Mich.
Love Valley, N.C.
Rose Hill Acres, Texas
Rose Hill, N.C.
Rose Hill, Va.

Giving Love a Second Chance

8
Average length, in years, of first marriages ending in divorce.

3 1/2
The median time in years between divorce and a second marriage.

12% and 13%
Percentage of men and women, respectively, 15 and older who have married
twice. Three percent each have married three or more times. By comparison,
54 percent of men and 58 percent of women have made only one trip down the
aisle.

52% and 44%
Among adults 25 and older who have ever divorced, the percentage of men and
women, respectively, who were currently married.

Source for the data in this section: Marriage and Divorce: 2004 <
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/marital_status_living_arrangements/010624.html
>

Photo by Sister72.