I lived in Brighton, Great Britain, from August 1980 until May or June 1981. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979. If you wanted to get people’s blood boiling you could ask them what they thought of Mrs. Thatcher privatizing everything and dismantling the welfare state. I had stickers showing her sharp nosed face in a trash can. The caption read, “Put her in the dustbin of history!”. I’ve always remembered those.

And now she’s dead. We want all souls to rest peacefully, but when President Obama said that Margaret Thatcher had been a role model for his daughters I couldn’t help but wondering on what planet he spent the 1980s.

No, gender is not enough, Mr. President.