Secret Service code names for the Obamas, and Marion Davies’ clitoris

The Secret Service has apparently released its code names for the new cast of characters:

President-elect Barack Obama: Renegade
Michelle Obama: Renaissance
Malia Obama: Radiance
Sasha Obama: Rosebud

“Renegade” seems a nice little twist on McCain; Mac the Maverick, Obama the Renegade. But far more disturbing, for a fan of Citizen Kane, at least, is the codename for seven-year old Sasha Obama. I don’t know how the Secret Service came up with the name — maybe they foresee a legacy of parental neglect, a great inheritance and a Kane-like arc to her life? — but no matter where it came from, it’s seriously messed up.

As Gore Vidal wrote of Citizen Kane in a now-infamous memorialization of Orson Welles in the New York Review of Books, “On Kane’s deathbed, he whispers the word ‘Rosebud.’ This is thought to be the key, somehow, to his life. In the film it turns out to be a boy’s sled, which Mr. Stephen Spielberg recently bought for $55,000. In actual life, Rosebud was what Hearst called his friend Marion Davies’s clitoris, the sort of item that producers of children’s films tend not to collect.”

David Thomson offers some additional ruminations here.

Anyway, the point is, come up with another name, please.

P.S. As this hilariously unhinged letter and this family favorite make clear (in case it weren’t clear already), Gore Vidal is bat-shit crazy insane.