Alexandra Kotur learned this the hard way. When the ex–Vogue style director was prepping her departure for Town & Country (to be replaced by Observer contributing writer Chloe Malle) she sent an email to more than 500 close friends to let them know. Normally in such cases, bcc is the proper form. That way, everyone gets the message without their contact information falling into the wrong hands.

Ours, for instance.

Ms. Kotur used cc instead. Her email was promptly forwarded to the Transom, and we opened it to discover a who’s who of fashionistas, socialites and political players, with whom we simply cannot wait to start corresponding.

“Typically, I do choose to blind copy my contacts with mass emails,” Ms. Kotur told us, over email. “Chalk it up to human error.”

Her folly, our fun. We learn, for instance, that while Lauren Bush has a gmail address, her cousin Barbara maintains an antiquated AOL account. Also: Candace Bushnell still goes by “evilminkster”?

Daphne, Hugo, Peggy and Sebastian Guinness all make the cut, as do Bree, Gigi, Avi and Tinsley Mortimer. There’s also a court’s worth of royals, including Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia and Prince Pavlos and Princess Marie Chantal of Greece.

A few more choice names from the Kotur Club: Camilla Al-Fayad, Dennis Basso, Manolo Blahnik, Emma Bloomberg, Tory Burch, Francisco Costa, Dree Hemingway, Carolina Herrera, Valerie Jarrett, Luke Janklow, Caroline Kennedy, Michael Kors, Diane Kruger, Robert Gibbs, Stephanie LaCava, Dylan Lauren, Sandra Lee, Baz Lurhmann, Steven Meisel, Margherita Missoni, Wendi Murdoch, Stavros Niarchos, Narciso Rodriguez and Rachel Roy.

Now, they wait for the spam.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

East Village resident found alive and well after having gone missing for four days. [NYDN]

James Cameron will rerelease Titanic in 2012. In 3D, natch. [WSJ]

American ire falls on BP's high-profile CEO. [NYT]

Laura and daughter Barbara Bush spotted house hunting in the Village. [NYDN] 

City to pay $9.9 million to a man wrongfully imprisoned for two decades. [NYT]

Jonathan Karp to replace Rosenthal at Simon and Schuster. [NYP]

Gagosian to sell luxury speedboats. [ARTINFO]

McDonalds recalls toxic Shrek drinking glasses. [LATimes]

Regardless, the only political figure present was Barbara Bush (the younger), whose mother favors Mr. de la Renta. The young Ms. Bush wore a peacoat and blue scarf and was ushered to her seat mere seconds before the show began with Derek Blasberg, ubiquitous consort to young social types. The Upper East Side social contingent had also rallied, of course—Marjorie Gubelmann, Alexandra Lind Rose, Marina Rust, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer—not to mention Barbara Walters, a close personal friend of Mr. de la Renta’s who spent the Christmas holiday with the designer and his wife, Annette, at their estate in the Dominican Republic (where they were joined by the Kissingers and Joel Klein, according to Cathy Horyn’s recent profile of Mr. de la Renta in The Times’ style magazine).

Ms. Walters was seated in the second row (perhaps to avoid the photographers, in which case, better luck next time!). She donned red-framed glasses throughout and afterward declared the collection “very glamorous, and yet, you know, some practical pieces.” She sighed heavily when asked to name her own favorite de la Renta frock. “Well, look what I’m wearing,” she said, motioning downward to her cream-colored shirt and matching long coat. “God knows how old this is!”

Suddenly a blond friend of Ms. Walters’ appeared. “Do you want me to drop you?” Ms. Walters asked solicitously.

“Are you going my way?”

“No, but I will, I don’t mind, darling,” assured Babs.

“It’s snowing and raining!” protested the friend.

“I have a car.”

And with that, Ms. Walters pulled on a fur-lined overcoat with massive furry hood and (after pausing in the lobby for a brief TV interview or two) escaped the building arm-in-arm with her friend.

*A previous version of this article characterized the space as a "former" Christian Science church.

Apparently our city's young women who've made their names attending galas and charity balls are suddenly opting to stay home these days. Why? Well, it seems that the weakening dollar has made the socialites want to slow down and show less of themselves in public.

Over-exposure is suddenly so crass.

"Even if I went out one night a week, with all of the internet outlets for photographers it looks as though you've been out 50 times!" said 23-year-old Lauren Remington Platt, the great-granddaughter of Union brigadier general and Remington Arms founder Marcellus Hartley. "That's 49 times too many."

Ms. Platt has even instituted a policy where she's stopped answering her cell phone while she's on the move in order to slow down. Instead she has begun listening to books on tape. (Currently, Barbara Walters' Audition is in her purse.)

Meanwhile, sisters Maggie and Jessica Betts, Barbara Bush, and Jessica Joffe are staying home to host intimate dinner parties, opting for a more calm setting to their socializing instead of the nightly designer or liquor company hosted soiree.

"The Internet bloggers created all the socialite fuss," Ms. Betts tells the magazine. "The whole phenomenon was a diversion from how unsettled people felt after September 11, but finally we're coming off out of it. If the economy continues to slip, don't you think the adoration of Daisy Buchanan types will fall with it? They will be resented, replaced by something grittier and more real."

As defining as that statement may sound, this seems to be a fairly new order of things among our socialite class. Indeed, this summer, we haven’t seen much of Ms. Platt. But in May, she was out almost every other night, according to Patrick McMullan's website.

There she is hosting an after party for the Met's Costume Institute gala along with Olivier Theyskens on May 5, at a party for Allure magazine on May 7, at the Pronovias store opening on May 8, at a Chapman Brothers dinner on May 12, and at a party for Melanie Charlton Fascitelli on May 14. But then only twice in June, and once in August.

This supposed new trend has got us worried. Is New York society reverting back to the days when socialites are rendered in grand portraits, but are not to be seen or heard among us? Is the era of "the socialite" dead?

Brrrr! PETA magnet and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour takes to the tents.

Doesn't designer Lela Rose, former employer of Barbara Bush, look eerily like a Gore Girl?

Nicole Romano presents a look suitable for Victoria's Secret "Angels" line.

Silver foxes! Anderson Cooper and Charlie Rose en route to Diane Von Furstenberg, whom we always used to confuse with Coop's mom Gloria Vanderbilt in the early 80's.

Hillary Clinton spent the second weekend of August in the Hamptons and left with a half-million bucks, $100 of which was mine.

Nobody from the press, no photographers, were invited to the various fund-raisers.

But duty called. First, I needed some appropriate shoes. At the Ralph Lauren store, I scored some $145 dressy white bucks. I called my therapist, Dr. Selman, for a pep talk. He happened to be in East Hampton, doing some shopping on Main Street. He said: “No drinking and driving!”

I smoked some “Vermont Green” marijuana and got behind the wheel of my grandmother’s baby-blue 1986 Mercedes and set off for Huntting Lane.

I realized I had no idea where Huntting Lane was.

I drove around Lily Pond asking for directions. An old man with a walking stick ignored me. Jerry Della Femina and wife passed me in a convertible. His face looked like a giant pink balloon. Boy, was I stoned.

There’s Egypt Lane and … there! … Huntting Lane. A line of cars on the grass.

I parked. The walk past the cops on the driveway brought on a mild attack of paranoia.

My body started moving left, toward the neighbor’s driveway, but righted itself, and immediately eyeballs were on me. I told the three young lady gatekeepers that I wasn’t on the list.

“No problem,” one of them chirped. All I had to do was fork over the suggested donation of $500.

“Umm.”

“But whatever you can give will work!”

“How about a hundred?”

“Oh. Kay. Can’t you maybe do 200?”

“Wellllll, not exactly. I’ve given money before, but—”

“No problem. I just need you to fill this out.”

I gave her my debit card and started filling the clipboarded paper thing out (for occupation I wrote “investor” and “N/A” for employer) and handed it back. Pretty sure it was the new shoes that got me in.

At the bar I met the handsome and tanned hosts, Randy Kempner and Tony Ingrao, two lovers who run an antique gallery on the Upper East Side. They were wearing tight pants. In the garden I met a nice aging gay couple, “Francis” and “Larry.” Been together three decades. They said they were Eisenhower Republicans who’d done business with Barbara Bush and voted for Bush 1 and 2.

Francis said he didn’t know how keen he was on Mrs. Clinton: “Ambivalent.”

All of a sudden, Senator Clinton was walking straight toward me!

She was trailed by two Secret Service guys talking to their wrists. She had an easygoing stride: queen of the rich soccer moms. Wearing sunglasses, diamond earrings, a turquoise Indian-like shirt, white pants, no socks and white Gucci-looking shoes.

Oh boy.

“Hello!” she said. “How are you?”

“Hi!” I replied, holding out my hand.

She eyeballed my nametag from behind her dark glasses.

“Hi, George. Nice to see you.”

My new friends told her a quick story about when they met in 1999.

“That’s so cute!” Mrs. Clinton said. “I love that. It’s so exciting for kids, too. I hear that all the time—some kid will say to me, ‘Do you remember me? I came to meet you at the airport,’ among this huge crowd of people. I say, ‘Wow, I’m so glad to see you again!’ So sweet.”

Francis joked about her running for President.

“Oh, well, gotta get through November first! Ha ha ha!” she replied.

I wanted to ask her if it’s O.K. to be celebrating five years without a terrorist act in this country, not to mention Bush and Blair’s foiling of the London bomb plot—but I went with “Are you gonna be able to relax this weekend at all?”

“This is like a little mini-vacation,” she said. “To be able to come here, even though I’m sort of working—it’s just so relaxing.”

I nodded. Mrs. Clinton turned to her two hosts.

“Now tell me, what’s the perspective here? This way?” she asked, and off she went.

The two Secret Service guys were still looking my way.

“They can probably hear everything we’re saying,” Francis said.

By now, a good 50 people had arrived.

A man whom I took to be a gay spy approached me at the bar.

“Hey, George. How are you? So how do you know the group here?”

“I actually don’t.”

“Are you from the area?”

“Kansas.”

“Oh, I’m from Colorado—we’re neighbors! Where in Kansas?”

“Lawrence.”

“Oh! Well, I practice medicine in Boulder.”

I managed to slip away. I found Francis and Larry, who were checking out the cute European-style pool with a water-spewing alligator. We raved about the steak tartare appetizers and cantaloupe gazpacho. Then we noticed five Chinese businessmen, three of whom were talking on cell phones. Francis chatted with one of them, who said they were with an “organization” and were there to show support.

I needed a breather, took a seat—then the gay spy appeared.

“Hello again,” said the gay spy. “You should get up and mingle.”

“Just taking a break.”

“Too much socializing? Where’s your mother’s house?”

Nearby, Ms. Clinton was schmoozing.

“Now tell me, how did you get into making chocolates,” she asked someone. A few minutes later, she was going on about how pleased she was to be “chatting, you know, out of uniform. I mean, how much more fun could it be?”

Soon it was speech time. Mr. Kemper introduced her.

Whoo! Yay! Clap clap.

“It really means a lot to me,” she said, “because I am running for re-election and—thank you—I feel so strongly about what’s happening in our country and around the world, and we are, in my view, heading in the wrong direction at an unfortunately rapid rate.”

She talked about the national deficit, the increase in the national debt, the country’s dependence on foreign oil, climate change, long-term weather projections, health-care problems.

She looked sturdy, like a tank.

“And on a beautiful summer afternoon in the Hamptons,” she said, “it may be something of a downer to say, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to fight and win against a new and very determined enemy that uses all of the advances in technology and the benefits of globalization—cell phones, the Internet, you name it, global-positioning devices and night-vision goggles you can buy at Radio Shack—and we have got to have the world united against this new enemy.’ And unfortunately, our current administration, our President and our Vice President, are more interested in drawing lines than drawing circles.”

Not a stammer. She finished up on a note about getting the country back on track.

“I saw some people coming late, and I saw some people with cameras,” she said. “So I would happy to stand here and take some pictures with those of you who haven’t had your picture taken yet.”

I got back into my car and drove to a party at yoga instructor Lienette Crafoord’s waterfront house in Sag Harbor. She looked good: a buxom redhead. She told me she stays away from politics.

“Because I have to have a flow of energy to teach yoga, my policy is to stay away from anything that’s going to change that, anything that’s controversial or might cause anxiety,” Ms. Crafoord said. “I take a little news off the Internet; I don’t really read newspapers or periodicals. I’m just very selective about what I take in, because I have to be able to put out. And I don’t want to be jaded in that effort to get people to heal their bodies.”

I spoke to a guest, one of her yoga students, Harry Hurt, the New York Times “Executive Pursuits” columnist.

“I think one of the things you should know about Hillary,” he said, “is that she supported the war in Iraq: She bends with the political wind. In that sense, she’s the yogi of American politics. She can twist herself up into a half-moon position, a tree position, awkward poses, eagle pose; she can be a camel, she can be a rabbit, she can be a tortoise, she can be an up dog, a down dog!

“Also, she’s got really, really thick legs and calves—and that just is not appealing,” Mr. Hurt added.

We went to hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s house on Tuckahoe Lane. It was his 50th birthday, and 200 or so friends, many European, were dressed in white and having cocktails before a dinner dance under a big white tent. In the living room, I sat down by movie producer Charles Evans with a beautiful blonde. In line for the bathroom, I met a gorgeous blond Italian woman in a white silk dress. She said she was Paola Bacchini-Rosenshein, a real-estate agent. “Personally, I think Hillary was a big disappointment to women, because she didn’t stand up for her rights,” she said. “She was humiliated publicly by her husband. I would not have tried to cover him up. So I lost faith in her. Totally. And I just think she’s doing all of this because she likes the power. I have given money to Hillary in the past, and I won’t do it again.”

It was close to midnight. Mr. Hurt and I made a pit stop at nightclub owner Noah Tepperberg’s spread in Water Mill, where I met two Russian sisters—models!—by the bonfire.

“I think she’s a strong woman,” said the younger one of Hillary. “It’s because she’s so much in love with her husband that she can forget and forgive.”

“I say Hillary Clinton, beautiful woman,” said the older sister. “Except she has fat legs.”

The sisters agreed to accompany us to the nightclub Boutique. At 2 a.m., Mr. Hurt leaned over to me and said, “What I’m thinking is, Hillary is rushing to be President, and you and I are just looking for Russian girls. And we found that. I’m not sure she’s going to be able to rush her way to the Presidency. As for us, I think it would be a mistake to be rushing a Russian girl. You gotta let every girl take her time, you know? We’re gonna take our time tonight, George, our good sweet time.”

—George Gurley

"While my father and I don’t share the exact same view on marriage …. " John Edwards’ 22-year-old daughter had begun, and the room at the Sheraton New York erupted in applause. Everyone knew what she meant. "We assumed she supported gay marriage," said Alan Van Capelle, the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, which hosted the Oct. 14 dinner.

Ms. Edwards isn’t the only dissenter on this issue: John Kerry’s younger daughter, Vanessa, made her own view plain at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. "I personally believe in gay marriage," she said. Mary Cheney, as you may have heard, is actually a lesbian; she also served as a board member of a gay Republican group, the Republican Unity Coalition, whose founding statement calls for "full civil equality for all," and which reacted with disgust to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Only the Bush twins have stayed off the record on gay marriage, but they did cheerfully accept an invitation to their make-up artist’s celebration of his gay wedding.

This is the generation gap writ large. Even the candidates’ kids, in the ultra-disciplined world of Presidential politics, can’t seem to stay in line. This quiet breach between fathers and daughters is a sign of the coming acceptance of gay marriage, and a sign that the 20 Senators who sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment, and the President who backed it, will likely live to be embarrassed by their positions.

The numbers speak for themselves: A CBS News/ New York Times poll last year found that Americans under 30 favored gay marriage by 61 percent to 35 percent. People 65 and older opposed it by a 73 percent to 18 percent margin. In 20 years, that first group will be running the country; the second will be passing on. If conservatives see an urgency in rushing gay-marriage bans through state legislatures, it may be because demographics are closing their window of popular support.

Those shifting sands may also explain why the Democratic daughters’ positions aren’t just more liberal than their fathers; they’re clearer. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards both stick to the gnomic refrain, "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman." At its minimum, that’s just a dictionary definition. The rough outline of their position is that states should do what they want and won’t be forced to honor each other’s decisions. What it means for the federal benefits of marriage—from the tax code to immigration law—is less clear. Ms. Kerry’s stance, by contrast, makes those answers obvious.

Ms. Edwards, for her part, tried to play down the gap between her father’s delicate position and her own implied views.

"We all agree on the issue of fairness, the issue of equality," she said. The goal, she said, is "real equality—meaning that two people in a committed, long-term relationship, regardless of who they love, should be able to have equal rights under the law."

There’s something painful, and a little unseemly, in watching this argument go on inside political families. It’s not something that’s going to be argued out; it has as much to do with comfort levels and intuitions than with rational argument. Vice President Dick Cheney is the one who has been drawn most publicly into this generational breach. On one hand, he’s made it clear that he quietly differs with President Bush’s attempt to amend the Constitution to prevent his openly lesbian daughter from marrying her partner. On the other, he’s openly "angry" that Mr. Kerry would mention that his daughter is a lesbian. Mr. Kerry’s remark did come across as nasty, but its real nastiness came in revealing Mr. Cheney’s impossible, incoherent position between his daughter and the President.

Mr. Van Capelle, of the Pride Agenda, said he hopes the children will bring their fathers around.

"Everybody else in the White House lives in a bubble," he said. "The children are the only people who are in contact with the real world, and they’re whispering in their fathers’ ears because they have the best feel for what’s happening in America."

One tantalizing moment in the generational shift arrived unexpectedly in the midst of the gay-marriage fight this summer, when Irwin Gomez invited Jenna and Barbara Bush to a Maryland party to celebrate his San Francisco wedding to James Packard. Mr. Gomez is a makeup artist at a Chevy Chase salon; he does, he said, the Presidential daughters’ eyebrows.

"They said, ‘We’ll try to make it,’" he said. "They knew I was married to a man, and they were cool."

News of the invitation, however, hit the press, and the Bushes did not show up at the celebration last month.

"I had a feeling that the father didn’t want them to come," Mr. Gomez said.

First, "party girl" Jenna: "Ganny, we love you dearly, but you're just not very hip." And then the "smart one" Barbara: "Jenna and I are really not very political."

The Bush twins, our American first daughters, one blond, one mousy-haired, one U. Texas, one Yale, showed up at the Republican National Convention in all their sisterly glory, intending to inspire American boys and girls with their flirty, vapid charms, and woo Ma and Pa with a Parent Trap –style sweetness. No matter how shell-shocked we felt after their sugar bombs, most unnerving might have been that we recognized that serious/silly dichotomy immediately. Watching the tug of war between naughty and nice is a potent voyeuristic pastime. That the one-two punch was delivered by sisters makes it all the more thrilling.

In fact, our media-sopped heads are aswim with sisters. The egregiously tan socialites Paris and Nikki Hilton huddle together in long-limbed poses for US Weekly . The neurasthenic, startle-eyed Olsen twins yuk it up for the millionth time in their young lives, round little faces pressed close, in practiced affection. And MTV fixtures Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, and their lower-visibility pop-tart cognates, Hilary and Haylie Duff, flash their whitened smiles in professionally styled defiance.

In the words of feminist icon Robin Morgan, "Sisterhood is powerful." The sentiment is truer now than ever, but maybe not in the way she meant it in the 1970's. Today's hot power couple isn't a man and a woman joined by matrimonial pledge, but two cutesy-poo girls yoked together by DNA.

As a spectacle, you can't beat sisters. With a wholesome, family-values façade and undercurrent of cheesy sexual innuendo, the sister thing makes sense in a society that's as conflicted about notions of family (They're your support system! No, screw it, who needs anyone?) as it is about sex (We want fantasy! Eek, too much-retreat!). Rife with potential for conflict, comparison and erotic suggestion, you can't deny that sisterhood makes a compelling spectator sport and a top-notch marketing ploy.

The Redgraves, the Mandrells, the Collinses-sisters have always conjured up cultural fascination, a sense of awe that some mom and dad actually had enough celebrity genes to go around for more than one kid.

But the new wrinkle is that sisters are being trotted out in the name of Presidential aspiration. Veer away from Hollywood and zoom in on Washington and you've got two buzz-making sisterly duos: Democrat daughters Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry, and first twins Jenna and Barbara Bush, the only Presidential daughters to trade up from Beltway curiosities to full-blown tabloid fodder. This year, they became the ultimate campaign tool. Exploiting your family image for political gain is an American tradition, going back to the tweed-romper cuteness of Caroline and John-John heightening the Camelot mystique of John F. Kennedy. But now the siblings are female, nubile and groomed with the media eye in mind.

The Bush twins, now 22, are pulling ahead as the hip campaigning daughters. College-educated party dolls, they exude a giddy Girls Gone Wild mania that's hard to ignore. They took to the podium at the R.N.C., heedless and clueless, like two wonks shot from a Cuervo Gold cannon, and delivered their now-notorious speech. The handiwork of former Presidential counselor Karen Hughes, the writing had a gormless "banker at the rave" quality to it. With flabby jokes and tin-eared, outdated pop-culture references, it was a king-size sampler platter of stupid-if your jaw didn't drop open from the first sentence, it must've been wired shut.

The real shocker, however, wasn't the speech itself but the giggle-giggle-hair-toss delivery and ditzy-chick ditzy-chick posture. The folks at home know these kittenish machinations intimately-they see them at the mall, or remember them from high school. Whether you were that type of girl, loathed that type of girl or got your heart broken by that type of girl, you recognized their type of reckless exuberance at being young, sexy and, in their cases, wealthy and powerful, the apparent knowledge that they could behave however they wanted and someone would still give them a pass for being "cute."

The performance was the speechifying equivalent of a wardrobe malfunction-one of those TV moments that burns into the pop-cult consciousness as a glorious mistake. Which would be funny if the situation didn't pertain to influencing something as significant as a Presidential election. Sayeth Jenna from the podium, "You know all those times when you're growing up and your parents embarrass you? Well, this is payback time on live TV."

Um, yeah.

Watching the twins act as if girlish wile and privilege absolved them of responsibility or even adult vocal inflection brought up a Hiltonesque reaction: Look at this crap-spacey, fluffy, smug and, oh God, there's two of them. (One doesn't feel that way when watching Venus and Serena Williams. Maybe because they had to work for what they have.) There is something undeniably easy or lucky about these shinier celebrity sister acts; not only are they famous, but they always have someone around to get their back. You, the poor schlub at home, are a mere one. They are a unified, untouchable, blow-dried and pedicured Teflon Two. They win.

Funny thing about that speech, though. Sure, it was dippy and crass-but heck if it didn't work. It was the ultimate in smart-stupid promotion tactics, lifted straight from the bimbo playbook. It speaks to the campaign strategy of our times: You don't have to be informed and you don't have to make sense. You just have to be seen. The speech was no more substantial than Clinton honking away on his sax during the Arsenio show over a decade ago, and it didn't need to be. The point was pop-culture bounce and they got it. Double your pleasure, double your fun. Double your votes? Well, we'll see. It might not help, but silly as it was, it didn't seem to hurt.

The same can't be said for the Kerry sisters' sad showing at the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami. The Kerrys had the same basic setup: One blonde, one brunette, one campaigning dad they wanted to support. Trying desperately to rock the vote, they barely made it past easy-listening. The dutiful daughters, couture-clad and poli-sci-major serious, got vociferously booed, just like their dad at Fenway Park last July. (The Bush twins also made a video appearance, but the Kerrys were actually there in Miami.) Their faces betrayed not only pain and embarrassment, but indignation. One of them tried to shush the crowd. The Kerry sisters are proof that celebrity sisterhood takes some strategy. Giggles à deux trip the applause meter, while two girls bearing a message in stereophonic schoolmarm style won't fare as well in the public eye.

Watching Alexandra and Vanessa eat it was a twofer pity party. In an "It" obsessed era, their presentation made the viewer painfully aware that these two are utterly "It"-less. The Kerry's vibe is akin to Tracy Flick crossed with a Bennington girl who sulks in the corner at a party, plucking hairs out of her head one by one. No matter how many times Alexandra shows off her fried eggs through draped black chiffon at Cannes, that dour, long-faced New England reserve queers the air. The Heinz-Kerrys are just not a bunch that screams "get on board." But the election is still weeks away, so maybe the Kerry girls will rally, giving the Bush twins a bit of a challenge. Maybe they'll catfight. (Dude! That'd be awesome!)

What's interesting, however, is the potential clawing going on within these power couples. Any twosome implies tension-an unstated battle for supremacy. Yet no matter how many hectoring reporters may ask, every celeb sister swears her kin is more inspiration than competition, thus leaving it up to us to set them against each other. And so we do. Poet Louise Gluck wrote: "Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer." See through that scrim of lyrical politesse and you'll get at the unvarnished truth: One sister gets nudged into the spotlight as The Hot One, while the other is doomed to be, at best, The Smart One. (Usually, she's just The Other One.)

For proof positive that yes, we do actually have time to ponder such matters, look no further than the Internet, our infallible digital id. Compare-the-sisters Web sites, message boards and articles abound, with tonal range from bitchy to lecherous. The only constant is a choose-or-lose mandate. Would that we were so interested in voting for a President instead of a Twinkie.

One camp roots for Paris, with her globe-trotting, dog-toting, porn-making arriviste antics, while another favors Nikki, with her stabs at stability and (hasty) marriage to an older financier. Some prefer the angular-featured Haylie to the peachy smooth Hilary. Others are turned off by earnest Ashlee but swoon over spazzy golden girl Jessica. (Ashlee's lyrics in her song "Shadow" hints at cracks in the sister-luv ferment as she whines about someone who sounds very much like Jessica: "She was beautiful / She had everything and more … I was living in the shadow / Of someone else's dream.")

We love to watch celebrity sisters because they embody sibling rivalry writ large, but with better clothes and freakier sexual subtext. Do we want to see them fight or kiss? Do we want to be in the middle of that sisterly action, watch it or flee in terror? What, we wonder, do the parents really think of their daughters being so publicly and permanently objectified?

The sister-watch is so engrossing it seems a shame that this armchair event is limited to pop culture and politics. Why not expand it to include journalism and literature? I'm seeing prime opportunity for Ruth and Wendy Shalit (cage match: stylish plagiarist versus virginal pedant). And, the Sykes sisters are the ultimate cosmo-set trifecta. (They can duke it out with the Minots, who bring a certain cloth-bound cred into the arena.) With a little arts-'n'-letters retrofit, we could get the Brontës in on the action. Snap to, publicists, snap to! Here's your chance to get Jane Austen off that pedestal she's been hogging since the dawning days of chick lit.

We could further extend the family-bond franchise and begin objectifying brotherhood as well, but that would likely diminish the men's image rather than enhance it. Men, whether they trade on their sex appeal or not, are meant to stand on their own, to bask only in their own glory or that which they inherit from their father. Patrilineal splendor is money in the bank, but brother-to-brother glow is for pussies. Guys shifting in and out of fraternal shadow are emasculated, a point made particularly obvious if one brother operates at a power deficit, like Billy Carter or Roger Clinton shrinking boozedly in the wake of their President brothers. And it doesn't work when they're more or less equals, either. Think Shaun and David Cassidy, Nick and Aaron Carter, Nick and Drew Lachey. Even Olympic gymnasts Paul and Morgan Hamm seem too much like a porno trope to have much heft.

We're tumbling in the midst of a culture threesome-pop culture, politics and psychosexual hype are sweaty bedfellows now. And here we lie, the media consumers, smack dab in the middle with a good-bad, cute-ugly, smart-stupid sister on either side. One comely lass might spark our attention, but two, with the suggestion of abundance and perversion, closes the deal. Our gaze is held.

When feminist Morgan said so long ago that sisterhood is powerful, could she have known how that sentiment might be corrupted? The eyeball-grabbing potential of a sister duo speaks more to the power of titillation than to the power of authentic female agency. It's the ultimate statement of this cultural moment, when coy spectacle trumps substance. It's so sexy. It's so obvious. It's so perfect.

And into our usual Manhattan morning cup of steamed Schadenfreude fell a few drops of dismay, followed by a stiff chaser of nostalgia: for Amy Carter reading quietly in the Oval Office; for Susan Ford writing a column for Seventeen ; even the quaint courtship of Julie Nixon and David Dwight Eisenhower II.

"Barbara is hot," Sette owner Bobby Malta excitedly told The Observer . "She's a great dancer, she loves to party-she's the perfect guest. I wish she'd come every night!"

"Barbara Bush was the sparkler on the soufflé," said publicist and society editor R. Couri Hay, who helped organize the party. "It added a lot of pizzazz; it was a special moment. The young social set got a close-up look at Barbara-they all loved her. She's not boring. She's not Chelsea Clinton. Although Chelsea is coming into her own right now …. "

You could say that. You could also say: What in God's name is going on with political progeny these days? The Bush twins have been spinning wildly on the axis of privilege between Kennebunkport, the Crawford ranch and Washington, D.C., ever since they turned up at their father's inauguration three and a half years ago, sporting knee-high Jimmy Choo boots and matching sullen expressions. Young Ms. Clinton has gone from days of ballet dancing to nights of table-dancing with Mark Wahlberg (at the Shore Club in Miami on Dec. 29)-a true "shark-jumping" moment for a former First Daughter-not to mention table-hopping with the actors Jessica Alba and Jason Biggs at the recent third anniversary of Tao, the trendy pan-Asian restaurant in midtown.

Then there's Georgina Bloomberg, galumphing gaily on her horse through that Born Rich documentary. And now-move over, Gore girls! Beat it, Bush babes!-ready yourself for Alexandra (Alex) Kerry, 30, the chestnut-haired daughter of the Brahmin Senator and Democratic Presidential front-runner. An actress and aspiring director, Ms. Kerry lives in gaudy Los Angeles-where she attends the American Film Institute-and will appear in the David Mamet movie Spartan , due out March 12, playing a bartender and sexy eye candy opposite Val Kilmer and William H. Macy.

Alex Kerry "has always been a limelight-seeker," said Letitia Baldrige, former chief of staff to Jackie Kennedy, author of New Manners for New Times and a longtime acquaintance of the Kerry family. "She loves to talk and be seen and be part of the group."

The elder Kerry sister-there's also Vanessa, 26, a medical student at Harvard studying economics and public health-has already shared screen time with Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker in Mr. Mamet's State and Main (2000), had a recurring role in Mister Sterling , a mid-season replacement for NBC in 2002, and began directing her own feature film about a Presidential candidate this summer, gathering footage while on her dad's campaign trail.

"Alex is very dedicated to pursuing a career in acting and in the entertainment profession," said Jim Jones, Mr. Kerry's former policy director, who is currently director of the Children's Defense Fund. "She doesn't take this career on frivolously." Other adjectives he used were "open, nice, warm, gregarious, friendly" and "approachable."

Ms. Kerry declined the chance to chat with The Observer , which wasn't surprising.

But the question is: Why? The new generation of political offspring could be doing all kinds of things; why do they seek camera lenses and late-night clubs and the movies? It's an old tradition: Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah had a Hollywood career, and Margaret Truman sang, leading her father to challenge The Washington Post 's music critic to an alley brawl. Steven Ford acted, Lynda Bird Johnson dated George Hamilton, and Patti Davis took off most of her clothing in Playboy . What is it about the limelight that becomes addictive?

Consider Ms. Clinton, 23, who once seemed headed down a positive garden path of good works, attending Oxford and helping with her mother's Senate campaign. That was before she moved to a neighborhood of muscle boys, landed a six-figure job with McKinsey and Company, and inked up her social calendar. "Chelsea Clinton-likes the limelight, goes where the press are," Ms. Baldrige said. "Front row of the Versace show! She's very confident-she has a lot of self-confidence-and she's out there. She wants to be."

And think of Jenna Bush, the blond twin, celebrating her 21st birthday by visiting the Cheers Shot Bar in Austin, Texas-site of her second arrest in four weeks for underage drinking the previous summer. "It smacks of privilege and a sense that you didn't have to abide by the same rules as other people," said Ann Gerhart, author of The Perfect Wife , a biography of Laura Bush.

Once a privileged position that came with a certain sense of social responsibility attached, First Child–dom seems increasingly like a greased chute straight down into the celebrity funhouse.

The first modern-era wild girl was Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth-dubbed "Princess Alice" by the press in 1905-who smoked on the White House roof and caroused unchaperoned with single men. A flagrant exhibitionist, she graced the cover of Time magazine in 1927 and remained a darling of Washington society until her death in 1980. John F. Kennedy Jr. spent his entire abbreviated adulthood walking a perilous tightrope between glamour and public service. And who can forget Patti Davis?

But in an era when appearing in a sex tape can actually seem like a decent career move for a young woman-note Paris Hilton peering insouciantly in French couture from the cover of Elle this month, interviewed by Kevin Sessums as if she were Catherine Zeta-Jones-the public acting-out seems to have taken on a new intensity, a peculiar fervor. "The Roosevelt children certainly liked to have a good time, but it was kept out of the paper," Ms. Baldrige said. "Today, it's not kept out of the papers."

"It's a thing," said Ron Reagan Jr., who parlayed a 1986 appearance in white briefs for a Risky Business sketch on Saturday Night Live into a successful broadcasting career (he's now on MSNBC). "And you're never going to be able to get away from that thing. For your entire life, you will know what your obit is going to read. Unless you happen to be George W. Bush, and get elected President, it will read 'son of' or 'daughter of President of the United States.'"

Ms. Clinton's exhibitionism, the Bush sisters' blasts and even Ms. Kerry's nascent film career suggest a pressing need for external validation and attention-a desperate desire to gain and retain currency in a culture oversaturated with images.

Doug Wead, author of All the Presidents' Children and a former aide to George Bush père , has a theory. "The outrageous behavior is a punishment of the parent for abandonment, and frustration at establishing who they are," he said. "It's a pattern of self-destruction. At that age, at that time of our lives, we go through individuation. It's a difficult process in normal circumstances-but when your dad is the President, he's everywhere. There's this public persona that everyone is angry or happy with, and then there's the private mom and dad. You can feel his whiskers; you can smell her perfume. There's tremendous conflict. On the one hand, you owe some loyalty. What do you owe to the public set of parents? What do you owe to the real parents? Who are you?"

Mr. Wead invoked an unfamiliar psychological term, dysgradia , that has apparently been kicking around since the early 1970's. "It's the phenomenon of how what you get is unrelated to what you do," he said. "It's common among children of celebrities and others. If they do something bad, they still get money and friends. It takes a lot of the motivation out of life."

Dr. Djenane Nakhle is a psychologist who counsels high-school and college-age children from her office on Park Avenue and 75th Street. "Because they've lived a certain way of life, they feel comfortable around celebrities," she said, considering the new generation of political girls gone wild. "They've gotten used to this celebrity lifestyle. They've been taught how to deal, how to survive and how to cope with these pressures. [And] in many ways they are role models, which adds a certain pressure."

Over on the Upper West Side, Columbia psychoanalyst Jules Kerman floated the possibility that "Barbara's lascivious dancing may be some indication of some way that she feels very starved for attention, and very starved for some sort of involvement by somebody or another.

"You could speculate that some of the more notorious behaviors of these kids-who know they're going to get in the papers-may be a disguised, unconscious form of hostility for the parent," Dr. Kerman continued. "They have this incredible world of privilege which they have access to, and many opportunities to make connections, and at the same time they have to deal with a terrible lack of self-esteem, because they never quite feel that they've done it. There's an ideal that they set up for themselves that they never can match, which is a narcissistic issue and also a competitive one-a rivalrous one that they sort of feel that they're bound to lose, because they'll never match what their parents have done. There are competitive issues and issues of envy."

Not everyone copes by "busting out" onto the public stage. There are the quiet shadows to the spotlight-seizing siblings: the "good girls," the blameless angels.

Such as Emma Bloomberg, 24, who toils as an analyst at City Hall.

"You don't see photographs of me in the newspapers everyday," Ms. Bloomberg pointed out to The Observer . "I've been in the 'Sightings' on Page Six once in my life. It seems that you actually do have to work at it a little bit to get coverage. There are some children that want it more and go on to create a career out of that."

Meanwhile, Karenna Gore Schiff, 30, leads an apparently perfect life on the Upper East Side with her doctor husband, Andrew, their two children, and sweet gigs at the Sanctuary for Families and the Association to Benefit Children. "There are opportunities made available by exposure to the highest levels of political campaigns," she wrote in an e-mail, "and I have felt extremely privileged."

And there seems to be hope for the Kerry sisters. On Thursday, Feb. 19, they'll join the well-adjusted troika of Rebecca Lieberman (daughter of Joseph), Liz Cheney (daughter of Dick) and Corinne Quayle (daughter of Dan) for a Glamour magazine panel at Columbia. The topic: Why young women don't vote.

Ms. Bush, who lives in Texas, recently visited Manhattan to discuss her idea for the book with several publishing executives. She had a long lunch with biographer Kitty Kelley, who wrote a controversial 1991 portrait of Nancy Reagan and currently is researching her own book on the Bush family.

The two women discussed the possibility of Ms. Bush acting as an important source for Ms. Kelley in addition to writing her own book, Ms. Kelley's agent, Wayne Kabak, told The Observer . Such a turn of events could provide Ms. Kelley with invaluable inside assistance for her research on the family.

Mrs. Bush is in the middle of a divorce battle with Neil Bush, and the fight has turned nasty on both sides. The Observer has obtained a deposition given by Mr. Bush on March 4, in which he described his marriage as "broken" and "loveless."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Bush's talk of a book may merely be an effort to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Bush to give her a more generous settlement than he has offered in the past.

Still, Mrs. Bush insists she has a good story to tell. She had a seat at the kitchen table as the family twice reached the pinnacle of American politics and power. She married Neil Bush in 1980, the year Mr. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, was elected Vice President. During her 23-year marriage, the elder Mr. Bush and his eldest son, George W. Bush, were both elected President, while another member of the family, Jeb, was elected governor of Florida.

In her book, Ms. Bush wants to detail her disillusionment with the family. According to her associates, she has grown despondent about her treatment at the hands of the Bushes. She said family members have turned their backs on her ever since last year, when she learned that her husband wanted to end their marriage after carrying on an extramarital affair with one of Barbara Bush's former assistants.

But her disappointment with the family is only one of many subjects she wants to address, those close to her say. In her book, she has told associates, she hopes to show that the family has relentlessly managed its public image to a far greater extent than previously known.

Ms. Bush's spokesman, Lou Colasuonno, a partner at the public-relations firm of Westhill Partners, confirmed that she wanted to write the book. "This will be the story of Sharon Bush's life inside one of the most powerful families in America," Mr. Colasuonno said. "She witnessed the evolution of a dynasty. She believes, and is prepared to reveal in her book, that the Bushes are far more pragmatic and calculating than has ever been seen before. She will show that the family orchestrates its public image from top to bottom. She will reveal that the family is in essence a political operation."

But one publishing executive expressed skepticism about Ms. Bush's ability to pull off the project. "I doubt that Sharon Bush would be able to deliver the goods to fill a whole book," the executive said. "She would be far more useful as a source to another future biographer than she would in her own right."

Neil and Sharon Bush are the parents of three children: Lauren, the supermodel, and teenagers Pierce and Ashley. Mr. Bush has offered his wife $1,000 a month, as well as some other assets, an offer she rejected in March.

Ms. Bush, who declined to be interviewed, is currently drawing up a book proposal and hasn't yet signed a deal with a publisher. But her idea has already stirred interest in Manhattan publishing circles. Ms. Kelley, for one, has taken a particularly keen interest in Ms. Bush's story.

"Kitty had a very long lunch with Sharon, and a great deal of information was put on the table," said Mr. Kabak, Ms. Kelley's agent at the William Morris Agency. "They talked about the possibility of Sharon writing her own book, as well as about the possibility of Sharon further cooperating with Kitty's book in the future."

At Ms. Kelley's instigation, Ms. Bush subsequently met with two top executives at William Morris to discuss her project, although the agency hasn't agreed to sign her.

While it's not yet clear if Ms. Bush will be able to offer up any explosive revelations, talk of her book plans is likely to give Karl Rove, the President's chief political adviser, something of a headache. That's because Neil Bush, the President's black-sheep brother, has gotten the family in trouble before. He played an infamous role in the catastrophic collapse of the Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association in the 1980's, costing taxpayers more than $1 billion. More recently, his plan for an educational software package for use in Florida's public schools raised questions about whether he was taking advantage of his brother Jeb's position as Governor. Now his divorce is threatening to create political complications for the family once again.

Ms. Bush, people close to her point out, has had a front-row view of the family drama for more than two decades. While Neil and Sharon Bush spent many years in Colorado, Ms. Bush has nonetheless been with the family at many gatherings at the White House, in Texas and at their vacation compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. She has witnessed many off-the-cuff conversations on everything from politics to baseball to race relations, her associates say.

In her book, sources said, Ms. Bush hopes to show that Barbara Bush has exercised a good deal more control over the family than previously revealed. She also wants to show that the relationship between the Bush brothers, as well as relations between the President and former President, have been more fraught and complex than previously known, her associates say.

Mr. Colasuonno declined to address details, but said: "This is a woman who has had some wonderful times with the Bushes and knows she's fortunate to have had a close-up view of two Presidencies. But she has seen the dark side, too. And she intends to provide a view of the family that everyone will want to read."

Spokesmen for the Bush family and the White House didn't return calls. Richard Flowers Jr., a lawyer for Neil Bush, declined comment.

Written Off

Whatever Ms. Bush's motive in pursuing plans for a book, she appears to be eager to air her disillusionment with the family. In her view, according to people close to her, the Bush family has more or less written her off, even though she sees herself as the aggrieved party. Ms. Bush likes to portray herself as a loyal and dutiful wife whose husband destroyed their marriage when he indulged in an extramarital affair.

Mr. Bush's affair with Ms. Andrews isn't in doubt; the New York Post wrote about the relationship in March. Rather than trying to conceal the affair, Mr. Bush explained, in the deposition reviewed by The Observer , that his marriage and couldn't be saved by a marriage counselor.

"I threw myself at the mercy of this counseling and have-have reached the conclusion that it is irresolvable, that our marriage has been broken," Mr. Bush said. "It's loveless. And there's nothing left to it. And there hasn't been for a long, long time. There's no affection. There's been very little sexual activity over the past 10 or 12 years …. Sorry if marriages fail. And I'm-I'm sorry ours is one of those."

Given the fact that the marriage had fallen apart and that her husband had been unfaithful, Ms. Bush had hoped that Barbara and the elder George Bush would lean on Neil to give her a fair settlement. She expected that the Bush clan, with its public emphasis on family values, would surely rally around her after what she saw as two decades of faithful service to the family. According to Ms. Bush's associates, she pleaded her case with Barbara Bush in several phone calls, asking the family matriarch for help in patching up the marriage and, subsequently, for help in winning a better settlement. But Barbara Bush politely but firmly rejected her pleas, the associates say.

Elizabeth Mitchell, the author of W: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty , a biography of the President published in 2000 and due out in paperback this summer, noted that Sharon Bush would be the first family insider to break the code of loyalty of the Bushes, a notoriously guarded family.

"This is significant, because members of the Bush family are always careful to avoid offering up any kind of personal insights," Ms. Mitchell said.

Indeed, other biographies of the Bush clan written by family members have tended to portray the Bush family as a goodhearted and wholesome Texas clan that is forever being sniped at by the East Coast liberal media establishment. For instance, this is how Barbara Bush, in her 1994 memoir, described Neil and Sharon's first meeting during his work on the elder Bush's Presidential campaign in 1980: "Neil had met and fallen in love with a darling young schoolteacher from New Hampshire, Sharon Smith. He not only won her vote but, thank heavens, her heart, too."

"The family's political savvy and psychological complexities are always played down, and Sharon's book could change that," Ms. Mitchell said.

Ms. Mitchell added that Sharon Bush's contribution, while perhaps likely to be short on explosive revelations, would nonetheless enrage the family. "A lot of people have gone up to the Bush family ramparts in search of real dirt and come away with nothing, so it's hard to believe that Sharon could lead us to true scandal," she said. "Still, her book would probably be a revelation to many people, and it would certainly displease the Bushes, who value loyalty above everything else."

In Ms. Mitchell's view, Ms. Bush's meeting with Kitty Kelley was of particular interest. "Kitty's book [on the Bush family] has been a big, hyped thing for several years now, but nobody knows if she has come up with the goods yet. If Sharon Bush and Kitty Kelley end up collaborating, Sharon could end up saving Kitty's project by becoming her very own Bush family Deep Throat.