You Can’t Be Serious(71)

Follow on Twitter @realjmiddletonrocks

*Motivational leadership for young people

*TTOP Speakers Bureau

*Teamwork and advisory council for parents

*Founder of Summit for Virginia/Maryland Youth (SVMY) Conference (12 states in attendance!!!)

WINNER: Southeastern Leadership Conference of the Greater Virginia Leaders of Tomorrow (SLCGVLT)

WINNER: Greater-DC Area Chamber of Public Service Impact Award

“Life isn’t about waiting for the hurricane to pass. It’s about learning to dance when it drizzles.” —Unknown



Even if you hadn’t read the body of Jonathan’s ridiculous email, the fact that the signature is longer than the rambling note itself tells you all you need to know. Emails from legit people will be confident and crisp. They don’t need to prove themselves with the girth of their email signature. (Yes, that’s a euphemism. I can make dick jokes again, but you shouldn’t. Not a great look for a White House staffer.)

Speaking of euphemisms and dick jokes, let’s discuss internal White House emails. You’ll often be looped into large-group email chains, many of which will require quick responses or dedicated decision-making throughout the day. Others are just for your situational awareness. One day, the National Security Council (NSC) will email you and eighty other staffers a memo with a list of talking points about an upcoming visit to the United States by a delegation of government officials from the Philippines. It’ll be your first NSC loop-in.

I want you to know that almost everything in government is an acronym, as you see in the last paragraph. When a name is introduced, it will be written out fully, with the acronym in parentheses—“The President of the United States (POTUS) is convening a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) next week.” Subsequently, only the acronym is used—“The POTUS NSC meeting is at 4:30.”

The Filipino memo from the NSC will include several pages of talking points, but you’ll be super obsessed with item fourteen:

“One of the main terror groups in the Philippines is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).” Your hopes are confirmed by the next few bullets:

MILF is considered highly dangerous.

MILF has a long history of recruiting young men.

Many young men who join MILF come to regret their choice, as the novelty of life with MILF wears off.



Listen. You can only laugh to yourself about a terror group named MILF. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Do not Reply All to the email. Don’t write, “Whoa, their main terror group are the MILFs? Amazing!” If you do this, the chain will go silent for thirty minutes before an older NSC career person will also Reply All with the message, “Looks like Kal Penn is in the building.”

Oh sure, your friends will laugh in the hallway and secretly high-five at your joke, but they will not have your back in any official capacity on this serious internal email chain. On the plus side, it’s the only time you’ll ever screw up in this manner, so I’m saving you the hassle. Don’t reply to the MILF email. Just smirk quietly at your desk. If you need to share it with someone, use the phone so there isn’t a permanent PRA-mandated record of your deliciously immature joke.





Tip D: Nobody Is Crazy


Try not to use the word crazy in describing anybody, especially the constituents. Just as in Hollywood, nobody in the political world is actually crazy. People can have colorful personalities. They can be eccentric. They may even have unconventional views.

You can say something like, “Wow, Anthony from that think tank sent me a passionate email about the president’s foreign policy strategy,” or “Anthony from that nonprofit has such a peculiar take on leadership!” People in DC will know that you actually mean Anthony is one hundred percent completely batshit crazy.

In the rarest of situations only, you might actually need to use the word crazy. At these times, close your office door, lower your voice to a bare whisper when you reach the offending word, and affect the same kind of apologetic tone that white ladies use when they say things like, “Linda, it’s just terrible. She has cancer.” And “Oh, Bethany, I’m sure she’d love to go on a date with him but he’s gay.” Like that, you can say, “Anthony is straight-up crazy.”

But in general, try to avoid the word altogether.





Tip E: White House Snail Mail Is NOT like Fan Mail!


Passionate emails with girthy signatures can be annoying. Colorful snail mail… now that’s just fun! In your old life, your publicist weeded out the weirdest notes your fans sent you. Now, the Secret Service handles this task, except you’re not getting any letters about your spread in People magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” issue, and they’re filtering for anthrax, not for crazy.1 So, get used to receiving random items in the mail, including:

trash (yes, actual, physical garbage)

tiny bits of paper with weird nonsensical slogans scribbled on them, including gems like: “Because of the triumph of the spider in metaphysics” and “Nocturnal challenges await the waited”

random, unmarked CDs (obviously, don’t try to play them or insert them into any computers)

Post-it Notes about conspiracy theories stapled to articles

Post-it Notes about conspiracy theories not stapled to articles

long manifestos claiming to be from the real president