The First Second Gentleman

An urgent question for my fellow Americans.

January 20, 2021 was a historic day in America, as Doug Emhoff, husband to newly-inaugurated Vice President Kamala Harris, became the first man to move into the VP’s apartments at the United States Naval Observatory. For the next four years, Emhoff and Harris will nest in the bedroom previously reserved for Mike Pence and his wife Karen, the erstwhile Second Lady. This situation invites a number of questions — Will the mattress be changed out? What of the linens? What of the spices in the Pence’s spice rack, if indeed they have one? — but no question is more urgent than this one:

What shall we call Mr. Emhoff, henceforth?

According to Mr. Emhoff’s Twitter page and personal website, “Second Gentleman” or SGOTUS are his rightful monikers. But is Mr. Emhoff correct? Has he really thought this all the way through? Is he the man he appears to be, i.e. the first-ever Second Gentleman of the United States? Or is Mr. Emhoff in fact the first First Gentleman, seeing as Jill Biden, by dint of her PGP’s (she/her/doctor, presumably), is ill-suited for the title?

Dr. Biden is and can only be the First Lady (albeit far from the first First Lady, or the first Second Lady to later attain First Ladyship — of these there were eleven prior, making Dr. Biden the twelfth Second Lady turned First). But it is difficult to see how Mr. Emhoff could justifiably be dubbed the Second Gentleman in the absence of a First (a gentleman such as Chasten Buttigieg, in an alternate universe), just as a baseball hitter cannot reasonably expect to attain second base without first passing first.

Logic therefore dictates that we must refer to Mr. Emhoff as the First Gentleman or FGOTUS, and not the Second or SGOTUS. But this resolution stirs up problems of its own. To refer to Mr. Emhoff as the First Gentleman would be to flout the implicit hierarchy separating the First Spouse from the Second. We can easily imagine Dr. Biden perceiving this as a slight since, after all, she has already spent so much of her life playing second fiddle, first to Joe Biden’s first wife Neilia and later to First Lady Michelle Obama.

In light of this Goldilocksian conundrum, it seems that neither title (FGOTUS or SGOTUS) is “just right.” Therefore, on behalf of the editorial staff of Il Macchiato, I propose we refer to Mr. Emhoff as one of the following:

(a) The First-and-a-Half Gentleman

(b) The First and Second Gentlemen

(c) The Gentleman Residing in the Naval Observatory

(d) The Gentle Secondman

(e) Mr. Kamala Harris

(f) The Nth Gentleman

(g) Biden’s Bidensman

(h) The Kamala’s Harrisman

(i) The Gentleman Squared

(j) xGOTUS

(k) Doug

My fellow Americans, what are we to do? We bid you share any other viable monikers that may occur to you in the comment section bellow.