I’ve never been entirely clear about the point of books like these, and never less so now that I’ve read Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s quasi-autobiography “Know Your Power.”

Subtitled “A Message to America’s Daughters,” the 21-year congressional veteran says she means to do two things by detailing her life story:

Pay homage to the women who smoothed her path to become the first female Speaker of the House and second in line to the president. And offer insight, advice and inspiration for women trying to find and use their own power. (Unfortunately, what she mostly did was constantly remind me of a tepidly received Dennis Quaid/Jessica Lange movie from 1988, but more on that later.)

However well-meant, though, what has to be said here is that “Know Your Power” is mostly a chronicle (and not a particularly intellectually demanding one) of how Pelosi found her power — and not much else. And while this perhaps was predictable, it was still disappointing.

But more than that, it was a bit scary. Scary the way it was last January, when Sen. Hillary Clinton tried to explain how personal the election was for her and suddenly found her eyes teary and her voice quavery; she was suddenly, achingly and undeniably real. And then it was gone. Even though her poll numbers skyrocketed over that, that Hillary never came back. Her people didn’t get it.

Scary that way.

Because Americans know “real,” and they know truth when they hear it, see it and read it. In fact, they’re dying for it — some of them literally in Iraq and millions metaphorically in their yearning for a president who doesn’t set off every hard-working citizen’s b. s. meter the minute he opens his mouth.

Yet time after time, politicians and their staffs, handlers and data insist upon giving us their own version of “real” — thin, sanitized, crowded with banalities and platitudes — and think we either won’t notice or won’t care.

Speaking the truth

Pelosi devotes literally half her book to her charming coming of age in Baltimore’s Little Italy, replete with tales of family, Catholic duty, service and the de rigeur John F. Kennedy meeting. The rest is an occasionally feisty but generally trite accounting of how she got elected and what it all means.

Raw realities? Shrewd advice on how to find, keep and wield power? Inside truths? Good luck.

Why is this? Why is it that those who cloak themselves in the pashmina of “speaking truth to power” have such a hard time simply getting the “speaking truth” part down?

In Olympic-speak, that’s called nailing the compulsories. And if pols with power like Pelosi’s can’t (or won’t) nail to a few hundred pages some raw realities and blunt advice, then who and what are these books for?

Does she truly not understand that inside the Beltway, D. C. insiders will roll their eyes over this, if they read it at all?

Or that outside the Beltway, readers likely will give it a few chapters before erupting: Who gives a &@#%$, lady? I’m about to lose my house, my wife’s depressed, my kid’s sick, I have no health insurance and my nephew just came back from Iraq missing a leg and most of his mind. You got power? Fix these! Heck, fix one! I’m OK with that! DO something!

I suspect Nancy Pelosi knows her power perfectly well — and not the type of power she spends precisely half the book describing as having been achieved despite blushing protestations and Who-Me? astonishment. We’re talking the steely kind that comes from being a millionaire many times over, a 21-year member of Congress, the first female Speaker of the House and the highest-ranking elected woman in American history.

The kind that comes from being, in short, a woman of substance, contradiction, complexity and craftiness, which is the kind of person anyone would want to read about. And yet here, she has chosen to not be that person.

I kept thinking about that scene as I paged faster and faster through Pelosi’s book.

Words such as “bipartisan,” “organize,” “constituents” and “coalition” kept popping out, and no Krispy Kreme glaze ever covered a doughnut more heavily than those words glazed my eyes. Stories about races, legislation, trips and tradition rolled on and on.

They must have mattered to her.

But they didn’t to me. These weren’t the stories I wanted to read about, stories we should know, stories only Pelosi could tell.

Which brings me back to that Dennis Quaid/Jessica Lange movie, “Everybody’s All-American,” which despite a Frank DeFord-based script and Taylor Hackford directing, was called corny, dopey, boring and worse, but which I found incredibly engrossing and heartbreaking.

Toward the end, some 25 years after Gavin Grey has faded from stardom as a Louisiana football star, he sits on his porch and plays for a guest a taped memoir of each play of each game he ever played. Grey is lost in each detail; the others are lost in boredom. It’s an excruciating moment, until his beauty-queen college sweetheart and longtime wife, Lange, softly urges with exquisite compassion, “Turn it off, Gavin. Turn it off.”

It matters deeply to him; not to anyone else.

Missing information

From Pelosi, I would’ve liked to have learned:

• Just how she’s managed to stay married for 45 years. It’s been written that her schedule gives them about a week per month together, which, if true, is definitely something women and their daughters should know. What’s more empowering than saying bluntly: “Look, frankly, once the kids are grown, take at least half the month to yourself, more if you can. You’ll find out who you are, and boy will you get along if you see each other only a week at a time”?

• The grittier details of having had five kids in six years, the mere thought of which triggers a cluster headache behind my right eye. The sheer brutality, organization and endurance that was required had to have prepped her for the snake pit of D. C. better than anything. But the closest hint we get is a chirpy, “Some days I didn’t even have time to wash my face,” which strikes me as a tad dainty when most mothers I know will cop to consecutive days without showering at some point along their parenting journey.

• More about the blasphemy of America’s health insurance system from Pelosi — more anger, more ideas, more everything — instead of merely this: “Think of it — 40 days in Iraq could pay for 10 million children getting health care in America. And the president says we can’t afford it.”

• But above all, I am dying to know (and, to stay on-message, I think modern women and their daughters would be well-served by knowing) exactly what went on at the pivotal moment of Pelosi’s political life when she was elected speaker, which, bizarrely, gets a mere paragraph at the end of Chapter Nine: “I immediately went into action and called over 150 Democratic members to personally ask them for their vote, and in 24 hours I had the votes I needed. And I was ready to be their leader.”

Pelosi’s book could have included all these things, and more.

But it didn’t. It may be because it didn’t have to — which is why this seems less a primer on how to know your own power and more a flaunting of Pelosi’s own.

For with everything she could have clocked us with, right across the psyche, she inexplicably churned out what seems little more than a political resume leavened by name-dropping, homespun froth and policy banalities — and then she had the front to market it as an homage/empowerment guide for women and daughters everywhere.

Or, as the news release describes it: “It is a keepsake to turn to again and again, when you need to be reminded that anything is possible when you know your power.”

And when you squander it.

Today brings the joyous news that ovary-shaking Idol demigod Clay Aiken has become a father to a healthy baby boy through the miracle of cutting edge fertilization techniques (the specs of how it was all accomplished are available here, if you care). In honour of this most improbable celebrity parenthood, we thought we’d compare and contrast Clay’s siring achievement to that of another unlikely new dad, Matthew McConaughey:

1. Spawn
Clay
Sex: Male
Name: Parker Foster Aiken
Weight: 6 lbs., 2 oz.
Birth Defects: Highlights

Matthew
Sex: Male
Name: Levi Alves McConaughey
Weight: 7 lbs., 4 oz.
Birth Defects: One flip-flop

2. Privacy
Clay
Shield your newborn for as long as possible from the public eye, then premiere him on The View at age four-days-old.

Matthew
Flashbulb innoculation: Subject early and often to as many red-carpet events as possible. Try not to forget car seat cradle on a counter of marked-down “Paris For President” T-shirts at Kitson.

3. Bonding
Clay
Father-son spa days…Front row seats to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular…Blind cheesecake taste-testings.

Matthew
Mutual wingman duties while combing Maui for honeys…bong shopping…post-weightlifting body-scrutinizing sessions.

4. Bedtime Rituals
Clay
Laser tooth whitening…Re-telling of the story of Goldilocks and the Big Fat Ruben Studdard…Christmas carols regardless of season…reassurances that there are no razor-toothed Claymates lurking under the bed.

Matthew
1000 crunches…bongo-accompanied African tribal lullaby…Reminder to “stay strong, little man” before administration of tender kiss on forehead.

Some fashions are like zombies: they just refuse to die. In all good horror films, the zombie will be shot down, battered over the head, and buried six feet under. Then it rises from the dead, ready to make you the next victim.

The cover of the new issue of Vogue features something back from the grave. No, not a zombie, but a model in a flesh-coloured dress made of lace. Lace? The ultimate in fuddy-duddy, “wouldn’t be seen dead in”, fabric. And it’s not the only “never again” style that’s back on the catwalks and in the shops as the new season’s stock arrives.

Leather trousers are all the rage after years in the fashion wilderness, and bootcuts are back – to the delight of women for whom skinny jeans were impossible.

Some “new” trends for autumn/winter 2008 have barely been away – leggings have been poking out under dresses for about two years now – and some were never that fashionable in the first place. Pashminas were a Sloane Ranger staple long before and after their moment in the fashion limelight.

Is this just fashion’s circle turning? Or is the global credit crunch allowing us to dig out style from the back of the wardrobe?

For those old enough to remember leather and lace from last time around (or the time before that), it’s time to welcome them back.

Pashminas

Rarely will you see a Sloane Ranger (or a political wife) without her ‘poshmina’. This, despite ‘Vogue’ saying in 1999 that they were over. ‘A pashmina is not fashionable,’ agrees Stefan Lindemann of ‘Grazia’. ‘It’s a staple. But a Sloane pashmina has fringes. A cashmere wrap does not. And keep the colours neutral.’ Cameron Diaz gets it right.

Lace

It was favoured as edging on Laura Ashley-style flowery dresses in the Eighties, and was kicked out of the way by power dressing; was reinvented by Madonna; refused to be pigeon-holed as wedding-dress material/goth staple/granny favourite. Lace. It’s resilient. It’s back (again). It will not disappear, says Jo Ellison, features editor at ‘Vogue’, so get used to it. ‘Lace will never die because its uses are so multifarious,’ she says. ‘It’s an incredibly versatile fabric. It can look punky, powerful, profane or poetic, depending on how you wear it.’ Wear it we will, because designer powerhouse Miuccia Prada has decreed it the fabric of the moment, as worn by Tilda Swinton.

Leggings

Looking back at ’80s photographs of Princess Diana, it’s easy to laugh. But Emma Jones of Missoni – which has reintroduced leggings for this season – says: ‘They’ve become a staple. Because leggings cut off at the ankle, the thinnest part, that’s very flattering for the leg.’ The actress Lindsay Lohan has her own leggings line.

Fringe

Kate Moss’s fringe was a short-lived trend. Now that models Agyness Deyn and Petra Nemcova both have newly cut ones, it’s time to ask why. Nicola Clarke at John Frieda says: ‘Find a good hairdresser who will suggest a suitable fringe that will complement your face shape.’ In other words, don’t ask them to copy a picture of a supermodel.

Leather

Apparently, Blake Lively, hottest US actress of the moment, will be wearing leather trousers in the next series of ‘Gossip Girl’, which means all sorts of women will be wearing them soon too. Designers have always liked leather, says Sarah Harris, fashion features writer at ‘Vogue’, though they ‘definitely went through a bad patch in the Eighties and early Nineties; they were hard, crunchy and terribly uncomfortable, but Chanel and Versace adored them because they empowered.’ Favoured by Cilla Black, above, for 2008, they’ve evolved, as seen on the Alexander Wang catwalk. ‘Think liquorice legs,’ says Harris. ‘They have to be spray-on tight and you have to be reed thin’.