No first couple is more adored by the national media in modern times than Barack and Michelle Obama. From their first campaign for the White House in 2008, they were compared to John and Jackie Kennedy for their style and grace. But Mrs. Obama still claims she was abused during her latest love-bombing book tour with three networks.
Her new book is titled “The Look,” a coffee table book chock full of fashion photos (list price $50). You can wallow in her “intimate and candid stories” about what she wore. It all sounds very self-righteous.
The tour kicked off with an ABC Sunday night “20/20” special on November 2, entitled: “Michelle Obama: The Style, The Power, The Look.” Robin Roberts was enthusiastic from the start: “As First Lady you shot out of a cannon, all eyes in the world will be on you.”
Roberts read some complaints from her book: ‘We were all too aware that as the first black couple we could not afford a single misstep. And that as a black woman I was under a particularly white-hot gaze.’ She added a prompt: “Did you feel that?” Well, she wrote it!
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Former First Lady Michelle Obama on the set of her podcast in June. (Michelle Obama YouTube Channel)
Michelle responded, “If you make a mistake in a political environment where you are first and the people are first – where your opponents use your race as a fear-based strategy to make you look like the other, then everything matters.” This is a weird flex, because the whole Obama strategy was about how wonderfully different they were, the brilliant, high-achieving married couple with two lawyers.
But she kept complaining, “You couldn’t afford to do anything wrong because you didn’t get the—at least until the country got to know us, we didn’t get the grace that I think some other families got.”
This is plainly untrue. From the moment the Obamas burst onto the national scene in 2004, the media was enamored. Grace was flooding like Niagara Falls. Conservatives may have criticized them harshly, but those comments were dismissed – as she wanted – as a “fear-based strategy.”
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This special was perhaps like other prime-time Michelle-ogling specials, such as the CBS-aired interview with Oprah Winfrey in December 2016, in which Oprah touted her as both a “pop culture icon” and “the coolest First Lady in American history.”
But it’s a dramatic contrast to what happened to First Lady Melania Trump during an ABC “20/20” special in October 2018. ABC’s Tom Llamas — now NBC’s evening host — asked a series of rude and personal questions, not the kind Hillary Clinton would get:
“You are not the first First Lady to have to deal with her husband’s alleged infidelity. Has this put a strain on your marriage?’
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“During the ‘Access Hollywood’ incident during the campaign, your husband apologized to you. Has your husband apologized to you since you’ve been to the White House?’
And finally: ‘You said you still have a good marriage. Do you love your husband?’
The tour kicked off with an ABC Sunday night “20/20” special on November 2, entitled: “Michelle Obama: The Style, The Power, The Look.” Robin Roberts was enthusiastic from the start: “As First Lady you shot out of a cannon, all eyes in the world will be on you.”
So who did not receive mercy?
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Mrs. Obama also appeared on CBS, on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a show dominated by the host fawning over Democratic leaders. Colbert threw softballs: “When did you realize that [fashion] was there anything to handle? That it was actually a power?”
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She responded, “I knew very quickly that I had to control every aspect of how I appeared in the world. It was a race to get the country to teach me for me before they taught the other crazy woman they were talking about, the angry, bitter black woman who was a terrorist and a danger to her country, and who didn’t love her country.”
Honk if you remember when Republicans called Michelle Obama a dangerous terrorist. “Angry and bitter” is a plausible description, as you can hear in these responses. That’s exactly how it came across in February 2008, after most states had voted, when she at least attracted conservative attention by saying, “For the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty called the comment “strikingly off-putting.”
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She concluded the final interview: “And how I showed up in the world played a big role in reminding people that we are normal people. Yes, we are black. But we bleed red and we love red, white and blue.” That’s a campaign response. They are not ‘normal people’. Their first post-presidential book deal was estimated at $65 million.
She also highlighted how she showed that the First Lady can be “sexy”: “I wanted to take advantage of the fact that as a First Lady, yes, you can be smart and educated and beautiful and sexy and interesting and all those things.” And yes, you can be a black woman, a tall, six-foot black woman.”
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NBC paired Mrs. Obama with Jenna Bush Hager because the Bushes worship the Obamas, just like the media does. Michelle continued to highlight racism: “The light was a little brighter because politics created an otherness. There were people who tried to portray everything we did as a sign that we weren’t ready, that we weren’t qualified, that we weren’t American enough,” she claimed.
She was also asked to drop rhetorical bombs on President Donald Trump demolishing the East Wing to build a grand new ballroom for future generations. The entire TV tour felt like the latest 21 softball salute.
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