Rebranding Michelle? Hardly

If anyone has a bizarre obsession with sycophantic journalism then I urge you to read Michael Powell and Jodi Kanter's article in IHT about Michelle Obama and her 'subtle makeover'. I was actually hoping for an honest piece of work and instead got a 2000-word gush-fest. This kind of stuff doesn't belong in a newspaper. Everything she has done in her life seems to necessitate an extra celebration for her triumph over the white establishment, whether against the (obviously) racist institutions of Princeton, Harvard, Sidley Austin (a corporate law firm), or the University of Chicago Medical Center. Naturally, the next establishment she will want to fight against is (ironically) The White House, probably as the first lady from 2008 to 2016, and then presumably as President from 2016 - 2024 (is this really as ridiculous as it sounds? No, I didn't think so).

I don't see how this kind of article can do anything but hurt her (and her husband) with America's working classes. There are few things more annoying than a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, earning more than $300k-a-year, complaining about how hard her life has been fighting against the historical 'whiteness' of America.

This though is perhaps the most telling part of the story:

By 2001, Obama, married for nine years and the mother of two daughters, had taken a job as vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She soon discovered just how acrimonious those affairs were.

Hospital brass had gathered to break ground for a children's wing when African-American protesters broke in with bullhorns, drowning out the proceedings with demands that the hospital award more contracts to minority firms.

The executives froze. Obama strolled over and offered to meet later, if only the protestors would pipe down. She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards.

I'm confused, is this supposed to be a good thing? Shouldn't the criteria for awarding contracts be effectiveness and efficiency and not skin colour or gender? Had a group of white people disturbed proceedings in such a way, would she have reacted the same? Would she have given white-run firms a similar boost in contracts? I doubt it. Michelle Obama seems to see whiteness, whatever its purpose or function, as an obstructive force in the advancement of minorities.

For all that this article is a poor, polemical, and also vague attempt to elevate Michelle to first lady caliber, it's done nothing other than confirm that she presents a fundamental problem for the Obama campaign that the Republicans can (and will) exploit to the fullest extent.