For the sake of Barack Obama's enthusiastic supporters, I was happy to get a call from campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor pushing back on this talk of an image makeover for Michelle Obama.
Vietor explained that Mrs. Obama's appearance this week on The View had been in the works for a long time and was absolutely not part of a new image initative -- as the New York Times reported in advance of the show.
For a while there it seemed that Mrs. Obama might repeat Hillary Rodham Clinton's mistake of 1992. After getting hammered for seeming to malign housewives who bake cookies, Clinton embarked upon a campaign to "soften" her image.
Clinton's various efforts over the years to become a neutral figure only made her more polarizing by adding "phoniness" to the list of charges against her.
Like Clinton, Mrs. Obama is a tough, smart and serious political player. Trying to seem more like Laura Bush is not going to work.
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People know it's the medias' desire to stereotype women--and it's why the msm has come under fire.
This isn't the 50s-and women good give a flying flock about cookie recipes..from candidates wives..
It's insulting that Stepford wives would even answer such ridiculous questions in accordance with the expectaions game..
Playing such games just shows the shallowness and lack of core strength as a woman and individual..
Men in the media DO love their womens' "catfights" and "hissyfits" between women.
Such storylines further the male sterotype of women as being "silly,sexual, emotional, unable to think about serious things- iow ; OBJECTIFIED.
How many nights on the tube do we see this done as Hollywood objectifies women based on looks-that the rest of women are supposed to be thinking about over "substantive" things.
Or showing women who are digbats-headlining the news.
It's meant to shame women-and it's done by males who are all about holding onto control of their own industry and leadership roles anywhere..
umm...guys...we figured out a long time ago what was being done--so please stop insulting our intelligence..
The solution is simple--if you want womens' business-quit insulting us.We can go elsewhere.
That's the power of the consumer-that women know they have..
It's already starting and its ridiculous. Black women already struggle daily with their difference in body structure. If you watch closely it looks like her clothes are puposesly tailored to be loose on the bottom.
Someone suggested she wear more sweaters and softer colors.I don't remember anyone telling Nancy Reagan, whose favorite color was red to wear softer pastels. I could not help but think is was a subtle racist way of saying she shows too much of her dark complexion in all of those sleeveless dresses.
To some, she will never be good enough, pretty enough, intelligent enough because she is not and will never be white.
Michelle, don't ever stop being Michelle.
One of the curious aspects of South African apartheid was the fact that in the eighties, whilew Nelson Mandela was still in prison at Robben Island and Reagan and Thatcher were bolstering the racist government's whites only policies, the top-rated show on South African television was the Cosby Show--a show about a black, middle class family. Because of the family sitcom context and relationship that any long-running TV show builds with its fans, white South Africans saw the family as *middle-class* when they watched the show, rather than *black*.
That's what Barach and Michelle Obama need to do--show themselves as such an ordinary family that every Americans of all stripes can find something in them to identify with. Something other than 'black'.
So getting Michelle out of the context of rallies and political events and into more intimate and non-political context is exactly the right idea.