Is the First Lady a Liar--or Just a Dopey Mom?

It's pretty certain--make that absolutely certain--the White House is lying. Perhaps even more dispiriting, it's Michelle Obama who's doing it. It's probably a feel-good, righteous, doing-the-right-thing-by-lying lie, but a whopper all the same.

"In my household, you know, we try to establish a set of guidelines and rules that make sense--no computers, phones, television during the week" for her children. Ahh, sure. She goes further: "We talk a lot with [our daughters] about the dangers of Facebook and sort of getting into that social networking kind of gossip mill or, you know, that--that comes from those activities."

This is preposterous. An overzealous, tone-deaf parent might have tried once, blunderingly, to talk about social networking etiquette (on the basis, no doubt, of some article in Time magazine), only to be shamed and dismissed by the nearest 12-year-old--the age of the Obamas' oldest daughter, Malia. Or, if the parent actually thinks his or her 12-year-old is taking this to heart, then the 12-year-old, product of an overt narcissist, has more problems than social networks.

As for restricted technology use, every parent has tried this for the better part of 50 years and failed. Home entertainment and communications have been irresistible since black and white TV and princess phones, and has only gotten more powerful in their subversive appeal. What? The Obamas, these super creatures, have such affable and malleable and reasonable children that they'll wait till the weekend for their buzz? Any child who obeys such rules is odd (you don't really want that child), and any parent who can enforce such rules is an anal-compulsive nut (you don't want that parent). The Obamas, even if they have the will, surely don't have the time to be these sort of obsessive, home-school enforcers.

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