About The First Lady

It makes some of us sad when we hear ridiculous comments that the Honorable First Lady Michelle Obama “doesn’t act like a First Lady.” In other words, she doesn’t act like royalty, that she acts “common” that she has been seen in shorts with muscular arms – the result of rigorous exercise, and fraternizing with common folk.

Of course, Mrs. Obama is not Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Reagan, or Mrs. Clinton, for that matter. She exhibits what she is: a middle class woman from the south side Chicago, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment, studied hard and obtained government financial aid. A woman who the went to Princeton and Harvard, became an attorney and served as a mentor for Barack Obama and later married him.

Both the First Lady and the President rose from incredibly ordinary beginnings. Born to a pump worker at the City of Chicago Water Plant and a secretary of Spiegel Catalog Store, Michelle grew up as an ordinary, simple young woman living in a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a classic Chicago brick bungalow. Her bedroom was actually the apartment's living room, which, for a while, had been converted with a divider down the middle, allowing her to share it with her brother.

The President also hails from humble origins. He was not born of famous people who had gained high military or political honors. His father was not the endower of the Exalted University sitting on its Board. He had no European nannies for him, no privileged status, no fineries of clothing. This commander in chief of the most powerful armed forces of the world didn’t grow up in estates or palaces with marble floors, fine tapestries and gilded domes, acres of polo playgrounds, hundreds of Arabians, French chefs in the vast kitchens and harem girls to pamper him. In fact, when he was a child in the State of Washington, for a while his mother had to live on food stamps.

How much more ordinary can you get and what a saga of conquering environments which some may consider blighted.

But herein lay the marvels of democracy, the great equalizer, and the American way.

And now, it is good that we have a fresh breeze in the White House, and a hard-working campaigner, a person who cares for the poor and the middle class. She has a ready smile for the common folks, the elementary school students, and whoever she comes in contact with.

Mrs. Obama is a phenomenon. Barack Obama has called Michelle “the most quintessentially American woman I know.” The world press called her a “firebrand” when she was in the 2008 campaign trail. She is a powerful speaker, an astute analyst, and one on whom the President has always relied heavily in campaign and in office. “Long before there was a Barack Obama, there was a Michelle Robinson who was a star in her own right,” said a classmate of hers at Harvard. Even though she is a “homely,” unassuming person, the French said she reminded them of Jackie Kennedy.

Consider the opposite. Suppose all of a sudden she changes and goes about with regal bearing, up-turned nose, with a retinue of assistants and body guards, always wearing expensive, high fashion clothes. Some may like it. The photographers will have field day.

But there will be others who would say, “Look at that woman! What a put on! Don’t we know where she is from? South side Chicago? And how can we forget that she is a great, great, grand-daughter of slaves?

We admire Mrs. Obama just as she is -- a smart, talented woman and role model.