CBS News is reporting:
First lady Michelle Obama is challenging assertions she’s forcefully imposed her will on White House aides, saying she’s tired of people portraying her as “some kind of angry black woman.”
Mrs. Obama tells CBS News she hasn’t read New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor’s new book that characterizes her as a behind-the-scenes force in the Executive Mansion, whose strong views often draw her into conflict with President Barack Obama’s top advisers.
… The Kantor book portrays a White House where tensions developed between Mrs. Obama and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary and presidential adviser Robert Gibbs. The book, titled “The Obamas,” describes Mrs. Obama as having gone through an evolution from struggle to fulfillment in her role at the White House, while labeling her an “unrecognized force” in pursuing the president’s goals. Neither the president nor his wife agreed to be interviewed for the book.
“I do care deeply about my husband,” Mrs. Obama said in the CBS appearance. “I am one of his biggest allies. I am one of his biggest confidants.” But she sought to put aside “this notion that I sit in meetings.”
“I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” she said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.”
“There will always be people who don’t like me,” Mrs. Obama added, and said she could live with that.
Really Michelle? Really? You don’t understand how wearing a $500 pair of designer sneakers to a charity event, or telling an audience, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country” after her husband surged to the front-runner spot during the 2008 campaign, or occupying a pew for nearly 20 years in a church whose pastor regularly preached hatred for “white America, the US of KKK-A”, or enjoying lavish vacation after lavish vacation in some of the world’s most exclusive getaways, or joking with a television audience that she liked being called “your excellency,” might give people the impression that you are an ungrateful, angry elitist?
The sooner we get these people out of the White House, the better.
