World

Can Michelle Obama keep it real?

by Barry ORegan | June 21, 2008 at 08:09 am

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Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor

Love or Hate her, Michelle Obama, wife of Presidental Hopeful Barak Obama will be a force to be reckoned with if her husband becomes the next President of the most powerful country in the world.

Certainly a concern with Democratic Handlers, whose "Product Placement" is Barak Obama certainly does not bode well with those who wish to mould a Presidential Hopeful in their own image.

Barak clearly is devoted to his wife and loves her, you can bet more than the Presidency or the Democratic party.

Michelle Obama, like most first ladies always have their husband's ear from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. Something Democrats may not like as they usually like to have the last word. Something hard to do, unless you're sleeping with him.

The conundrum facing Michelle Obama - lawyer, political wife, mother of two and in every way her own person -- is how to keep being herself and still become the first black first lady.

Ms. Obama's frank nature, once considered one of her greatest assets, has become one of her detractors' greatest weapons against her husband, the presumed Democratic nominee. Putting words in Ms. Obama's mouth has proven a reliable strategy for the right, given her propensity for saying what she thinks.

They dredged up her senior thesis from Princeton and widely e-mailed out some choice quotes about race, with a few fabricated phrases thrown in for good measure. Rumours circulate that Ms. Obama was the true link between her husband and his controversial former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And Rush Limbaugh recently repeated an Internet rumour she had used the word "whitey" in a speech from a church pulpit -- a word the Obama campaign says she has never used, and a pulpit they say she has never spoken from.