The Mystery of Michelle Obama

Your humble correspondent is in bad decline. Plague (genus: respiratory, locus: head, although there is something brewing in the chest region this morning) has struck the house of Russo. The Democratic National Convention, while considerably less of a carnival from hell than its Republican counterpart last month, is still a pretty bad trip when you are stuffed to the Afrin-spritzed gills with Zyn, instant coffee, Sudafed (the real stuff, not PE), and just a wee little glass of Wild Turkey (rocks) to smooth the ragged edge of the Sudafed. This is no condition in which to watch serious television. This is no condition in which to watch Michelle Obama. 

I don’t have a lot of opinions or feelings attached to the former first lady. Thanks to an old-fashioned upbringing, I am disinclined to have detailed opinions about other men’s wives, even the wives of public figures. I was too young to be deeply invested in the Obama thing. By time I got the franchise, Barack was something of a figure of fun (competitions around the lunch table to see who could muster the most convincing Uh, let me be clear!), and the parade of broken promises about ending the war, about shutting Gitmo, etc., had dampened the heady enthusiasm of 2008. If you didn’t like his policies, there seemed to be little chance of getting rid of him or doing much beyond gumming up his legislative agenda. It was, for me, an era that discouraged strong passions.

So the devotees of Michelle Obama Theory kind of mystify me. So far as I can tell, there are three main schools. The first is straightforward and embarrassing celebrity-worship, the same pathological grrrl-power! complex of behaviors trotted out for Taylor Swift, for Beyonce, for whatever new, horrifying pop stars of the feminine persuasion they’re cooking up in Rick Rubin’s subterranean complex of torture chambers. The second holds that Michelle Obama is a man, lesbian, and/or lizard. Both these groups spend an awful lot of time posting, inspecting, and commenting on pictures of Michelle Obama on social media. The third school, which is kind of chin-stroking and consciously intellectual and—dare I say it?—aspirationally Obamaesque, engages in open-ended psychological speculation about why Michelle, an accomplished lawyer who was going places, would throw it all away to be just a planet orbiting Barack’s splendid sun. All three types of Michelle Obama Theorist think she might run for president.

I should mention, for the sake of completeness, that my teacher friends tell me the under-25 set mostly associates Michelle Obama with ruining school lunches. 

So I guess I’m basically in the third camp, the chin-stroking one, to the degree I have any coherent priors. I tried to bring psychology to bear as, sniffling and groaning, I watched Michelle’s opening act for her husband and attempted to mill the wheat of experience into a neatly bagged column. It wasn’t a particularly good speech, but it wasn’t terrible, either. She threw some red meat to the party’s identity-politics factions—“Who’s gonna tell [Trump] the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”—but her delivery was cool, studied. Her outfit was, to my eyes, unusual, but probably the sort of thing people who know about clothes like. She didn’t seem to feed off the crowd’s energy the way her husband or other generational political talents do—Bill Clinton, Trump—but she wasn’t cowed or nervous, either. She gave the impression of someone doing a job, and doing it competently without particular feelings about it one way or other.

Maybe it’s a projection of my own phlegm-sodden ennui, but I didn’t get the sense that Michelle Obama wants to be president. In fact, I didn’t get a sense of anything about her subjective experience, her wants, fears, or passions. I noticed for the first time that she has a slight imperfection in her front teeth—she has forgone the cosmetic orthodontia that has become universal in the American upper classes. That seems human; there’s a real person behind the fame and obsession and Michelle Obama Theory. I’ve just got no insight into that person—goose egg, zip. She is basically a private person with a public job.

People have the wildest relations to politicians. Tim Walz is the dad I wanted! Donald Trump is like my uncle who drinks two Yuenglings at Thanksgiving and starts having opinions about Mexicans! Momala! I don’t think that’s particularly normal or healthy, especially in a notional republic. I can’t imagine wanting to play that game, doing what it takes to meet those associations and turn them into fundraising and votes. Michelle Obama, at least as she was last night, doesn’t seem to want to play the game either. Who can blame her?

Especially with the school lunch thing. I mean, do you want to be the politico who killed pizza day? I’d keep to myself, too.

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