The story made the "top headlines" lineup for the afternoon of June 13, along with a headline tease for recent video from Fox News Channel where an onscreen graphic labeled the mother of two as Sen. Obama's "baby mama." Online slang lexicon urbandictionary.com defines a baby mama as "The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved."
The "Michelle Obama 2.0" article begins by regaling readers with a look at life in the Obama household as given by Barack and Michelle on a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio. The Illinois senator joked about his wife speaking more endearingly of him on the campaign trail than she does behind closed doors:
"She never says such nice things about me at home!" he smiles. "I really enjoy listening to her praise me like that because when I get home she'll remind me that I didn't make the bed."
The article then continued by contrasting the domestic bliss of the young Obamas with those mean ol' conservatives dead-set on stopping the presumptive Democratic nominee by gunning for Mrs. O.:
This is the Michelle Obama that the Obama campaign wants Americans to get to know -- not the "Mrs. Grievance" depicted with an angry scowl on the cover of the conservative National Review, or "His Bitter Half," as conservative columnist Michelle Malkin called her.
Some of the conservative attacks are even less subtle. Fox News Channel depicted her loving fist-bump with her husband the night he clinched enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination as a "terrorist fist jab" and a chyron on Fox News identified Michelle Obama as "Obama's Baby Mama," urban slang for an ex-girlfriend with whom one has fathered an out-of-wedlock child.
The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune followed up with other stories probing why the woman once seen as a potential African-American Jackie Kennedy risks becoming more of a liability, a black Teresa Heinz Kerry.
At a posh fundraiser for the Democratic Party's White House Victory Fund last night Obama told supporters, that their opponents are "going to try to make me into a scary guy. They're even trying to make Michelle into a scary person."
As the general election kicks into gear, the Obama campaign wants Americans to instead meet the woman whom friends describe as clever and warm, who will pull up a sixth chair on "The View" next Wednesday to chat about "hot topics" and interview actor Matthew Broderick. (Michelle has been studying up on Broderick and his wife Sarah Jessica Parker in preparation.) She's been leading a number of public forums with military wives, which campaign aides say she finds rewarding and her husband sometimes refers to on the stump.
Oh really? The Obama camp wants Americans seeing Michelle Obama on "The View" alongside ultra-liberal co-host Joy Behar who:
...has spouted off many false remarks, putting her leftist ideology before the facts. [For example,] Joy fed her viewers false information about the vice president's record on the Marriage Amendment and falsely charged the Bush administration with airing the "swift boat" ads. Behar has also, without evidence, smeared Republican presidential candidates of ties with the Ku Klux Klan and accused Republicans of giving Senator Tim Johnson a stroke.
Sounds like a more Teresa Heinz Kerry-friendly venue than for a a modern day Jackie O.
