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It’s Obama time.
Michelle Obama time.
I break with my fellow conservatives and even some liberals to praise the first lady, not to trash her. For Mrs. O has come a long way, baby, since she declared haughtily during the 2008 campaign that put her husband in the White House, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.’’
A softer, user-friendly Michelle beamed into the Oscars telecast last week like the big-deal celebrity she has become.
On Jimmy Fallon, she boogied to the “Mom Dance,’’ then coquettishly shrugged off Fallon’s idea that she run on a 2016 presidential ticket with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
No, Michelle joked. She’s got her “hat in the ring’’ to host the “Tonight’’ show when Jay Leno leaves, a job Fallon wants to win like Mega Millions.
She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s easy on the eyes.
Michelle Obama in 2020? Don’t underestimate her.
The Michelle Moment of Truth came during the Academy Awards ceremony (pictured). Folks who laughed at the infantile jokes of host Seth “We Saw Your Boobs’’ MacFarlane were shocked! and appalled! that Mrs. O had the temerity to invade this sexist celebration of the movie industry by showing up, via satellite, to read the name of the Best Picture winner.
Funny enough, it was “Argo”— a patriotic and CIA-friendly movie.
Pundits smelled blood.
“It’s not enough that President Obama pops up at every sporting event in the nation,” wrote Washington Post conservative political blogger Jennifer Rubin.
“Now the first lady feels entitled, with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining (this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election).”
Note Rubin’s use of “entitled” and “entertaining.” Back in the kitchen, Michelle!
“As if Hanoi Jane wasn’t fuel enough,” wrote Deadline.com founder Nikke Finke, referring to traitorous actress Jane Fonda, who posed atop an enemy anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War.
Michelle’s harshest critics are the same types who have obsessively gone off on her bare-armed gowns, her insistence on wearing shorts — on vacation! — and what the first lady called her “mid-life crisis” bangs. (They’re cute.)
The size of her backside was also cause for journalistic meditation, though that piece was penned by a liberal, Salon’s Erin Aubrey Kaplan. (She’d be covering crops in Des Moines if she dared discuss the president in such grotesque fashion.) Michelle shrugged off the haters.
“That’s just the nature of life. I mean, we live in a time when there are bloggers and tweeters and 24-hour news and everyone has a voice in this town square, and it’s a big one,” she told “Today” Friday in a Missouri Walmart — where real people shop.
By now, Mrs. Obama, who graduated from Princeton University and earned a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School, has learned to roll with it. She seems to have studied at the feet of another once-polarizing figure who was reborn as a latter-day rock star for chicks, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Like Hillary, Michelle rose to prominence on the coattails of her husband, the president of the United States.
Like Hillary, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, she’s endured relentless scrutiny over her looks, the kind of misogyny normally reserved for Republican hottie Sarah Palin.
Like Hillary, ridicule made her stronger.
“She’s smarter than her husband and tougher,” said communications expert Hank Sheinkopf.
“The new Michelle Obama — softer when necessary, better to the camera, and more able to relate to average Americans — could be the beginning of African-American dynastic presidential politics,” said Sheinkopf, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.
In early 2012, a book by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, “The Obamas,’’ portrayed the first lady as — Michelle’s words — “some kind of angry black woman.’’ Were she a man, she would have been applauded for her moxie.
But she’s learned to play the game, doing first lady-like things, fighting childhood obesity, not running the world.
Ironically, Michelle Obama has never been more popular. Or powerful.
And no one saw her break a sweat.
‘Cannibal cop’ jury given little to chew on
In the grossest trial ever to hit Manhattan federal court, “cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle is charged with conspiring to kidnap, rape and cook women, including his wife, and then eat them.
But would the devoted carnivore have ever carried out his demented fantasies? So far, there’s been scant evidence that he’s Hannibal Lecter lite.
Since Valle’s trial began last week, court watchers have learned all about a fetishistic Internet demiworld in which grown men worldwide swap recipes for babes in a blanket.
Kathleen Mangan-Valle, the mother of Valle’s child, tearfully testified about learning that she was to be the main course in a feast imagined by the man she loved.
This marriage can’t be saved — but Valle has a shot at walking free to a cafe near you.
The force abandons O
President Obama has caused a rift in the nerd-iverse.
Mooshing sci-fi metaphors, he said of Republicans, whom he blames for forcing budget cuts: “I’m presenting a fair deal. The fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right?”
Every sentient being on the planet knows that Jedi knights from “Star Wars’’ play “mind tricks’’ and that Vulcans from “Star Trek’’ share each other’s thoughts through “mind melds.’’ Duh!
As Yoda might say, “Bad Trekkie the president is.’’
No, Joe, you’re the one full of horse $#!+
My e-mail in-box is bursting with messages from folks outraged by ex-Rep. Joe Kennedy II. As I wrote last week, the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy has teamed up with Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez to bring discounted home heating oil to needy Americans. His tear-jerking commercials feature a 5-year-old cancer patient who keeps warm, thanks to Chavez.
“Joe Kennedy should be ashamed of himself for being a frontman for this American-hating dictator!’’ wrote Stewart Marden of Queens.
Chavez allegedly tortures political rivals in his own country.
Joe defended his Citizens Energy program on NBC Friday.
“It’s all happy horse manure. That’s what [big oil] is selling,’’ he said, ignoring the fact that programs in states such as New York and Massachusetts provide cheap oil to the poor.
Stuff it, Joe and Hugo.
Hooray-cane baby boom
Finally, joyous news from the superstorm: Area doctors report a 30 percent jump in births due this summer — some nine months after couples hunkered down without power.
Just name that baby anything but Sandy.