Nancy Gibbs and Jay Newton-Small:
The National Review put a glowering picture of Michelle on its April cover, called her “Mrs. Grievance” and declared that “Michelle Obama embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology which is not where most Americans live.”
[Michelle Obama’s conservative critics] are probably right to think that most Americans have a happier impression of the past 40 years. But the skies have clouded in the past year, and this time around, the attacks make one wonder how those who find Michelle Obama’s gritty realism out of bounds would mount a campaign in this climate. By suggesting everything is swell? By gliding silently over the battered economic landscape at home in order to talk instead only about terrorism abroad? That is certainly not where most Americans live either.
I don’t think Michelle Obama and Pollyanna quite exhaust the alternatives.