Tuesday’s Today show on NBC featured a typically boot-licking Michelle Obama profile by London-based reporter Dawna Friesen, making all the requisite suck-up stops (Jackie O! Amazing arms! Harvard-Law-educated icon of accomplishment!). But columnist Helen Kirwan-Taylor took the hype beyond the ridiculous:

She is absolutely terrifying for the British, because the British like their women subdued and doe-eyed, modest and soft-spoken, I mean, Princess Di. And here comes this woman who’s in your face. Everything about her says ”I’m confident. I know what I want. I can do anything.”

Didn’t the British elect Margaret Thatcher prime minister three times? They’re too sexist to like confident women who know what they want? Kirwan-Taylor went on to hope young British women join Michelle in celebrating accomplishment. NBC seems to have accomplished complete historical amnesia.