The First Lady, Michelle Obama, is expecting another busy week. How's that possible for a person with "no official duties"?
This week the White House released the much-anticipated official Obama family photo. The portrait was taken in the Green Room of the White House on September 1 by famed Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz. The seated and beaming first family looks happy and relaxed, with Sasha and Malia Obama each draping an arm over mom and dad. Michelle Obama style-watchers may want to note she’s not in a sleeveless dress: The bare arms in her solo official portrait caused a minor stir when it was released last February.
The portrait adds to a flurry of Michelle Obama publicity this week. On Wednesday she hosted a "healthy kids fair" for approximately 100 Washington D.C.-area schoolchildren on the South Lawn of the White House. During the event, part of her ongoing effort to educate children about the importance of proper diet and exercise, the first lady wowed onlookers by swiveling a Hula-Hoop 142 times before it finally hit the ground. Not quite done there, Mrs. Obama also took off her shoes to run an obstacle course with hurdles.
Also this week, a new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that the American people view Michelle much more favorably than they do her husband or Vice President Joe Biden, a change from the numbers just after the first family took up residence in the White House. Approval numbers for the president, meanwhile, have been sliding; the USAToday/Gallup poll notes that Obama is viewed favorably by 55 percent of respondents, down from 68 perecent just after the election.
What's next for Michelle? How about an appearance on late night television on Leno's new show. Mrs. Obama's appearance with Leno is notable but certainly not unusual, as former first lady Laura Bush appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show” when it was hosted by Leno during her husband's presidency.
All these things might seem like fun, but some of the First lady's time is spent debunking false or misleading information. In a recent blitz of coverage, a minor uproar over the first lady's staff size ensued. One critic at CanadianFreePress.com accused the president's wife of employing an "unprecedented number of staffers" for someone who "doesn’t perform any official duties," while a widely circulated chain email reported that "there has never been anyone in the White House at any time that has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady’s social life." Many other critics of the Obama administration expressed similar sentiments.
Michelle Obama's press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, confirmed that 24 was an accurate count of staffers working for the current first lady. So just what does a staff of 24 do for Michelle Obama? Well, for starters there are the 32,000 pieces of mail that have flooded the East Wing since Michelle Obama took occupancy in January, but the main official duty of the first lady is to tend to the care and maintenance of the White House and its seemingly endless social functions. Of course some first ladies, like Michelle Obama, maintain a higher profile than others, and with that comes the need for people to help write speeches, arrange travel and security details, handle media inquiries, etc.
As far as Michelle Obama's staff size being "unprecedented" in modern times, this appears to be factually inaccurate. According to the Washington Post, the Bush White House also had 16 people on staff whose official titles included the term "first lady" working for Laura Bush, and a recent AP story placed her total number of staffers at between 24 and 26. The same AP report also noted that Hillary Clinton had up to 19 staffers, while Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy had 30 and 40, respectively. To that end, Snopes.com, another Web site dedicated to checking the facts on issues prominent in the public discourse, described the claims of Michelle Obama's “unprecedented” staff as "grossly inaccurate" and "on par with her predecessor's."
Just another quiet week in the White House, but I believe Michelle Obama is well suited to handle her "job" as First Lady of the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment