Michelle Obama on Vogue cover. Running for something?

Michelle Obama is the focus of a new Vogue piece about the first couple. Also this week, Hillary-Michelle has been a hot search term, but there's no real news on such a front.

|
Susan Walsh/AP
First lady Michelle Obama speaks to the quarterly meeting of member Chief Executive Officers of the Business Roundtable in Washington, Wednesday. Mrs. Obama is the focus of a new Vogue piece about the first couple.
|
Annie Leibovitz/Vogue/AP
This cover image released by Vogue shows first lady Michelle Obama on the cover of the April 2013 issue of Vogue.

Michelle Obama is on the cover of the new issue of Vogue looking very much like an icon of American fashion. She’s sporting her new bangs and a cerulean sheath next to a vase of cherry blossoms that are just beginning to open. Vogue writer Jonathan Van Meter interviewed both her and President Obama, but it’s Mrs. Obama who’s the focus here. She dominates the word count of the article inside, and the cover readout is, “How the first lady and the president are inspiring America.”

Is she running for something? Hillary-Michelle (or Michelle-Hillary?) 2016!

OK, it hasn’t escaped our attention that “Hillary-Michelle” has been a hot search term this week. There’s no real reason why that’s so, in the sense that there isn’t a speck of news on this front. The whole notion of Hillary Rodham Clinton teaming up with Mrs. Obama in a journalists’ dream team seems driven by speculation, idle and otherwise.

But what struck us about the Vogue piece was the degree to which it promoted the first lady and examined the nature of first couplehood.

Yes, it’s a fashion magazine: None of its readers want to see those old photos of the president in dad jeans or read about why the United States is hesitant to help Syrian rebels. Instead, the article inside frames the Obamas not as the first African-American first family, but as a symbol of today’s highly involved parenting style – a husband and wife who focus after-work energy on their kids and think about how they complement each other’s personalities.

They’re helicopters parents with a Marine helicopter, in Mr. Van Meter’s telling.

“They are ... exemplars of a new paradigm – the super-involved parenting team for whom being equally engaged in the minutiae of their children’s lives is paramount,” he writes.

The thing we find interesting about this is the generational question it raises.

In the piece, the Obamas talk about the old Washington they’re not part of, the Georgetown dinner-party/Kennedy Center box/Middleburg weekend crowd. Actually, they talk about not being part of it because it no longer exists.

Congressional families don’t live in Washington anymore: Lawmakers face tremendous pressure to scurry back to districts and home states on weekends. Also, the president and top leaders of the other party don’t socialize because the city’s too partisan.

And then there's the broader reason: They also don’t socialize because parents in modern families don’t have time for that.

“The culture in Washington has changed in ways that probably haven’t been great for the way this place runs,” Mr. Obama says at one point.

As anyone who’s watched today’s sitcoms knows, the center of the modern family is the mom. The dad may be president, but he’s probably still a bumbler at heart. Thus the first lady notes that the small apartment her husband rented when he was a US senator once caught on fire.

And she draws a laugh from the press handlers assembled to watch the interview when she notes that the leader of what used to be called the free world is the sort of guy “who still boasts about, ‘This khaki pair of pants I’ve had since I was 20.’ ”

That’s what we mean when we say the piece almost seems to be pushing Mrs. Obama for something. What it does is place her at the emotional heart of the Obama presidency – in a way that even Jacqueline Kennedy, despite the huge amount of coverage she got, never was.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Michelle Obama on Vogue cover. Running for something?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2013/0314/Michelle-Obama-on-Vogue-cover.-Running-for-something
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe