David Blackburn

Obama 2.0, ready to try politics

Jodi Kantor is unrepentant: Michelle Obama knew what she was letting herself in for. At a lunch held in Kantor’s honour at St. Stephen’s Club in London this afternoon, the New York Times political correspondent said that she had been given access to the First Lady’s staff in the East Wing, and had rendered a fair and accurate portrait of Michelle Obama, who has begun ‘pushing back’ against ‘an independent journalistic project’.
 
According to Kantor, the First Lady is a strong personality, quick to rebuke others but loath to take criticism herself. Obama’s reaction to the publication of ‘The Obamas: A mission, a marriage has inadvertently substantiated Kantor’s claim, with Michelle Obama demanding of a hapless CBS interviewer last week, ‘Who can write about what I feel? Who? What third person can tell me how I feel, or anybody for that matter’. Kantor simply shrugs and says that Michelle Obama will doubtless set the record straight with a ‘definitive memoir’.



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