Something Else You Can Blame On Hillary

People hating on Michelle:

Hillary became a first-name in a way that Barbara and Betty never did. Everyone managed to project his or her fantasies onto her. For the right, she was a leftist Madame Defarge. She was a closeted lesbian. She was having an affair with Vince Foster. Even on the left, any number of feminist writers blew a gasket over her failure to leave Bill over his infidelity or her seeming to be an enabler. She became a Rorschach test for prurient fantasies of all kinds. Bill Maher, the comedian, this year said that he was voting for Barack Obama but added that he couldn't fathom Hillary-hatred. If you hate Hillary the problem is with you, he said. She is not a hateful person.

...The Hillaryifcation of First Ladydom continues. Teresa Heinz Kerry took her hits in 2004. Once the floodgates are open and a first lady is no longer seen as removed from politics, no one is safe. Thus the right already pillories Michelle Obama.

Granted, Mrs. Obama's ham-handed line about being very, very proud of her country for the first time in her adult life over the presidential bid of her husband struck many as off-putting. But the right making her into a latter-day Angela Davis has twisted that bit of spousal hyperenthusiasm. A cover story on Michelle in the National Review made her out to be a grievance monger. They've made much of her senior thesis at Princeton, where she wrote with great pain about feeling alienated on a campus surrounded by white privilege.