Mrs. Obama, who is the spearhead of the Let’s Move! campaign, geared toward the end to childhood obesity and exercise awareness, has been criticized for ordering a fattening meal of a burger, fries, chocolate shake and diet coke.

The Huffington Post Reports:

Is the criticism warranted? To what degree should the Obamas be perfect role models of a healthy diet?Neil Barnard, M.D. president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, wrote on The Huffington Post:

The First Lady’s signature anti-obesity campaign — Let’s Move — is no match for the administration’s ongoing purchases of sausage, cheese, burgers and other fatty foods that are sent to schools everyday. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to bow to the interests of meat lobbyists and heavily subsidize the production of meat and other unhealthful foods.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

RELATED:

First Lady Races Kids At Harlem School To Promote Let’s Move Campaign

Instead, Mrs. Obama managed to inspire South Africans, through relating to their story of struggle and the telling of her own.

Rohit Kachroo, from The Grio, highlights the success of the first lady’s trip to South Africa and the impact it made.

An excerpt reads:

A key moment was her meeting with Nelson Mandela on Tuesday. From their short time together, a tender image emerged of him reading to his guest. She seemed attentive. Here was a woman from a powerful country which has a painful racial past, pictured with the father of South African’s racial struggle. It was poignant; the image resonated in both countries.

Read More At TheGrio.com

RELATED:

Michelle Obama To Youth: History To Be Made In Africa

Rush Limbaugh said Friday that the media is allowing Michelle Obama to take a vacation as a form of reparations for “our slave past.”

In discussing the lack of media outrage over the First Lady’s trip to Spain — which isn’t exactly true, as documented here — Limbaugh said that it stems from her race.

Read more at Huff Po

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Top 10 Racist Rush Limbaugh Quotes

Rush Limbaugh: There’s No Proof Of Obama’s Birthdate

From BVBlackSpin.com:

First Lady Michelle Obama is tackling childhood obesity with the launch of the nationwide Let’s Move campaign and its new enhanced website.
Obama will kick off the program Tuesday with a live web broadcast at 10 a.m. Eastern on Aol Health.

The Let’s Move campaign will bring together the public and private sectors to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity. Nearly one in three children is obese while a third of all children born after 2000 will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives.

The goal of the program is to provide schools, parents and communities with effective ways of tackling the problem so that a majority of kids reach adulthood at a healthy weight within a generation.

Click here to read more.

Click here to view photos:

RELATED:

Michelle Obama Vows To Help Camp Pendelton Troops

Mexico Embraces First Lady Michelle Obama

GALLERY: Black Cemetery Vandalized, Community Outraged

Updated 7/15/09 at 11:01am:

From ABC News:

After initially saying that Michelle Obama’s father is buried at Burr Oak Cemetery, the first lady’s office now says he is not buried at the historic Chicago cemetery where workers are accused of digging up the dead, discarding bodies, and in some cases, reselling burial plots.

“There has been some confusion that has been cleared up. Fraser Robinson III was buried at Lincoln Cemetery, not Burr Oak,” said Mrs. Obama’s Communications Director Camille Johnston. “I do not know where her grandfather was buried, but I do not believe he is at Burr Oak either.”

Click here to read more.

——————–

GALLERY: Black Cemetery Vandalized, Community Outraged

From MSNBC:

ALSIP, Ill. – First lady Michelle Obama’s father is among those buried at a cemetery near Chicago where workers are accused of digging up and dumping bodies to resell plots, the White House confirmed Tuesday.

Emmett Till’s Grave Among Those Vandalized In Chicago Cemetery

“I can confirm the First Lady’s father is buried at Burr Oak cemetery. We will have no additional comment on the matter,” Camille Johnston, a spokeswoman for the first lady’s office, wrote in an e-mail to NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV in Chicago.

Click here to read more.

GALLERY: Black Cemetery Vandalized, Community Outraged

\First lady Michelle Obama kicked off a summer of community service Monday by helping fix up a school playground, part of a national effort that saw administration officials traveling all over the country to promote the value of volunteering.

The initiative, known as United We Serve, was announced by President Barack Obama in a video message last week.

The president is urging people to help in the nation’s economic recovery by volunteering at schools and hospitals and pitching in on community needs ranging from tutoring to park cleanup.

Michelle Obama went to work by joining California first lady Maria Shriver and several hundred local volunteers at Bret Harte Elementary School in San Francisco, where the playground is being refurbished to include a garden with a farmers market stand where kids and seniors can sell vegetables to raise money for the school.

Obama talked about the importance of children getting exercise, adding that at the White House they’ve instituted “Camp Obama,” which means the TV and computers are off until after dinner and right before bedtime — “Bedtime is early.”

She also said the Obama girls play on a swing set that has been installed.

“They don’t even know that they’re getting exercise,” Obama said. “That’s the value of play and that’s what we need to get our kids to do in this community — but we have to provide them with resources to make that happen.”

The first lady also gave the keynote address to the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service, where she told attendees that what they do isn’t easy even in good times.

“In times like these, when we’re facing challenges unlike any in our lifetime, and you all know this better than anyone, I know it can feel close to impossible,” she said.

Her husband is working to change that, she said, but government can’t do everything, she said.

Some may view volunteering as something extra, she said, but “real change” comes from “the bottom up, from citizens working and mobilizing and serving the nation that they love.”

Change is also coming to TV, she said.

The Entertainment Industry Foundation has created an initiative under which the four major networks — ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC — will include service themes and plots in TV programs during the week of Oct. 19th.

“It’s going to be a great thing,” Obama said. “This is really exciting.”

Earlier, a volunteer driver from the nonprofit Disabled American Veterans participated in the United We Serve program by transporting Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and two Vietnam-era veterans through commuter traffic to a VA hospital in Washington.

More than 80,000 people donated time last year helping with VA-related programs, but Shinseki said there’s concern that there’s been a decline in the number of volunteers.

Other senior VA officials volunteered at homeless shelters and in other ways.

Tammy Duckworth, a VA assistant secretary who lost both her legs and partial use of one arm in an attack inIraq in 2004, recalled a fellow veteran offering to wash her hair when she was injured and another volunteer pulling up a blanket for her when she was on a gurney in a hospital hall and unable to move her arms.

“Sometimes, it’s the smallest gesture that makes the difference to these vets,” Duckworth said.

Other officials promoting the event included Craig Fugate, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a former volunteer firefighter, who met with firefighters and other emergency workers in Denver.

In New Orleans, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan helped rebuild the home of a 68-year-old widow living in a FEMA trailer.

“It’s about rolling up our sleeves,” Donovan said, plasterer’s trowel in hand and sweat beading on his forehead. “Good old-fashioned hard work to help this community rebuild.”

United We Serve is led by the government-run Corporation for National and Community Service. People who want to volunteer can visit http://www.serve.gov to look for local opportunities.

From CNN.com:

Heather Ferreira works in the slums of Mumbai, India, where she has watched thousands of women live under a “curse.”

The women she meets in the squalid streets where “Slumdog Millionaire” was filmed are often treated with contempt, she says. They’re considered ugly if their skin and hair are too dark. They are deemed “cursed” if they only have daughters. Many would-be mothers even abort their children if they learn they’re female.

Yet lately she says Indian women are getting another message from the emergence of another woman thousands of miles away. This woman has dark skin and hair. She walks next to her husband in public, not behind. And she has two daughters. But no one calls her cursed. They call her Michelle Obama, the first lady.

“She could be a new face for India,” says Ferreira, program officer for an HIV-prevention program run by World Vision, an international humanitarian group. “She shows women that it’s OK to have dark skin and to not have a son. She’s quite real to us.”

Those who focus on Michelle Obama’s impact on America are underestimating her reach. The first lady is inspiring women of color around the globe to look at themselves, and America, in fresh ways.

Click here for more.

From ThePage at Time.com:

FLOTUS delivered her only prepared remarks of European trip at a girl’s school in London Thursday afternoon, at one point getting choking up with emotion during the delivery. Transcript coming from WH. Details below.

Click here for exclusive journalist notes from the speech!

WATCH the video here:

WASHINGTON – Michelle Obama’s predecessors have carved out enough different roles as first lady that she is now free to fashion the job in a way that suits her. The first lady will take her time defining her new role, but already she’s dropping clues.

Sit in on Cabinet meetings like Rosalynn Carter? No thanks. Mrs. Obama says she doesn’t like “the process stuff.”

Pick a pet issue? She’s identified a few favorites, including supporting military families with a parent far from home.

Her priority? She always will be “mom-in-chief” first.

Protective of her daughters, Mrs. Obama made it clear she was not amused when the makers of Beanie Babies released “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia” dolls just after the inauguration.

People who’ve built careers studying first ladies say it will take time for Mrs. Obama to settle into hew new role.

Will she try to push the traditional first lady boundaries and have better luck with it than Hillary Rodham Clinton? Will she stick to tradition, avoid controversy and dive right into decorating, meal planning and welcoming guests to the White House? Will she try to do it all?

“I would be surprised if first ladies came into office in the first week and said, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’” said Stacy A. Cordery, who teaches history at Monmouth College in Illinois. “For the most part, first ladies’ platforms evolve. They have to get their footing.”

Based on what Mrs. Obama has said, her role is unlikely to evolve fully until she’s assured that her 10- and 7-year-old daughters are comfortably settled in at the White House after moving from Chicago, the only other place the girls have ever called home.

There are other hints about what lies ahead for the first lady:

_She’ll continue as one of President Barack Obama’s closest advisers. After all, their relationship began that way some 20 years ago when she was a corporate lawyer in Chicago and was assigned to be his mentor after the firm hired him as a summer intern.

_Her daughters come first. She’ll try to keep their lives as normal as possible, even seeing to it that they make their beds and do other chores. Mrs. Obama largely has stayed out of the public eye since the inaugural, helping the girls make themselves at home. But she did hold a reception Thursday in the State Dining Room honoring Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama woman whose name is on an equal-pay bill the president signed into law. On Monday, she planned to visit the Education Department and speak briefly to the staff. Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, also moved in to the White House and can fill in when duty calls the first lady away.

_Issues she’s expressed interest in include helping women juggle career and family, and promoting community and national service. At the reception for Ledbetter, Mrs. Obama said she’d heard from working women all over the country during the campaign about the need for fair pay, especially “at a time when so many families are facing economic insecurity and instability.” She also did her best to put her White House guests at ease, telling them: “Feel free, walk around, touch some stuff, just don’t break anything.”

_She could be eyeing her predecessor as a role model. Mrs. Obama has talked about how gracious she found Laura Bush to be and said, “I’m taking some cues.” Accompanying her husband to the White House on Inauguration Day for coffee with the outgoing president and first lady, Mrs. Obama arrived with gift box in hand. Inside was a leather-bound journal and engraved pen for Laura Bush to use to begin writing her memoir.

Americans expect a certain kind of first lady, one who supports the president, doesn’t steal too much of his spotlight, stays out of trouble, advocates for favored causes and does all the other things that come with running a home, such as raising children, being a hostess, planning parties and decorating.

But each first lady puts her own stamp on the position, as Mrs. Obama is sure to do.

She’s called her new life “a bit surreal” but also says she’s excited “because I think there’s a lot that can be done with this platform.”

Hillary Clinton was the first real career woman to become first lady; she was a practicing lawyer, children’s rights advocate and first lady of Arkansas when her husband, Bill, was elected. She offended the public during the campaign by saying she wasn’t about to give up her career to “bake cookies and serve tea.”

The Clintons pushed the boundaries in other ways.

Bill Clinton joked during the campaign that the country would get two for one if it elected him, speaking about the first lady’s long-assumed role as an informal presidential adviser in a way that made the public uncomfortable.

Instead of following tradition and settling in the East Wing, Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows by taking a West Wing office among her husband’s top aides. Laura Bush moved the office back to the East Wing, and Mrs. Obama is there, too.

Bill Clinton put his wife in charge of trying to overhaul the health care system, but the effort failed and damaged their public images in the process. Hillary Clinton also was fingered as being involved in various administration scandals. She is the only first lady to testify before a federal grand jury, and once was burned in effigy.

“People expect the first ladies to be more traditional than they expect the women in their own lives to be,” said Kristie Miller, an independent historian who has written books about the Coolidge and Wilson first ladies.

If Mrs. Obama, a lawyer who is as accomplished and Ivy League-educated as Hillary Clinton, at some point decided to take her new role beyond what’s expected of first ladies, she could have an easier time of it because of what Clinton endured.

“Mrs. Clinton opened that door for other first ladies to walk through,” Cordery said. “She pushed the American comfort level with what first ladies could do.”

Even Laura Bush, widely viewed as a traditional first lady, broadened the role.

She was the first first lady to record one of the president’s Saturday radio messages. She held a news conference in the White House briefing room, rare for a first lady, to accuse Myanmar’s military rulers of ineptness after a killer cyclone struck. The plight of pro-democracy activists in Myanmar, also known as Burma, became one of her causes and she consulted often with the U.N. secretary-general. She also championed the rights of Afghan women.

Mrs. Obama will have to be careful about overstepping because some people still have negative impressions of her, Cordery said. Some still regard her as unpatriotic and angry because of her comment during Obama’s campaign about being proud of the U.S. for the first time in her adult life.

Cordery said Mrs. Obama is smart enough to have paid close attention to Hillary Clinton’s trials and to have reached out for advice on the do’s and don’ts of being first lady. Playing off of the recent news that Obama won his fight to keep his beloved BlackBerry, Cordery quipped: “Maybe the first lady’s private BlackBerry will have Mrs. Clinton on it and they will talk.”

My erstwhile African-American-studies-minored self would love nothing more than to publish a dissertation on why this piece in Salon, written by Erin Aubry Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times, is destructive, superficial and historically unsound. But what would be the point?

I would say how dare you continue the objectification of a black woman, but mostly what I want to do is scream in outrage.

The article is, essentially, an ode to the black butt—specifically Michelle Obama’s. It is titled, predictability: “First Lady Got Back.” Lame title aside, it is a clear demonstration that despite the historic events of Nov. 4, there is still a lot to do about how we talk and think about black people in this country. This is especially true of black women who, whatever their accomplishments, are often seen as no more than the mere sum of their body parts, especially that part.

Click here for the full post.

IS MICHELLE OBAMA’S BACKSIDE OFF-LIMITS?

The debate rages on…

From LATOYA PETERSON at racialicious.com:

While the commenters debate back and forth about whether or not the [Salon] article is “joyful” or “disrespectful,” a large part of me wonders when Salon will publish an article on what faces Michelle Obama in the White House, or an article about racial trends in America penned by a woman of color, or a review of a book like Naked which lays all these issues bare.

My problem with the article isn’t that it’s a lighthearted musing on Michelle’s attributes, as seen through the eyes of another black woman (who – according to Kaplan’s website – has also whipped out personal essays on her own butt, as well as musing on J.Lo’s.)

My problem is that articles about Michelle Obama’s wardrobe, booty, and mom duties are what is fit to publish, what is seen as relevant to a mass audience.

Click here for the full post.

See the referenced Salon article here, posted 11/18/2008:

From ERIN AUBREY KAPLAN at Salon.com:

Free at last. I never thought that I — a black girl who came of age in the utterly anticlimactic aftermath of the civil rights movement — would say the phrase with any real sincerity in my lifetime. But ever since Nov. 4, I’ve been shouting it from every rooftop. I’m not excited for the most obvious reason. Yes, Obama’s win was an extraordinary breakthrough and a huge relief, but I don’t subscribe to the notion that his capturing the White House represents the end of American racial history. Far from it. There is a certain freedom in the moment — as in, we are all now free from wondering when or if we’ll ever get a black president. Congratulations to all of us for being around to settle the question.

But what really thrills me, what really feels liberating in a very personal way, is the official new prominence of Michelle Obama.

Click here for the full story.