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You know, there was a time when an article like this would have worked me up into a righteous rage.
Now? Not so much.
See, this is what marriage is.
Look, when your spouse has an impossible dream and even the glimmer of a chance of achieving it, and you believe in him *or* her, you support them. As it becomes more and more likely, you make sacrifices for that dream, trusting, of course, that he or she won't fuck it up and throw those sacrifices back in your face, a la Eliot Spitzer.
That's what you do when your husband or wife gets that tenure-track offer at that first-tier university. That's what you do when your spouse has a shot at Congress, or the Senate, or the White House.
While Bill Clinton probably got quite a bit of ego gratification out of his wife's run for office, he put everything he had behind her--even risked tarnishing his image by going after her chief rival. I still maintain, whatever people say, that that is a solid marriage.
And the same thing with the Obamas. If I were in Michelle's shoes, I'd do the same thing. That's what you do when you love someone and have committed your life to them. Someday, eight years from now, maybe even sooner, he'll start to make it up to her. That's just what couples in healthy marriages do. One gives, and then the other gives back. I'm sorry if this sounds retro, but, well, maybe marriage is retro.
Anyways, I'm happy to see all the gushing over her taste in clothing and her elegance and grace. Like him, she's playing it cool. No angry outbursts about baking cookies and giving teas, understandable though that might be (and I sympathized mightily with Hillary back in 1992, believe me). She's not giving the press, particularly the right wing press, any ammunition, and it's driving them batshit that those children are beautiful and bright and happy and perfect and thoroughly unlikely ever to partake in drunken shenanigans like the children of the previous occupant. I say, more power to her.
