I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn't mine. You completely expressed my black feminist (big booty) sensibility. And you even went on to the hair! We can bring our obsessions out into the sunlight because THE FIRST LADY IS A BLACK LADY! Yeah! What a cause for celebration!

Please, some serious articles about MO ! This one was just plain silly. Who really cares anyway ? Not me !!

Since Ms. Walsh has published an article that reduces Ms. Obama to her butt, this signals the end of Salon's feminism. Today, Broadsheet will be replaced with Dudesheet.

Hey, dudes, click on Dudesheet if you want to see some fine, fine asses!

I just made an account to tell you that I won't be reading your website anymore. I've read it occasionally through out the past four years, and I started reading it more frequently before the election. This article is a real low for your website. I saw it last night on the front page and I thought it would be gone by this morning, yet it's still there. The fact that you would even consider publishing this article is just ridiculous. Of course, I'm sure it was only published to bring attention to your website. So maybe you've gained a few page views, but you've lost one disgruntled reader.

This article was the last straw. A HEADLINE article about the future first lady's booty???? I've tried. god knows I've tried. I watched as Salon drifted from a truly independent, intellectually stimulating web site to something so far left and so catering to the superficial, to the whiny concerns of vapid writers... first I let my premium membership go. Now I am letting the whole site go. ah Salon, I will miss you.

She has freely chosen how she wants the world to see her. The rest of us are equally free to view her choices of attire and appearance and dress as we too, see fit.

For one thing, she's so tall she should break up her tall figure with jackets, skirts and trousers, and yes!! nice, elegant trousers with pleats and with those sheath dresses that show every bump and bulge, a jacket too. Wide belts don't cut it .... narrow ones do.

I might suggest the author stop being so defensive and stubborn.

When she was on 60 min, I saw an awful lot of leg, knees and thigh. And a lot of arms.

Maybe a wee bit too much 'flesh'? She dominated the show.

And yes, I happily voted for and contributed to Pres-elect Obama.

For lack of a better word this is bullshit!!! As black woman, I'm a tad annoyed that another black woman would write about our future First Lady, who is poised, educated, accomplished and classy and the subject of her article would be Michelle Obama's behind???!! We are just waayyyy too excited and it's make our minde bubble over with foolishness. Get a life dear, seriously.

One of the most intelligent, relevant, and accurate articles in your history. Really, most of your stuff is superficial and uninformed...the literary equivalent of urban sprawl. But compared to the garbage you publish on things like energy, immigration, or climate, this was fact-filled and well done.

Ditto what others have said. Are there suddenly no pressing issues facing this country? Is President-elect Obama looking at an easy glide into the White House? Is the damage done by the Bush administration suddenly gone?

Honestly, this is what you want to headline your website?

Sex sells, controversy sells, to put it simply. This article will probably get more page views than anything else Salon publishes this week. More page views equals higher ad rates, equals profitability. The only thing I'm not sure of is if Walsh is doing this consciously (in which case, she deserves at least a little evil genius respect), or if she actually thinks this is good writing (in which case, well, wow, just wow).

This whole thing brings to mind a discussion I had with my cousin's wife. She worked for Rick Santorum's Pennsylvania Senate campaign, and when we were talking afterward about why he lost, she brought up that they thought that that wrestling ad (this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnfURvvNSI8) was "really successful" because it got so many page views. She didn't realize that the reason it got so many views is because people were linking to it to mock it. I picture Walsh sitting at her desk, looking at the page views for this and thinking "Wow, Kaplan is such a popular and great writer, look at how many people are reading this article! It's great how much respect and credibility she is bringing to Salon". Or maybe not.

Salon is such a paradox to me - the regular columnists are mostly pretty good, and most the blogs (with the exception of Broadsheet, although the Machinist has been pretty poor as well since Farivar took over) are usually very good or at least decent, but the "featured stories" are often downright awful. The things that are mostly beyond Walsh's immediate control are good, the things that she presumably has more say over are hit or miss at best, downright asinine at worst. We can haz David Talbot back, plz? kthnxby

I have not read the article, and I will not read it. I find it incredibly offensive that Salon would feature an article about the future first lady's behind. No matter how erudite or insightful the article may be about its subject, this is not an appropriate topic for Salon.

Call me an old grump (though I'm neither fairly young and generally cheerful), call me a prude (hah!) - I just think that entertaining this topic when writing about an accomplished professional woman is demeaning and wrong.

I wouldn't really want to hear about any First Lady, or President's, specific body parts. But it seems that women, black or white, are considered fair-er game to be reduced to the sum of their parts.

It kind of hurt when I kept having to hear about Hillary Clinton's thighs or (c)ankles too (and this started when she was First Lady). I admired her for her brains, spirit, and overall beauty, which did shine through to me whether it fit magazine model definitions or not. Thank goodness there is so much more beauty to be seen than in the pages or magazines or on ET.

Isn't it a better demonstration of respect and more uplifting to all of us women, regardless of our body shapes and sizes, to admire our First Families without reducing them to crude observations such as "got back" and their "booty"s? Heaven help us when Malia and Sasha go through puberty...are we going to have to read about their "booties" as well?

Private conversation between friends is one thing, and I wouldn't judge Ms. Kaplan for having this conversation with her friends, but a headline story on a major internet or print publication seems just tawdry and sensationalist of Salon. I agree with the prior poster who compared this to Fox news' use of the "baby mama" term. Why is one OK and the other less so?