Gaffe in Touching the Queen? Hell's No Says the AP: "Michelle Obama charms queen away from protocol"

She just plumed charmed 1000 years of royal protocol off her.

Michelle Obama's meeting with Queen Elizabeth II began with a handshake and ended in a hug.

...

Mrs. Obama clearly made an impression with the 82-year-old monarch — so much that the smiling queen strayed slightly from protocol and briefly wrapped her arm around the first lady in a rare public show of affection.

Either that, or she was trying to undo the faux pas of Michelle Obama hugging her by reciprocating... reluctantly.

The AP is pretty sure they know which it is, though.

In more Michelle Obama adulation, the world is going ga-ga over Michelle Obama's fashion disasters.

In a report, Tina Brown suggested that Nicolas Sarkozy's wife -- a former model, who is still smokin' hot -- did not join the Obama's on this trip because Mrs. Sarkozy -- the model, remember, who is as well-put together as anyone -- because she feared she'd be compared "unfavorably" to the sublimely beautiful Michelle Obama.

The media does this frequently with women they like -- we had to endure sixteen years of deadpan insistence that Hillary Clinton was "beautiful," for example. But never to this extent.

I don't mind some light let's-pretend-to-be-nice flattery of a quite average looking woman like Hillary or Michelle Obama. Women's looks are always commented upon -- even though in a supposedly enlightened age they shouldn't be, especially by the press, at the vanguard of sexual enlightenment -- and if you're forced to comment on an average woman's appearance, sure, occasionally claim she's "beautiful." Just to be polite.

This insistence -- apparently on the square, too -- that the gargantuan sasquatch Michelle Obama is beautiful and puts to shame a top fashion model is positively ludicrous.

I know what's going on -- over-the-top liberal partisans wish to call her beautiful partly to reward her for helping Obama win the election. (Republican women, of course, are punished for their political achievements by endless media attacks on their looks and fashion choices.) And no one in the editorial section can ask reporters to calm down with these obviously fantastical claims because the moment they say, "Hey, let's not oversell this too much; it's a bit shaky even claiming it less hyperbolically," they'll get rapped as (wait for it) racists who cannot appreciate a black woman's beauty.

There are, of course, any number of beautiful black women. Some of them are even top fashion models, but these too, I'm sure, would be compared "unfavorably" to Michelle Obama should they dare to stand in the same room as she.

It's not the polite-but-silly flattery that bugs me. If this were just some occasional bit of puffery, fine. I get it: Women's looks are important (more important than they should be, our media betters are always quick to point out), and some light, um, overstatement as to Michelle Obama's pulchritude may be necessary. Or at least chivalrous.

I'm a conservative. I have no problems with some outdated, heteronormative, male-chauvanistic, martial-virtues-inspired chivarly.

But the media has gone way past the boundaries of let's-just-be-nice-and-pretend mode. They are determined that we all accept that, despite the report of our very eyes, that Michelle Obama is among the most physically beautiful specimens of womanhood in the entire world, easily outclassing women who made millions of dollars simply because they were, in fact, actually beautiful.

Now is Michelle Obama actually ugly? I kid about it for purposes of push-back, and I note her resemblance to Lt. Worf of Star Trek, but no, she's not ugly. What she is is what many of us are -- neither attractive enough nor unattractive enough to warrant particular comment one way or another.

Unless you have an agenda, of course.

I don't find her attractive. But she's in that gray area, which, again, most people are in, where someone could find you attractive, if their eyes responded to your good features and somehow didn't notice your bad features.

More or less average, again. Like many husbands and many wives. Attractive enough to their partner, but not attractive enough that most would notice.

Let me point out that Laura Bush was an attractive enough woman -- no stunner, no model, no head-turner, but pleasant enough to look at. And I am having trouble recalling her ever being called "beautiful."

Or ever having heard the suggestion that, say, Heidi Klum had passed on a White House invite for fear of the uncharitable comparisons with Mrs. Bush.

I'm sure that Mrs. Bush would have appreciated a bit of flattery from the press, having endured eight years of stress and the occasional nasty attack on her daughters.

But the press doesn't wish to reward her. They don't like her.

I guess this just proves the obvious: You find the one you love to be beautiful. And the press has definitely found the ones they love.

P-Shop:

Look at that. Look at her bold fashion choices in ceremonial armor. The long clean lines of Vera Wang mixed with the titanium-mesh protection of famed Romulan armorer Kana Tren of Luxor 7.

I'm told the Consort to the Overwarlord of the Klingon Empire refused to show up for this picture, afraid her looks, her fashion, and her skills with the bat'leth double-sword might be compared unfavorably to Michelle "Weapons Officer" Obama.

Please, media. I don't particularly enjoy bashing Michelle Obama on something as trivial as her looks. Which, again, are unremarkable in any way. If you can just cool it with claiming she's Aphrodite Risen Again From the Sea, then the rest of us can stop telling you um, not so much.

And Oh... Here is Carla Bruni, Sarkozy's wife. (Whom I mistakenly called "Mrs. Sarkozy" above.)

Yeah. See how much she has to worry about?

I mean, look at her. She has biceps like a girl for crying out loud.

Thanks to Aaron S. for the p-shop and DrewM. for the tip on Sarkozy's wife.

Disagreement: from a reader--

Michelle is hawt. I would totally hit that.

Posted by: The Predator

Well, like I said: It's all in the eye of the beholder. Or the infrared targeting lenses of the beholder. Whichever.

posted by Ace at 03:28 PM

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