Forget how many men Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has slept with – the big headline America has grabbed out of a juicy new biography of the French first lady is the revelation that Michelle Obama thinks being first lady is “hell”.
Forget how many men Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has slept with – the big headline America has grabbed out of a juicy new biography of the French first lady is the revelation that Michelle Obama thinks being first lady is “hell”.
Unlike Bruni she doesn’t have to put up with people publishing books listing every former lover she has ever had. But she does still get quite a lot of criticism in the American press and maybe that’s why she says she “can’t stand” being first lady.
This summer she was blasted for taking a fancy holiday to Spain (including lunch with the Royal Family) whilst lots of ordinary Americans are unemployed.
Then the Obamas all went down to Florida and told the rest of America to vacation on the Gulf Coast – despite the BP oil spill.Before taking off to the considerably more up-scale Martha’s Vineyard for their own holiday.
All this seemed to get blamed on Michelle.
This is a strong minded and forthright woman who has not submitted to a voluntary lobotomy the moment she moved into the West Wing. And not all of America is entirely comfortable with that. Only Hillary Clinton before her was as feisty or out spoken and she didn’t win too many fans during her time as First Lady.
Now, in an authorized biography written by French journalists Carla Bruni says that during her visit last March to the White House with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, she asked the current first lady about her post.
“Don’t ask,” Obama said, according to Bruni. “It’s hell. I can’t stand it.”
The White House isn’t commenting, of course. But it’s a convincing story. It’s easy to imagine that woman like Michelle feels constrained by the “spouse” role she finds herself in. During the 2008 campaign she got into trouble several times for being refreshingly honest and although she sometimes made headlines it also made her popular with lots of voters who loved her authenticity and honesty.
The fact that she now has to be even more careful about every word she says makes this revelation potentially very embarrassing whilst also entirely believable
It’s reported that Carla and Michelle are not the very best of friends anyway. Michelle was supposedly unimpressed by Carla’s revelation that she and Sarko kept the Queen waiting whilst they made love
A rather bigger faux pas than just putting your arm around Her Majesty – which Michelle got into trouble for when she came to London.
The book goes on to suggest that coolness between the two women has made US-French relations at the very highest diplomatic levels “frosty”.
Michelle Obama is described “the only one in (Carla’s) eyes able to challenge her for the title of the world’s sexiest and most glamorous first lady.”
Michelle – five feet and eleven inches tall in stocking feet – is one of the worlds’ few first ladies who can stand beside the tall and elegant former supermodel without looking like a frump. Yet it is still sometimes speculated that she is jealous of the fact the Carla “does” Jackie O better any American has since the Kennedys left the White House. Without Carla on the scene, Michele would be the uncontested most elegant first lady in the western world.
But it could be exactly this sort of speculation, this kind of obsession with the totally superficial, that is the reason why Michelle says she its hell being First Lady