First lady Michelle Obama gave CBS Sunday Morning a little peek into the life of her family at the start of her husband’s second term, and she had one word for their life now that the president has no more elections to worry about: “Glorious.”
“I mean, if I could think of a better word, it’s — you know, it’s nice,” she said, as she sat down with CBS reporter Lee Cowan and took him on a tour of the White House vegetable garden.
“You know, I’d love to walk with you out that gate, but it would cause a stir,” she said, in describing the severe restrictions on her freedom. “When I make a foray into Target, it’s national news. So that stuff had to change, but you know, we are now accustomed to it, and we know how to work within the structure.”
But she said she is looking forward to life after the White House.
“You know, you learn to appreciate the value of anonymity. And the president and I, you know, we will grow to appreciate that greatly in four years, when the everyday sort of things we do don’t make front page news.
“But we also know the privilege of the platform that we have. I don’t take this platform lightly; I try to cherish it and make the most of it every single day.”
While she talked about the wonder of the vegetable garden, and how she has used it to discuss the importance of healthy living, the first lady revealed that the president’s favorite meal is the steak dinner they customarily have on Fridays.
“You know, we’re not vegetarians. We love red meat,” said Obama. “We generally have steak on Friday, and that’s the President’s favorite dinner, so Friday nights are steak nights.”
But when the President isn’t home, their daughters, Sasha and Malia, decide on the dinner meal.
“Dad not being here is kind of a good thing, because they get to pick the menu,” said the first lady. “Because there’s stuff that he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like a lot of cheesy stuff, so it’s sort of like, ‘Dad’s not gonna be home for dinner, we get to pick dinner!’ “
Conservative commentators took issue with the first lady linking the gun-control fight in Congress with the death of children like 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in Chicago a week after she performed at the president’s inauguration. During a recent speech in Chicago, Michelle Obama said of Hadiya, “What I realized was that Hadiya’s family was just like my family. Hadiya Pendleton was me, and I was her.”
Obama told Cowan that the Pendleton murder hit close to home for her because the murder occurred in her hometown.
“And after I gave that speech, I spent some time with a group of wonderful kids at Harper High School in Englewood, a community that has been riddled with violence. And to hear them share their stories of how every day they wake up and they wonder whether they’re going to make it out of school alive. I mean every single one worried about their own death, or the death of someone, every single day,” she said. “We have millions of kids living in these kind of circumstances who are doing everything right, and we, as a nation, have to embrace these kids and let them know that we hear them, we see them. One kid told me he felt like he lived in a cage, because he feels like his community is unseen, unheard, and nobody cares about it.
“What’s our obligation to these kids? We do have one.”
On the right-wing American Thinker website, writer Jeannie DeAngelis had this to say about the first lady’s words: “It’s also an effort on Michelle Obama’s part to paint anyone who doesn’t agree with her husband’s restrictive gun measures as people who are willing to force children to live their lives in terror…The first lady said that after delivering her speech on gun violence in April, she was amazed at the extent to which Chicago’s children were forced to live in subjugation to the fear of being shot. Thus, the unspoken premise of Michelle Obama’s comments is that the cure for children in Chicago being dominated by the fear of being killed by a stray bullet is to subjugate the entire nation’s Second Amendment rights.”
