As it happens, I’m working on two different posts at the same time this morning. This one and another one about the part of the national immersion in Trump Derangement Syndrome not being entirely without some truth on its side.
What the posts have in common is that the dominating element of both stories is a function of female psychology and can only be understood in those terms. There’s also the irony that Wilde’s jibe can be applied with some justice to both predator and prey in the two posts.
Megyn’s had her own controversies over the years, including problems with splashy attention seeking, public demeanor, and lately her choice of political allies and villains. That doesn’t mean she is disqualified from critiquing Michelle Obama. There are cases where the adage, “takes one to know one” rings true.
The article quoted here doesn’t make this point, because it is sharply focused on one target. Michelle.
That’s okay with me. She deserves it. The piece appears in an Internet rag called aright Wing News, which is so loaded with pop-up advertising that it’s taken me an hour to produce the consolidated text you see here. I won’t apologize for the Journalism 101 for Dummies style guide approach that says one sentence equals one paragraph. We are no longer living in a literate society. Which means we make do wiypth what we have.
The article:
The Left spent eight years telling you Michelle Obama was untouchable.
Megyn Kelly just spent twelve minutes explaining why that was always a lie.
And Megyn Kelly used Michelle's own words against her.
Kelly Plays the Tape – and the Tape Does the Work
On July 20, Kelly played a clip from Michelle Obama's IMO: The Look podcast – recorded live at the Essence Festival in New Orleans – where the former First Lady told actress Keke Palmer that early media coverage of her campaign speeches focused on her clothing as a deliberate attempt to "diminish" her.
Kelly wasn't buying it for a second.
"Oh my God, she is dripping in narcissism, dripping in it," Kelly said on The Megyn Kelly Show. "Would you at least feign some humility? I'm embarrassed for you. You're actually not that great. You're fine."
She didn't stop there.
"You seem very scripted and artificial to me, if I'm honest. You don't speak from the heart. You didn't move me at all at the Democratic National Convention," she said.
On the fashion coverage grievance, Kelly dismantled it cleanly: every female politician gets written up for what she wears – Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, all of them.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a column.
"So f–k off with this grievance nonsense," Kelly said. "You're not aggrieved."
The Part the Media Won't Ask About
She noted that Malia, 28, and Sasha, 25, both live in Los Angeles – and that the four Obamas are rarely photographed together.
"No wonder the girls fled the coop," Kelly said. "I'm sure they're so happy to be rid of this non-stop negativity."
Michelle Obama has been on a near-constant publicity circuit since leaving the White House – podcasts, festival appearances, book tours.
Her daughters have been notably absent from the public-facing version of that life.
Meanwhile, the Obama marriage has generated its own headlines for months.
Michelle skipped both Jimmy Carter's funeral and Trump's inauguration in January 2025 – showing up for neither while Barack attended alone.
When the couple laughed off the divorce rumors together on Michelle's IMO podcast, Barack joked, "She took me back. It was touch and go for a while."
Which is a strange way to debunk a rumor.
Kelly had noticed that pattern too.
"This is what poor Barack has been dealing with for 20-30 years now," she said. "No wonder the guy is so gray so prematurely."
The Same Media That Picked Apart Melania's Christmas Decorations
The same journalists who spent weeks dissecting Melania Trump's choice of Christmas ornaments gave Michelle Obama blanket immunity to rewrite her own history as a story of courage and persecution.
That's not journalism.
That's a protection racket.
Kelly called Michelle "a lying sack of you-know-what" who "has never seen a situation in which she's not the victim."
That's a statement millions of conservatives have been making at their kitchen tables for years without anyone in mainstream media acknowledging it as a legitimate view.
They're calling Kelly's rant a "meltdown" and an "unhinged" attack because she said something true they can't refute, so they're attacking the messenger.
The most unfortunate circumstance Michelle had to deal with as First Lady was her middle child positioning as the Democrat FLOTUS after Hillary and before Jill. Which makes her the best of a bad lot, those two being the most damaging to the Office of President in American history. Compared to them, Michelle comes across as an clumsy DEI incarnation of a President’s wife. Lacking in personal warmth, maternal interests and causes, and even the intellectual luster of academic credentials that should have made her a political asset (her published thesis from Princeton was all about her and badly written to boot), she spent a lot of time shopping and traveling to 5-star hotels overseas, staying home just long enough to ruin the school lunch diet of millions of American children.
Being publicly grumpy about her image didn’t help. The truth about First Ladies should have been on her side. Scandal has always been an accessory of the President’s helpmeet. The 250th Century in particular was awash with bad behaviors in FLOTUS lives. Mrs. Wilson hijacked the Presidency for herself when Woodrow had a stroke. Eleanor Roosevelt and hubby FDR were cousins. Bess Truman was kept locked away as much as possible. Mamie Eisenhower was reputed to be a drunk, Jackie Kennedy a debutante with a little girl voice mocked by comedians, Lady Bird Johnson an inside trader who doubled LBJ’s net worth whike he was President, Pat Nixon an Ice Queen, Betty Ford another drunk, Rosalyn Carter a character out of a Faulkner novel, Nancy Reagan a deranged movie star with psychics on staff, Barbara Bush a mannish recluse who went on to help pioneer Trump Derangement Syndrome (w/watch counting down days to his death), Laura Bush a woman with a questionable psst involving a vehicular homicide, and then, of course, there was Hillary.
Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary… Serious scandals in every single aspect of her ambitiously ruthless life, leaving who knows how many coverups and buried bodies in her wake. Still not gone even as Michelle had to undergo scrutiny no FLOTUS ever had before, measurement as to her Presidential potential based on wardrobe, Easter Egg hunts, Christmas decorations, and a sullen private life after eight uncharming years in Washington, DC.
After her came Jill, the bookend so to speak, whose list of scandals keeps growing, from suspicions of Presidential usurpation in office all the way back to the sleazy end of her first marriage, which has generated new headlines even this week.
All these women have taken their lumps, some deserved, some not. Why does Michelle suddenly seem like a story to Megyn Kelly this week. Perhaps it’s a “wag the dog” distraction for another woman’s career that might be in peril, caught up in the phony conspiracy theories that follow Trump and his allies wherever he goes.
Should we be glad or sad that Michelle never wooed public approval in quite the way Megyn Kelly has?
Your call, not mine. Unless something excitingly new emerges, I think I’m closing my own book on Michelle at this point.
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