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Live-Blogging Michelle Obama on ‘The View’

Michelle Obama

Photo: Courtesy of ABC

Now, some of you may have the kind of office where you get to watch a little TV in the corner of your desk all day long. Those of you who do probably catch The View every now and again. (Come on, you really expect us to believe that thing is tuned to CNBC all day?) If you do watch the show, you’ll be sure to be tuned in today, when Michelle “Outspoken” Obama makes her appearance. This is a live-blog for those of you who are not. We’ll watch the show and let you know all the juiciest bits. Sure, they’re going to talk about oversize fake pearls, they’re going to talk about whether her style should matter, and they’re going to bring up the whole “whitey” thing. But that’ll take up approximately seven minutes, and who knows what will happen after that. It should be good.

11:03 a.m.: Okay, Michelle is wearing a black and white floral dress. It’s a little J.Crew in a cute way. She’s not wearing any pearls, rings, or bracelets. She’s got a brooch but it blends. When she was introduced, she immediately interjected. “I have to be greeted properly, fist bump please!” It was a hit, but she admits: “I’m not that hip. I got this from the young staff.”

11:06 a.m.: Barbara mentions the Times cover story about Michelle today, and asks her about all the criticism. “I take it in stride,” she responds, referencing the idea that she wasn’t proud of her country. “Just let me tell you of course I’m proud of my country. Nowhere but in America could my story be possible!”
11:07 a.m.: Elisabeth references the fact that she and Obama are supposed to fight on today’s show and laughs about it. She’s deflating! (And even more amazing, Joy let her complete a sentence!) “I wear my heart on my sleeve,” Obama admitted. “I think people will see through” the media frenzy about her being “negative.”
11:09 a.m.: Michelle says she wrote Laura Bush a letter thanking the First Lady for defending her over the “proud” comments. And further, she admits, she’s “taking some cues” from Laura!
11:12 a.m.: Obama reaches out and takes Elisabeth’s hand and squeezes it. “This girl is solid. She’s got great kids, she’s a great mom, she’s funny. I can disagree with her on a whole bunch of points, but we can come together tomorrow.” Okay, this is overdoing it. She’s a Republican, she’s not an alien.
11:15 a.m.: Now she’s talking about Hillary. “She’s taking [the hits] so that my girls, when they come along, they won’t have to feel it so badly.” Wow, this is a lot of ground in the first fifteen minutes. What are they going to talk about for the rest of the time? Barbara asks about Hillary for V.P., and Obama says she’s just glad she has nothing to do with that decision.
11:16 a.m.: Whoopi spills water on herself. Stop the show! Stop the show! This has never happened before. GO TO COMMERCIAL!
11:17 a.m.: Sherri, bless her, starts talking about Michelle’s style (and her great arms!).
11:19 a.m.: Whoopi goes to the Bill Cosby place and thanks Michelle for being a good example for black women on television, because she says every other time you see black women on the tube, they have no teeth, or if they do, their teeth are covered in gold. Never mind that the two black women on The View have fabulous, white teeth.
11:20 a.m.: Barbara brings up pantyhose. It was inevitable. Michelle Obama is not wearing them. “I stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago, because it was painful.” Now we’re back in safe territory.
11:21 a.m.: Elisabeth asks how Michelle is going to protect the Obama girls from the press. Joy talks over her instinctively. “They have been fabulous,” Obama explains. When someone in the media asked her daughter Malia if she was nervous to go in front of all those crowds, the 10-year-old pragmatically replied: “I realize those people aren’t here to see me. I’m just a kid! … They just think I’m cute. I just wave and I smile and I’m out of there.” Hilarious. We expect big things from those kids. Let’s get some lederhosen on them immediately.
11:30 a.m.: There was a brief respite on the Obama questions as everyone made fun of Elisabeth for her neurotic dinner schedule for her son.
11:31 a.m.: Obama is asked whether she wanted Barack to run for president. “No. Please don’t do this,” she said she told him. “I didn’t want Barack to go into politics!” This is odd, we thought Michelle was the one who told Barack that he had a chance for the president. Hm. This is proving un-Googlable. Commenters?
11:32 a.m.: Barack doesn’t take out the garbage. Bastard!
11:39 a.m.: Matthew Broderick comes on. He fist-bumps everyone. Michelle has heard that his son, James Wilkie, is an Obama fan and asks about it. “He likes the man to beat the lady,” Broderick explains. This is awkward for the Hillary-loving audience. “Kids are drawn to Barack,” Michelle hastens to say. “I think it’s because his name is easy to say.” Nice save — she’s good. This skill is going to work well next year when Gordon Brown publicly congratulates Obama on beating “that old cracker.”
11:44 a.m.: Michelle Obama’s mom once won $17,000 in the slots. We actually rewound this moment, and we still have no idea how it came up. Joy points out that this is “change” we can believe in. Give that woman a raise.
11:50 a.m.: Ooh! New York got a shout out for their Breakfast Manifesto in a new segment on morning meals. Joy, Sherri and Michelle are all standing up now interviewing a nutritionist. Michelle is tall. She is also very politic — not even stopping to make fun of prune juice, after Sherri and Joy do their best “Ew, mom!” faces. Michelle has toast, fruit, and bacon for breakfast. “We’re bacon people,” she admits about the Obama family. What could be more American than that?
11:54 a.m.: Somehow the phrase “Obama eats the bacon” has been repeated about five times. We expect this to catch on — for the Democrats, as a pork-barrel-spending mantra probably, and for Republicans, as a gay thing.
11:59 a.m.: At the signoff, Michelle grasps Elisabeth’s hands again. Geez, who knew she took the Post so seriously?
Noon: Well, it’s over. Michelle did a great job, a lot more relaxed than Cindy McCain when she was on, but not necessarily headline-making. We expect the parts about Laura Bush, the fist bump, and the daughters will make the news tomorrow. And, of course, the bacon. Elisabeth will be on Hannity and Colmes tonight, and Joy will be on Larry King Live. Tune in to see their postmortems.

Live-Blogging Michelle Obama on ‘The View’