Twice in two days, the Los Angeles Times has revealed an odd perspective about relationships—apparently they cannot exist between equals. If one partner is strong, the other is weak. If one succeeds, the other has fallen behind. If one has the spotlight, the other is in darkness.
First Andrew Malcolm posted this weird piece titled “Michelle’s Obama’s got buff arms, but can she do this?” In it he juxtaposes Michelle’s official photo (starring us) with an image of figure skating athletes Sinead and John Kerr in which Ms. Kerr is lifting Mr. Kerr. There is probably a crazy skating term for this but we don’t know what it is. Malcolm calls the photo “amazing,” and writes, “We got to wondering if Michelle Obama could do this with the newly elected commander in chief.”
We aren’t sure just what is so amazing about the photograph. We don’t follow skating, but it doesn’t seem that weird to us that at some point a coach thought, “Hey, let’s try something more interesting than one person always lifting the other one.” Furthermore, no one in figure skating appears to share Macolm’s amazement—we read numerous accounts of the Kerr’s performance, “an impressive OD that was part Lindy Hop and part West Coast Swing,” which earned them seventh place, but none of them mentioned this move. (Hilariously, we did find this in our research.)
We assume Malcolm finds this image “amazing” because he isn’t used to seeing strong women. He linked it to us because Michelle Obama is the only other strong woman he could think of (sorry, feminism!). And he made the assumption that since Michelle is strong, she probably tosses her husband around like a rag doll whenever she feels like it. Because, you know, that’s what strong women do. In fact in the very next post Malcolm, in writing about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Mexico, referred, for no reason at all, to her “bruising assault” on then-candidate Obama during the campaign. Poor li’l Barack! He’s getting it from all sides.
Later the same day, another post went up, titled “Michelle Obama in Europe—could she upstage her husband?” Writer Joanna Neuman fears that Michelle could be her husband’s “biggest challenge,” on their forthcoming European trip, worrying that the First Lady could “emerge as the star of the show.” Neuman thinks the European press will love Michelle, much as they did Jacqueline Kennedy when she was First Lady, and that this will damage the work Our Leader is thre to do. Eek! We are sure the President is not sleeping over this! The economic crisis is clearly nothing compared to what might happen if people pay attention to his wife. And god knows what will happen if we show up!
A marriage, even the First Marriage, is not a zero-sum equation. The gain of one needn’t be at the expense of the other. This seems obvious to us, but we don’t work for the Times, which also ran a story on us and an opinion piece featuring us in the past two days, by the way. Barack’s nightmare of mega press coverage of his wife might be happening right here at home.
And yet, Mr. Obama seems unperturbed. Perhaps his famed equanimity comes at least in part from the knowledge that there is enough strength to go around. A strong man and a strong woman (or the gender arrangement of your choice) can be equal partners. Strong nations can join together to work for economic justice. Once you let go of the idea that someone has to lose, it might be possible for everyone to win.
That was extremely earnest. Time to drop and do 100.
Photo credit: Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times
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