Michelle Obama: Tired of ‘angry black woman’ stereotype
ASSOCIATED PRESS January 11, 2012 7:58PM
First lady Michelle Obama with her daughters Malia, center, and Sasha.
Updated: January 12, 2012 7:46AM
First lady Michelle Obama is challenging assertions she’s forcefully imposed her will on White House aides, saying she’s tired of people portraying her as “some kind of angry black woman.” Mrs. Obama told CBS News Wednesday that she hasn’t read New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor’s new book, which characterizes her as a behind-the-scenes force in the Executive Mansion whose strong views often draw her into conflict with President Barack Obama’s top advisers and who has occasionally bristled at some of the demands and constraints of life in the White House. “I never read these books,” she said in the interview broadcast Wednesday. “So I’ve just gotten in the habit of not reading other people’s impressions of people. “I love this job. It has been a privilege from Day 1. Now there are challenges. If there’s any anxiety that I feel, it’s because I want to make sure that my girls come out of this on the other end whole.” The Kantor book portrays a White House in which tensions developed between Mrs. Obama and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary and presidential adviser Robert Gibbs. The book, titled “I do care deeply about my husband,” Mrs. Obama said Wednesday. “I am one of his biggest allies. I am one of his biggest confidants.” But she sought to put aside “this notion that I sit in meetings.” “I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” she said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.” “There will always be people who don’t like me,” Mrs. Obama added, and she said she could live with that. She said that she’s “just trying to be me, and I just hope that over time, that people get to know me.” Asked about an assertion of dissension between herself and now-Chicago Mayor Emanuel, the first lady said she has “never had a cross word” with him. The same, she said, applies to Gibbs, whom she described as “a good friend, and remains so.” “I’m sure we could go day to day and find things people wished they didn’t say to each other,” Mrs., Obama said. “And that’s why I don’t read these books. ... It’s a game, in so many ways, that doesn’t fit. Who can write about what I feel? What third person can tell me what I feel?” Mrs. Obama said that when questions or conflicts arise involving her and the White House staff, her East Wing staff resolves the issue with her husband’s staff in the West Wing. “If there’s communication that needs to happen, it’s between staffs,” she said. “I don’t have conversations with my husband’s staff.”
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