Remember back in 2007/2008 when Democratic candidate Barack Obama was being called an elitist? Well, if you miss that kind of media coverage, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank has got you covered (9/18/09) here, writing up Michelle Obama's visit to a D.C. farmers market:

The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there's a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Iowans didn't have a Whole Foods.

In a column on media treatment of Michelle Obama, Katha Pollitt (Nation, 4/20/09) points out this forehead-smacking quote from New York magazine's David Samuels (3/15/09):

There are clear limits to Michelle's ambition. She went to excellent schools, got decent grades, stayed away from too much intellectual heavy lifting, and held a series of practical, modestly salaried jobs while accommodating her husband's wilder dreams and raising two lovely daughters. In this, she is a more practical role model for young women than Hillary Clinton, blending her calculations about family and career with an expectation of normal personal happiness.

To which Pollitt responds:

Would you like some manly condescension with that factual misinformation, ladies? By all means, avoid "too much intellectual heavy lifting"! If Samuels regards $273,618--Michelle Obama's salary in her last year as head of community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals--as modest, he must be the richest magazine journalist in the world. Michelle Obama, who made almost twice as much as her husband the senator, earned more than 99 percent of the population, and 98 percent of men. Moreover, she did so while raising two small children, often without her husband, who was off legislating in Springfield and Washington. That Samuels, like a 1950s home ec teacher, advises "young women" to keep their ambitions "practical" if they want to be happy shows just how disturbing Hillary Clinton--or rather the nightmare fantasy of Hillary Clinton--has been to certain male psyches. Because what if women wanted to be the ones with the wild dreams? What if they wanted men to be the enablers and nurturers? That would be awful.

From the end of the NBC Nightly News (3/3/09):

CHUCK TODD: And finally, let's close with Michelle Obama. Amazing numbers for a new first lady. Sixty-three percent positive rating. What makes it more remarkable, six months ago you and I were talking about at the Democratic Convention, she might be a liability if he's not careful. She's no liability.

Wait a second--you mean that some of the inane chatter heard in corporate media has no relationship to reality?!?! That is "remarkable."

In the same column (2/16/09) that he cites Sam Donaldson's reputation as a "blowhard liberal," the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has an item in which he complains that "the Vogue cover story on Michelle Obama, by editor at large André Leon Talley, is nothing if not laudatory." Kurtz writes:

The Talley article mentions briefly that Obama showed up "at a fundraiser I co-hosted last year." That would be a $1,000-a-head fundraiser--"An Evening With Michelle Obama"--also hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour and designer Calvin Klein.

Wouldn't the story have had more credibility if written by someone who hadn't helped the Obama campaign raise money?

Wouldn't Kurtz's criticism have more credibility if he acknowledged that fashion magazines are not exactly known for their hard-hitting attacks on the celebrities they profile?

Kurtz's subhead for the item--"Coziness in Vogue"--suggests that the article is a sign of the times, part of his ongoing "Obama Adulation Watch"...which he continues under that heading in the same column, with an item about a New York Times blogger who reports that women often dream about having sex with Barack Obama.

This kind of media criticism is barely above the level of Jonah Goldberg. If Kurtz is trying to evaluate what kind of honeymoon the press is giving Obama, shouldn't the fact that cable news allowed Republican lawmakers to dominate the debate over his stimulus plan carry more weight than the ethical lapses of Vogue?