‘Yeah, she’s got a temper. But we decided to keep her anyway!’ ”

[Pirate Smile]

“I remember Michelle telling me about a teacher complaining about her temper in elementary school,” said Verna L. Williams, a law professor in Cincinnati who has been a friend of Mrs. Obama since their days at Harvard. “She said her mom told the teacher: ‘Yeah, she’s got a temper. But we decided to keep her anyway!’ ”

Michelle Obama Takes to the Trail


Michelle Obama with Stevie Wonder, far left, at a campaign rally at UCLA.

By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: February 14, 2008

CHICAGO — There is no confusing Michelle Obama for her husband on the campaign trail.

-snip-
“What I’ve learned is that my humor doesn’t translate to print all the time,” she said in the interview. “But usually when I’m speaking to a group, people understand what I’m trying to say, they get the humor, they understand the sarcasm, they get the joke.”
Her audiences do laugh. Talking about how long it took her and Mr. Obama, 47, to pay off their student loans (they did so only in the last couple of years), she told a church audience in Cheraw, S.C., “I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund.” They cackled. She continued: “Then I heard Dick Cheney was supposed to be a relative! Thought we might be in for something here.”

-snip-
Mrs. Obama’s nickname inside the campaign is “the closer” because she is skilled at persuading undecided voters to sign pledge cards. But as a smooth orator, she is also known as a connector, volunteering her own life lessons from working-class roots and discussing her confrontation with a culture of low expectations.

She has been transparent about more mundane things, too, like leaning on her mother for child care while she is on the road.
Mrs. Obama does not have a nanny, only her mother. “Thank God for Grandma!” Mrs. Obama says more than once on the campaign trail, adding that she “couldn’t breathe” if she thought her girls, who attend private school here in Chicago, were being neglected for the campaign.

-snip-
Mrs. Obama is an organized and self-described “task master,” who has always been focused — so much so, that when she met Mr. Obama in 1989, when they were working at the same law firm in Chicago, she refused to go out on what Mr. Obama called “a proper date.”
“Eventually I wore her down,” he wrote in his memoir. During the summer when she met Mr. Obama, Mrs. Obama said she was influenced by his sense of purpose, and began to change her own career to add more service to others.

Martha L. Minow, a professor at Harvard Law School, did work with Mrs. Obama for a nonprofit educational group in Chicago. Dr. Minow’s father, Newton N. Minow, is senior counsel at Sidley Austin, the law firm where the Obamas met. Dr. Minow said she remembered hearing about the day Mr. Obama announced to her father that he would be leaving the firm to pursue public service.
“My dad was very supportive,” she said. “Then he said, ‘One more thing, I’m going to take Michelle with me.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/us/politics/14michelle.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1202960634-fcQn3P0ha1i0d6/6UGRvdA

[beachmom]

1. Great article. Thanks for posting, Pirate Smile. nt

[Pirate Smile]

2. Interesting that they mention a part of the GMA interview that GMA didn't bother to air:

On some occasions, Mrs. Obama’s straight talk has also made it necessary for the campaign to explain her remarks. In the case of “Good Morning America,” campaign officials pointed out that in an unbroadcast portion of the interview, Mrs. Obama later acknowledged that as a good Democrat, she would need to support Mrs. Clinton if she were the nominee.

But they included the controversial part at the top of the article and didn't include the paragraph above until down near the end.

I did like the article though.

[Cha]

3. I get Michelle's

humor..she cracked me up when I listened to her at the UCLA rally on c-span. What a day that was!

[TexasObserver]

4. I think Michelle Obama is awesome!!

[Pirate Smile]

5. kick

[Pirate Smile]

6. dupe