This Recording

Michelle Obama.

She is less amused by you than you think.

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

Girl went to Harvard Law, respect!

“If you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”

“Chatty Patty” — The Minders (mp3)

“One of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is he a good and decent person?”

You’re speaking my language Michelle and I love it when you wear hoop earrings!

Your husband’s a little bit of a toolbox, but he’s a likable guy, and I bet he’s really nice to you and listens to everything you say and buys you gelato.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, the other, to let her have it.

To wit:

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 43, is not your mother’s political spouse. She is 5 foot 11, earned more than $300,000 last year, has two Ivy League degrees and was just named to Vanity Fair’s 68th annual international best-dressed list.

But on the campaign trail, she has carved out a niche connecting with women over shared daily struggles: to get the kids up, their hair brushed and out the door; to have a job and a family and not go crazy; to hope for better for their daughters when they grow up.

As she crosses the United States on behalf of her husband, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Michelle Obama reaches out to a new generation of American women – those much-studied multitaskers who hope to change the workplace but, in the process, have inspired headlines like “Opt Out or Pushed Out” and “One Sick Child Away from Being Fired.”

Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said the Obamas “capture absolutely perfectly what’s going on with their generation.”

A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The rest is trust.

Also:

With spouses less programmed than in the past, the line is blurrier between what women like Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Obama want to say and what the campaigns need them to say.

“These are two women lawyers who have been in the professional world where they’re expected to speak up,” Mr. Anthony said. “But they still serve as windows into their husbands’ character.”

And possibly windows into the campaign’s needs. Witness Mrs. Edwards’s recent lament: “We can’t make John black. We can’t make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars.” Clearly she was expressing the campaign’s frustration at the media’s priorities, but she was skewered anyway (sometimes hilariously, with one blogger writing, “Mrs. Edwards wishes husband John was a black woman”).

Don’t worry about what that betch says, Michelle. She’s just mad because she’s married to a lawyer who spends more time on his hair care than quality time watching Top Chef with her.

“I’m tired of being afraid,” she said to rousing applause at the small rural town of Council Bluffs in western Iowa, the state where the nomination process kicks off.

Um, Michelle, when was it that you were afraid?

Nowsy?

“Dark Center of the Universe” — Modest Mouse (mp3)

Michelle, you are my new truest and realist. God Bless.

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.