Quote of the day

The first lady jokes about staging a coup so she and the president won't have to leave Hawaii

Published January 4, 2010 3:15PM (EST)

It’s hard to blame Michelle Obama for not wanting to return from her family’s Hawaii vacation to Washington this week. It’s 26 degrees in the capital right now, and that’s to say nothing of the fairly frozen political climate. But did the first lady take her reluctance too far in a comment she made this morning? A frightened nation demands answers.

Speaking to the traveling press corps, Obama suggested, “Let's stay! Are we all in? I'm trying to mount a coup here!”

Presumably there are now a few dozen mass e-mails circulating about how the first lady is a self-acknowledged fascist, whose main intellectual hero is Mussolini.


By Gabriel Winant

Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale.

MORE FROM Gabriel Winant


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