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January 22, 2013

On Conservative Panic, Obama “Unmasking True Identity”

Malia Sasha Inauguration 2 viewing stand

There were many moments during yesterday’s ceremonies in which the nation caught glimpses of Obama and his family as human beings apart from the celebrity and pomp: the first family acting like a family, the president’s daughters capturing themselves on an Iphone in the reviewing stand, Michelle Obama’s eye roll at some joke shared between Obama and John Boehner. Those are great moments, rare glimpses into the human beings behind the power of Washington. A sort of access, granted by virtue of cameras and coverage, to who these people really are when they are not guarded and staged.

Michelle Obama Inaguration 2 eye roll

The right wing meme circulating about the Obama — reinforced, it seems, by the Inauguration speech, and the references to Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall — is that the President, untouchable, is finally showing his true liberal colors. Maybe there’s some of that. But perhaps what these pictures demonstrate is something more basic.

Being a young family, one not that familiar with the public eye, with Barack Obama offering more promise and potential than the deep resume, and having just broken the White House color barrier, perhaps the Obamas — with the new four year lease — are finally just getting comfortable.

(photo 1: Joe Klamar/Agence France-Presse–Getty Images. screenshot: AOL via HuffPo)

  • tommo

    About time someone got the attention of the Repiglickin’s. They’ve been on the wrong side of every argument and the wrong side of history since Reagan. It accelerated during the Bush decade where every despicable creature in the nation crawled out from under their rocks, encouraged by the election of the stupidest, most amoral, most ridiculous POTUS ever, George W. Bush.

    Now we need to shame the theocrats, the evolution and climate deniers, and the gun nuts and racists back under their rocks. I want my nation back!

  • Thay Ray

    Ugh. You and the Obamas get a room. What I wouldn’t give for a taste of good old-fashioned journalism, the kind grandma used to read, back before saccharin.