Salon: Did Michelle Obama go on vacation because she hates her husband (and America)?

Did Michelle Obama go on vacation because she hates her husband (and America)?

By Alex Pareene

The first lady's trip riles Maureen Dowd, Mickey Kaus, Matt Drudge and plenty of other bored trolls

http://www.salon.com/news/michelle_obama/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/08/09/michelle_obama_vacation_outrage



Michelle Obama smiles while she visits Marbella, Spain on Wednesday, Aug. 4.

Mickey Kaus, Maureen Dowd and Matt Drudge agree: Attention must be paid to a vacation taken by the president's wife and their young children.

Maureen Dowd wants to know why that terrible Michelle Obama isn't making her husband "toast" and martinis instead of jetting around the world cavorting with "a cavalcade of Secret Service agents, friends, children and staff" while he sits around miserably solving all the world's problems. Michelle is "giggling" at her hardworking husband, apparently, instead of giving him foot rubs or whatever wives are supposed to do when their husbands get home.

Moving from bizarrely retrograde to outright batshit, we turn to former Slate blogger and current failed Senate candidate Mickey Kaus, who, considering the first lady's utterly unremarkable trip to Spain, postulates "three levels of perception." The "Real Insider," according to Mickey, knows that Michelle Obama's trip ("with her daughter and an expensive posse") means: "Jeez, they must have had some kind of fight. She's pissed! This is a big 'screw you.'" (Women, amirite?)

Mickey Kaus is not personally saying that Michelle Obama left Barack Obama alone on his birthday because they're fighting! He is just saying that there are ways of perceiving her decision to do so that imply that it was a slight of some kind, due, most likely, to their fighting. (Claiming that baseless speculation is merely an analysis of how various other people will "perceive" some piece of news that had no deeper meaning until it was imbued with one by people like Mickey Kaus allows Kaus to pretend that he is not engaging in baseless speculation.)