Michelle Obama's Vacuousness

    So I found out the other day that former First Lady, Michelle Obama, has a new podcast out titled IMO. (as in, ‘in my opinion’). Co-hosted by her and her brother, Craig Robinson, the pod’s aim, according to Obama, is to ‘‘let people in’’ and ‘‘have honest conversations about how people are working it through.’’ I know, I don't know what "Working it through" means, either. But she graduated from law school, so in spite of the contrary evidence, maybe she is smarter than me. And let me state here and now, I am not a fan of Ms. Obama. Sort of like she is not a fan of her husband. But we’ll get to that in a moment. 

    So, being the dope that I am, I got curious and had to check it out. Well, the podcast is as boring and full of platitudes as it sounds – I barely got through the first episode. Still, what did I learn? Obama and her brother were close growing up. They went to the same university. Their parents would talk to them over the kitchen table… On and on, and on and on it goes in this vein. You think I’m boring? I swear to the gods I had the pistol at the ready to end it all. They tell us they grew up in a two-bedroom apartment that was so small (How small was it, Michelle?) the dining room had to be used as a living room. We even get to hear about the homemade decor their mother made for the siblings shared bedroom, which Ms. Obama calls ‘poverty crafting’. Please, kill me now...

    The faux-humility soon grates. ‘‘That’s really ironic how we were talking about how small our place was growing up’’, says Robinson, ‘‘and look where we’re doing this taping, in this big beautiful Airbnb’’. (I hate to nitpick here, but I will tell Mr. Robinson the same thing I told Alanis...that is NOT ironic! But let’s move on.) Obama chimes in at this point, saying, ‘‘Who would’ve thought we’d be able to be in a snazzy place like this?’’ Which would sound a little more sincere if it didn’t come from a former resident of the White House.

    Believe it or not, this awful podcast is not Obama’s first podcast rodeo. She’s got a history of churning out this crap. In 2020, she partnered with Spotify for The Michelle Obama Podcast, interviewing her husband. Then, in 2023, she made The Light Podcast with Audible – one of the episodes was titled, ‘‘Our hair is a portal into our souls,’’ and no, I am not making that up. Yep, I listened to snippets of those two dreadful works, as well. Never let it be said that I do not give it my all for my readers. Even if it endangers my mental health!

    It should be clear by now that Ms. Obama is incapable of coming up with compelling content for contemporary audiences. Wait, let me correct that; incapable of coming up with compelling content for intelligent audiences. One newspaper, a bastion of the centrist establishment, has called IMO ‘‘dreary and in denial.’’ They were being kind.

    Media Matters for America (MMA) recently released a report complaining that the most popular figures online are ‘‘overwhelmingly right-leaning.’’ I would argue that MMA misses the point. Shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience are popular not because they are ‘right-leaning’, but because they are authentic, unguarded and interesting, unlike IMO, which is a preening vanity project in which someone who is already rich and famous pretends to be just like us.

    Indeed, in what must be the most disingenuous moment of the year, Robinson fondly reminisces about his childhood chores, in particular the smell of Pine-Sol, a once popular detergent brand. ‘Ooh, nothin’ like Pine-Sol!’ says Obama. It turns out, though, that this super-duper, extra-real story about the warm nostalgic smell of mopping floors is not quite what it seems. Pine-Sol sponsored the episode. If I wasn’t such a cynic, I might venture to guess that these two had never even heard of Pine-Sol. But I digress...

    That isn’t the only time Obama and Robinson pull this trick. They also tell a charming story about renting half of a two-family house that their aunt owned, and how great that was. That feeds effortlessly into an ad for Chase Bank home-mortgage lending. At points, IMO feels like pure grift.

    In some ways, it is all a bit of a shame. Even though I find her obnoxious and almost Hillary-like in her disdain for people, especially people who don’t think like her, millions of women have genuine admiration for her. She’s a successful, somewhat smart woman. But she’s now posing as someone she is not. She is downplaying, perhaps even hiding, the privileged life she has led, in order to sell Pine-Sol to an audience that she clearly thinks is frighteningly stupid. [Full disclosure: Ms. Obama lost me not long after her husband’s first presidential election win, when she was quoted in an interview saying, ‘‘This is the first time I have ever been proud of my country.’’ I mean, it’s one thing to be stupid and to keep it to oneself; it’s a completely different thing to advertise it to the entire world.]

    Ms. Obama has often made being first lady sound like an inconvenience, but here she suggests it caused serious resentment in her marriage. Robinson even tells her ‘‘not to penalize [Barack] for being really good at what he does.’’ I mean, even though I disagreed with most of Obama’s programs and philosophy of government, I appreciated the professional, and at times endearing, public image the Obamas projected when he won in 2008. They actually seemed to like each other, which was a far cry from Bill and Hillary, who were the emotional equivalent of watching Tiger and Phil being paired in the same group at a golf tournament! So the implication that Michelle was not her husbands’ biggest fan was a little jarring – like finding out the Hollywood couple you admire secretly hate each other and live separate lives.

    This also hints at a missed opportunity to speak more openly. There is so much Ms. Obama and her brother could have talked about honestly and genuinely. They could have talked about their parents, and in particular their father, Fraser Robinson, who had multiple sclerosis. They could have talked about anything, in fact, that touched on their real lives, I mean, other than the Pine-Sol, and it would have been far more interesting than the morass of insincerity they serve up on IMO.

    In the end, it seems Michelle Obama simply doesn’t care to share anything with her audience. She assumes the Democratic base – which, let’s face it, is the only source of audience for this show – will consume any crap and be on their knees listening to her while they consume it. (Actually, that kind of reminds me of Trump supporters. But that’s for another essay.) The rest of you, hopefully, will give this empty, cliché-ridden affair a very wide berth. You have been thusly, warned.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com