First Lady Michelle Obama: High Turnover of Her Personal Staff & the FLOTUS Cheeseburger Hypocrisy (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 30, 2011
FLOTUS Michelle Obama and her enormous entourage during her Spain vacation last summer
The turnover of FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s personal staff is high.
How high is it?
Much higher than that of other First Ladies.
From Politico, Spotlight takes toll on first lady’s staff:
Less than three years into the job, first lady Michelle Obama is on her third chief of staff and third social secretary. She is on her second communications director, the White House chief usher recently departed, and her press secretary’s last day is Friday.
On Friday afternoon, the first lady’s office announced that the executive director of Obama’s signature campaign to fight childhood obesity also is leaving.
The turnover, greater than under recent first ladies, underscores the pressure and high expectations of working in an operation known for its polish and discipline.
[...]
Some of the nine departures from the East Wing reflect routine attrition. Press secretary Katie McCormick-Lelyveld, for example, leaves Friday after more than three years on the first lady’s staff, dating back to the 2008 campaign. Julianna Smoot left the social secretary’s office to serve as deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.
Robin Schepper, executive director of the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” anti-obesity initiative, is departing after less than a year on the job.
[...]
Pressure on the first lady can trickle down to the staff level, exacerbating internal tensions among aides and occasional conflict with the West Wing, sources said. “For whatever reason,” said one source familiar with the office, the first lady’s staff just hasn’t “gelled.”
“You don’t take these sorts of jobs unless you love the principal [figure],” the source said. “And you can deal with a principal who has high expectations when you’re all gelling as a group, but that just wasn’t happening.”
Like many first ladies who preceded her, Obama came to Washington with a staff partly comprised of friends — people who knew her back in Chicago, such as [former chief of staff to the first lady Susan] Sher and former social secretary Desiree Rogers, who arrived unschooled about the crucible of Washington.
From American Thinker, Michelle Obama’s high staff turnover:
Here’s a shocker: Michelle Obama has trouble keeping staff. Despite the effort by Julie Mason and Amie Parnes to soft-peddle their Politico report regarding the high turnover rate on the FLOTUS’s staff, the message comes through loud and clear.
The first lady is a lovely woman, but she’s tough as nails and that can be hard for some people…She has really high expectations.
Apparently the source of this quote wanted to remain unidentified, that is to say, employed.Titled “Spotlight takes its toll on First Lady’s staff,” the article goes on to suggest that Laura Bush had a similar level of turnover, when, in fact, the same article demonstrates that Mrs. Bush’s turnover was about half that of M.O. After all, the “lovely” Michelle is on her 3rd chief of staff and 3rd social secretary and 2nd communications director in less than 3 years on the job. Did her staffers not realize there might be some spotlight involved in the gig when they signed up?
The lickspittle media is consistently exposed as being the Obamas’ handmaidens, but the length to which this article goes is remarkable. It takes what should be investigative reporting and turns it into just another puff piece.
Rather than investigating why it might be so difficult to remain employed by M.O., the reporters blame it on:
..the pressure…of working in an operation known for its polish and discipline.
[...]
Here’s an idea the gals at Politico never considered: just maybe M.O. has a temperament poorly suited to managing a staff, suffers from the same lack of experience as her greenhorn husband, and just doesn’t play well with others. The authors would rather fall back on the unsupported claim that M.O. Is a
…a lawyer who left a high-powered executive career at the University of Chicago Medical Center before coming to the White House.
In fact, Michelle’s job as a community organizer at the hospital appears to be one created purely as an act of political patronage. Her starting salary of $121, 910 suddenly leaped to $316, 962 once her husband was elected as U.S. senator from Illinois. One of Barack’s first acts in the Senate was to provide a million-plus dollar earmark to Michelle’s employer. There is no evidence to support the idea that Mrs. Obama actually supervised any staff in this position, which was so vital to the hospital that it was eliminated once Michelle no longer needed the income.
From Weasel Zippers, Michelle Obama Staff Turnover Blamed On.. Her Race?:
It must be nice having someone to walk behind you cleaning up all your messes.
“She is, if possible, under more scrutiny than even other modern first ladies, being the first African-American first lady,” said Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University who specializes in first ladies. “She also represents a new generation, really the first post-boomer generation of first lady.”
Sources familiar with the East Wing, who asked not to be named discussing internal dynamics, described the first lady’s office as a challenging workplace, where grueling hours and the expectations of a formidable boss intensify the demands of managing a popular first lady’s schedule, image and agenda.
Were news stories that were written about former First Ladies Laura Bush, or Hillary Clinton ,or Nancy Reagan ever scrutinized by the White House and WH “recommendations” made about removing any unflattering commentary? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps this is a common policy — or perhaps it is only during this administration.
This little news story didn’t get any play in the left-wing media… reported by Doug Powers @ Michelle Malkin, Reminder to the Press: Before Publishing an Article, Ask Yourselves ‘Does This Make FLOTUS Seem Snooty?’:
A small, local news outlet with a name like “Pleasanton Weekly” doesn’t sound very threatening, but according to an email sent to the Daily Caller, the publication has some journalistic teeth that the White House thought needed to be filed down — specifically, the choppers that made Michelle Obama come across as snooty:
A small weekly paper in California claims that a White House official asked it to remove a sentence from a “benign” feature about Marine One because it reflected poorly on first lady Michelle Obama.
[...]
The story in question was a soft feature about Marine One titled, “Inside Marine One, President Obama’s helicopter,” that ran in the paper on April 20. Pleasanton staffer Amory Gutierrez “didn’t get to ride in ‘Marine One,’” she wrote in her story, “but I did get the VIP tour and took photographs of the otherwise unseen aircraft.”
She also wrote a sentence that the White House thought made FLOTUS look snooty.
“Basically the reporter said that the First Lady didn’t speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact,” Allen wrote in her email.
Allen says she “complied” with the White House’s request “because it was not worth making a fuss over.”
This was posted in February 2011 — Politico, Trials of public scrutiny:
When she became first lady in 2009, Obama assumed a traditional role as the Obama administration’s gentler side, taking up noncontroversial causes like support for military families and the fight against childhood obesity. But she has also been stung by the criticism that comes with the territory.
Some have accused her of being a national scold for promoting healthful eating, while others say she shouldn’t have used her influence to get Congress to pass the childhood nutrition bill, paid for in part by cuts to other anti-poverty programs. Critics slammed her for taking a vacation in Spain with friends last year during the recession — even though Obama paid for some of the trip herself. And this week, some called her a hypocrite for serving burgers, bratwurst and other “junk” food at the White House Super Bowl party.
On the recent controversy concerning rapper Common, who wrote and performed pro-cop-killing songs, being honored at the White House as a poet:
As an adult Michelle can listen to gangsta rap all the livelong day. No one cares. But when she corrals area students into the people’s house for how-to workshops then it becomes child endangerment. And that is the public’s business.
Michelle Obama doesn’t like being called out. Acting like a defiant teenager herself she chose to mention the rapper thousands of miles away on a European trip. As far as we know, during the course of her discussion with the girls at Oxford she did not laud any other performer who attended the White House program, only Common. How absolutely disturbing on so many levels.
As I’ve written before, cameras are off limits, no one is allowed to photograph FLOTUS when she is out eating fat-dripping cheeseburgers in public — she confessed in 2009 that she often sneaks out of the White House, per HuffPo and Obama-adoring MSNBC, for her beloved junk-food burgers, while spearheading Nanny State food mandates on everyone else.
I wouldn’t begrudge the First Lady her favorite hamburgers and lobster and other fattening goodies if she hadn’t started waggling her “eat as I say, not as I do” finger at other Americans and has taken money out of the nation’s food stamp program for her own “Let’s Move” initiative.
From New York Post, Burger Watch:
MICHELLE Obama, like her husband, enjoys a good burger, but not as well done. The first lady brought daughters Malia and Sasha to former “Top Chef” contestant Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff Eatery in DC for cheeseburgers, onion rings, fries, and milkshakes. “They got the burgers medium,” says a spy. (President Obama was mildly ridiculed after ordering a burger medium-well in January.) “Three starving Secret Service guys were literally standing over the grill as Spike made the burgers, but didn’t eat,” our source adds. Fellow patrons had their cellphones temporarily confiscated to prevent pictures from being taken.
Now, if the White House had forbidden that photos be taken of First Lady Laura Bush when she was out in public chowing down on burgers, the outcry from the liberal media would be deafening. Potty-mouthed liberal harpie Joy Behar would likely call her the infamous B-word… but would mean it as a *cough* term of endearment.
The FLOTUS food hypocrisy continues — photos of Michelle eating in public restaurants, including her surprise visit last October to Miss Katie’s diner in Milwaukee, are simply nowhere to be found on the Internet (if you find any, please let me know. I’ve searched high and low, to no avail). Reported by the Los Angeles Times, Michelle Obama falls off the healthy eating wagon, downs cheeseburger and fries:
Michelle Obama has been talking for a while now about how Americans should eat healthier.
She’s even proposed some serious menu reforms to the nation’s restaurant owners, as The Ticket reported here.
As The Ticket has reported here and over here, her husband has been ignoring his wife’s advice.Now, it seems the first lady is ignoring her own advice.
A Milwaukee TV station reports that Michelle Obama dropped off the campaign grid for lunch one day last week when she was in Wisconsin to help endangered Democrat Russ Feingold try to salvage his Senate seat.
It seems Mrs. Obama’s motorcade made a surprise stop at a landmark local diner, Miss Katie’s, where everyone says she was very friendly, signed autographs and they were really excited and in awe.
However, the diner staff inadvertently let it slip that when it came time to order, the healthy eating advocate decided not to eat so healthy after all. She passed over the salad idea. And, instead, the first lady veggie gardener downed a cheeseburger and French fries.
Which flies in the face of this… they’re trying desperately to not use the word “ban.”
LA Food Police Ban Burger Joints: Is Your City Next?
Do As I Say…
Don’t tell Michelle what her hubby ate during this press-covered lunch fest… how much fat was in this dish, anyway? Sounds delicious, but since FLOTUS is waging a war against Americans eating food like this, it’s, once again, rather hypocritical.
Associated Press: Obama Takes a Break for Some Chili and Sausage | January 2009
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