MIchelle Obama to OFA Team @HQ: "You all are doing a great job!" (photo)

(CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE)

From Michelle Obama, on Twitter.

"Michelle Obama: Trayvon ‘tragedy’ should rally Americans" (with audio)

David Edwards (RAW STORY), with audio (02:13):

First Lady Michele Obama is calling on Americans to rally around the family of an unarmed African-American teen who was recently shot to death by a neighborhood watchmen in Florida.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, the first lady told NPR’s Michel Martin that her “heart goes out to the parents” of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

“Because we all, as parents, understand the tragedy of that kind of loss. And I think that’s really the thing that most people connect to,” Michelle Obama said. “And it’s important for us not to lose sight of the fact that this is a family that’s grieving — and there’s been a tremendous loss. And we all have to rally around that piece of it.” MORE...

"Obama Describes Difficulties First Lady Faced In Balancing Family And Career" (video)

tpmtv, video (01:32)from CNN.

"First Lady Michelle Obama Honors International Women of Courage" (video)

whitehouse, with video (56:27):

The First Lady delivers remarks at the International Women of Courage Award Ceremony on International Women's Day. March 8, 2012.

Howie P.S.: Like the President, I am blessed with a daughter.

2012 International Women of Courage Award Winners

Office of Global Women's Issues
March 5, 2012

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Honorable Maryam Durani, Kandahar Provincial Council Member

Afghanistan

Kandahar Province is among Afghanistan’s most conservative and most dangerous – but that has not stopped Maryam Durani from speaking out for the rights of Afghan women and girls. As a member of Kandahar’s Provincial Council, director of the non-profit Khadija Kubra Women’s Association for Culture, and owner and manager of the only local, female-focused radio station, she is both a leader and a role model for women throughout Afghanistan. A true woman of courage, Ms. Durani has survived multiple attacks on her life, including a suicide attack in 2009 that resulted in serious injury. Although she continues to face regular threats, she is undeterred in her mission to promote basic civil rights for all Afghans.

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Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo

Brazil

Major Azevedo joined the Rio de Janeiro Military police in 1998 and, following her graduation in 2000, started working in police battalions and street repression operations. In 2007, Major Azevedo demonstrated extreme courage and commitment to her duties by successfully arresting a gang of criminals who had kidnapped and tortured her. As a result of her courage and success, she was invited to head the first “Police Pacification Unit” (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro, in the “favela” (slum) of Santa Marta. During her two years there, she has shut down drug dealing operations in the favela, established conflict mediation models, worked with state and local government institutions to improve garbage collection and health care, broadened education and technical training opportunities, and developed a successful community arts and crafts fair.

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Zin Mar Aung

Burma

Zin Mar Aung is a former political prisoner, imprisoned for eleven years because of her political activism and has dedicated her life to promoting democracy, women’s empowerment, and conflict resolution in Burma. Following her involvement in the 1996 and 1998 pro-democracy student uprisings and subsequent imprisonment, she established a cultural impact studies group to promote the idea that democracy is compatible with Asian culture. She also created and leads a self-help association for female ex-political prisoners and a political science school in Rangoon, which teaches and empowers civil society activists in Burma’s changing but still challenging environment. She is also the co-founder of a women’s empowerment group, and is currently spearheading an organization to raise awareness of issues affecting ethnic minorities in conflict areas.

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Jineth Bedoya Lima

Colombia

Throughout her career as an investigative journalist, Jineth Bedoya has consistently sought out tough assignments, despite knowing the risks involved. In 2000, as she arrived at a prison to interview a key paramilitary member about an arms smuggling network, Jineth was kidnapped, driven several hours away and repeatedly gang raped. During this horrifying experience they told her, “Pay attention. We are sending a message to the press in Colombia.” Since then, Jineth has continued her work as an investigative journalist while pushing for justice in her own case and other unsolved cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Jineth has become an inspiration not only for female journalists, but for all women who are demanding justice for SGBV. She currently serves as spokeswoman of Oxfam’s campaign, “Rape and Other Violence: Take my Body out of the War.”

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Hana Elhebshi

Libya

Ms. Hana El Hebshi is a 26-year old Libyan architect who, during the long months of the Libyan revolution, became a symbol of solidarity and a model of courage to many across the country. Working under the pseudonym “Numidia,” a reference to the ancient Berber kingdom and to her own Berber heritage, Hana contributed greatly to proper documentation of the violence and tumult of the revolution and reached out to international media to share the realities of living under the previous regime, despite grave risk. She also became a symbol of hope to the Libyan people that the world was aware of the suffering they were enduring and that hope was on the way.

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Aneesa Ahmed

Maldives

Aneesa Ahmed stands out as a staunch advocate for ending gender-based violence (GBV) in the Maldives. While serving as Deputy Minister of Women’s Affairs, she raised the issue of domestic violence at a time when the subject was taboo. After leaving the government, she founded the NGO “Hope for Women” and began conducting sessions on GBV with students, Maldives Police Services, and other frontline workers. When religious scholars began identifying female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) as a practice supported by Islam on national radio, Ms. Ahmed asked the government to intervene, and spoke out publicly about the harmful effects of FGM/C. By openly discussing issues like these and promoting awareness through her NGO, Ms. Ahmed plays a key role in bringing these issues into public discourse and pressing the government to take action.

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Shad Begum

Pakistan

Shad Begum is a courageous human rights activist and leader who has changed the political context for women in the extremely conservative district of Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As founder and executive director of Association for Behavior and Knowledge Transformation (ABKT), Ms. Shad provides political training, microcredit, primary education, and health services to women in the most conservative areas of Pakistan. Ms. Shad not only empowered the women of Dir to vote and run for office, she herself ran and won local seats in the 2001 and 2005 elections against local conservatives who tried to ban female participation. Despite threats, Ms. Shad continues to work out of Peshawar to improve the lives of women in the communities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

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Samar Badawi

Saudi Arabia

In one of the world’s most restrictive environments for women, Samar Badawi is a powerful voice for two of the most significant issues facing Saudi women: women's suffrage and the guardianship system, under which women cannot marry, work, or travel without a guardian’s (male relative) permission. In a landmark case, Badawi was the first woman to sue her father for abusing the guardian system and preventing her from marrying the suitor of her choice. She is also the first woman to file a lawsuit against the government demanding the right for women to vote, and launched an online campaign to encourage other women to file similar suits. The efforts of activists like Badawi helped encourage a royal decree allowing women to vote and run for office in future municipal elections.

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Hawa Abdallah Mohammed Salih

Sudan

Hailing from North Darfur, Hawa and her family were forced to flee their home village in 2003 due to fighting between Darfuri rebels and government forces. As a result, she spent much of her young adult life in Abu Shouk internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in El Fasher, North Darfur, where she emerged as a prominent voice for the IDPs. For her advocacy, Hawa has been persecuted and detained on multiple occasions by the Government of Sudan, and was forced to flee Sudan in 2011. In spite of the personal harassment and political challenges that she has faced, Hawa hopes to return to her homeland to continue defending the rights of Darfuris, and in particular the rights of women and children.

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Safak Pavey

Turkey

Safak Pavey, the first disabled woman elected to the Turkish Parliament, has demonstrated great personal dignity in overcoming physical obstacles every day, while locally and globally championing the rights of vulnerable populations, including refugees and disabled persons. Whether working in extreme conditions for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, or acting as a lightning rod to spark the UN Interagency Support Group for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Pavey has sought to turn her disability into strength on a global level. After winning a seat in the Turkish parliament in June 2011, Pavey is continuing to give voice to disabled persons, women, and minority populations in Turkey as well.

"First Lady Michelle Obama Pokes Fun At Her Husband To Leno: ‘Oh, He’s Aging!’ But Still ‘Gorgeous’" (with video)

MEDIAite with video (13:32):

On Tuesday night, First Lady Michelle Obama visited NBC’s Tonight Show, chatting with host Jay Leno about her “Let’s Move” health initiative.

She also shared that, for her birthday, her mom baked her a red velvet cake (it really is the best kind of cake, folks — the “secret” ingredient is vinegar) with the help of First Daughters Sasha and Malia. The First Lady admitted that, sure, the cake is high in calories. But when you’re dancing along with Beyonce or on Nickelodeon, the cake melts right off. Plus, she runs, lifts weights and kickboxes. And punches Al Roker, apparently. MORE...

Howie P.S.: If you watched Part 1 (embed-above), Part 2 is here. If you go to the MEDIAite link, the video is the full (13:32).

"The FLOTUS and the Twitterverse"

Marcia Alesan Dawkins (truthdig):

I think that the first lady will be using her Twitter account to present a counterbalancing image to the “angry black woman” stereotype. And that these messages might make us think differently about what race and gender really look and sound like, by emphasizing her own brand of patriotism and adding new dimensions to what it means to be an ‘‘American.’’ More than that, I think she’ll be sending an important message to the press: Do report that racial and gender stereotyping exist. Do report that stereotyping frustrates those it affects most. And do remember that journalists are not immune to enhancing those stereotypes, a fact that can make the task of exposing them particularly challenging. MORE...

Joan Walsh on "Obama family values" (with video)

Joan Walsh (Salon):

In the end, though, the book made me an angry white woman. Reading about the many ways the Obamas strive to be good parents and partners, as well as president and First Lady, I found it even more disturbing that they’re treated so poorly, and depicted as so terribly “other,” by so many on the right. They are everything the right purports to believe in: The products of families who struggled to do right by them; people who studied and worked hard and played by the rules; good citizens and seemingly great parents. Even Michelle Obama’s own First Lady project, childhood obesity, focuses less on government than on how children and families can take responsibility and improve their own health. It’s what Republicans preach.

I’m not sure this is what she intended either, but Kantor’s book makes many of the president’s opponents seem like racist hypocrites. MORE...

Howie P.S.: Want more on this? Here's "Soledad O’Brien Hammers Jodi Kantor Over Her Controversial Book On The Obamas" with videos from CNN.

Michelle Obama to students on "the importance of following their passions and chasing their dreams" (video)

WhiteHouse.gov, video (100:41):

First Lady Michelle Obama talks to students about the importance of following their passions and chasing their dreams before a workshop with musicians Lyle Lovett, Darius Rucker, and Kris Kristofferson.

Barack and Michelle are in Hawaii

Even in steamy tropical weather, the first lady is camera-ready, as she speaks to interns at the Ma'o Organic Farms in Waianae.

Howie P.S.: Meanwhile the First Lady's husband was going to meetings and wearing a suit, except on Monday: "For Obama, a Day Off in Hawaii for Fund-Raising and Golf."

"A Tale of Two Michel(l)es: Bachmann and Obama" (with video)

Anna Lekas Miller (The Nation) with video from MSNBC (06:09):

On the campaign trail in 2008, Michelle Obama spoke at a rally and told the American people that for the first time in her adult life, "I am proud of my country." The backlash was swift, as news commentators and politicians of all creeds and colors—black, white, male and female—implied that she was Barack Obama's angry, bitter wife. In other words, they could not understand Michelle Obama outside of the angry, Black woman stereotype.

Before winning the Iowa Straw poll this past weekend, however, Michele Bachmann made a similar statement. But instead of being lambasted for not appreciating her country, the media has ignored her almost identical comment.

On MSNBC's The Last Word last night, Melissa Harris-Perry offered a comparison of the two responses, and her own definition of equality: "We will be an equal society when we can all celebrate and criticize our country together."

"Dear First Lady Michelle,"

NY Times (op-ed):

Ever since Barack Obama’s inauguration, the staff members and tutors at our nonprofit writing programs have marveled at how this presidency has percolated through student essays, stories and poems.

And it’s not just the president who has captured their attention — his wife, Michelle, has, too. From our students’ perspective, Mrs. Obama is glamorous but accessible, maternal but cool. They trust her.

So, earlier this fall, 826 National hosted a series of workshops inviting students to write to the first lady. The results were collected in the book “I Live Real Close to Where You Used to Live: Kids’ Letters to Michelle Obama (and to Sasha, Malia and Bo).”

Here is a sampling of what they came up with; some letters have been edited for space. — LAUREN HALL, grants director for 826 National.

Dear First Lady,

I am very vexed and sad about animal rights. Some cruel people abuse them or throw them away, and lots of animals are close to being extinct. When I think of how they feel, I cry for their suffering. Instead of complaining I decided to write ideas.

For starters, let’s not hunt endangered animals. If we hunt these animals, they’ll be extinct before we know all the information about them. I know that saying that we should all be vegetarians is too much, so how about we could just eat basic meats like cows, pigs, chicken and turkeys? That would help.

— JINHEE JUNG, age 11, Seattle

MORE...

"FELA! Musical (off Broadway)" (video)

thecolorfultimes, video (10:01):

FELA! is a new musical that is directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones with a book by Jim Lewis, in which audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), FELA! explores Kuti's controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones' imaginative staging, this new show is a provocative hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater.

Howie P.S.: Michelle Obama attended a performance of this show last week. How cool is that?

"Michelle Obama Stumps For Harry Reid" (video)

ABC News, video (02:18):

The First Lady says it's not just about "putting one man in The White House."

Barack and Michelle: "Get in the Game" (video)

BarackObamadotcom, video (01:16):

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are asking you to vote—and to help get out the vote—this November.

Politico: "Midterm Bieber Fever" (with video)

Politico with video (01:16):

Internet-savvy types know that teen heartthrob Justin Bieber pretty much rules the web. Just last week, rumor spread that Bieber’s fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him. Twitter didn’t confirm, but they didn’t deny it, either.

The takeaway? If you're trying to get a message to go viral, your success rate will surely be higher if you can somehow tie-in the Biebs.

So that’s just what Campus Progress, the college spinoff of the Center for American Progress, decided to do to get people to vote in the midterms.

The organization is highlighting a submission to its VoteAgain2010 video contest that argues, while Bieber can't vote in our midterms (he's both too young and too Canadian), shouldn't you?

"This isn't your standard election year video of celebrities asking you to vote," the ad says. "It's us, asking you to vote for celebrities who can't, celebrities like Justin Bieber. Bieber's too young to vote, yet whomever we elect in the 2010 midterm elections will impact his future and ours. ... So tell your parents, your grandparents, your Facebook friends ... If they won't do it for you, ask them to do it for Bieber." MORE...

Howie P.S.: Coincidentally, here's a report on "Justin Bieber`s `crush` on Michelle Obama." If we can't expect our political institutions to produce big "change," does working on the outside cultural forces offer any "hope"? Or are they just as limited by the bigger powers in charge?

Michelle Obama on FOX : "The true America is courageous" (video)

Michelle Obama Watch, video (12:44).

Howie P.S.: There is one comment, so far, and it's worth a look. I almost forgot this aired on Mike Huckabee's FOX show.

"Michelle Obama speaks frankly about race" (with video)

Politico, with video (01:38):

In tackling the problem of childhood obesity, first lady Michelle Obama is doing something that her husband rarely does — talking about an issue bluntly in terms of race and helping urban America.

She is, some say, filling a role that Barack Obama seems less inclined to fill, serving as a kind of bridge from the White House to black America in much the same way that she functioned during the campaign, observers said.

Where President Obama has been reluctant at times to address domestic policy in terms of how it would specifically affect African-Americans or Hispanics, Michelle Obama has approached her signature issue differently, frequently bringing up issues of race, region and inequality.

The first lady provided a vivid example Friday of her approach to childhood obesity, touring the Fresh Grocer in North Philadelphia, a predominantly black neighborhood that had been without a grocery store for more than a decade. The $15 million store opened in December, created 270 jobs and has a 96 percent minority workforce. The store, located near Temple University, is located in Progress Plaza. Aides to the first lady said the goal is to highlight how neighborhoods have addressed the problem of "food deserts," neighborhoods that lack a full-service grocery store.

“It’s a nuanced conversation about race and place and economic inequality, and at the same time, she is staying within the first lady framework,” said Melissa Gilbert, a professor in the urban studies department at Temple University. “It’s a very smart approach because she is bringing up issues that people haven’t thought about in the popular mainstream society.”

Over the past month, as she has rolled out her Let’s Move initiative, the first lady has spoken broadly of childhood obesity as a problem that confronts children everywhere, but she also frequently mentions the disproportionate effect it has on black and Hispanic children. One in two minority children deal with being overweight compared to one in three white children.

“Because right now, if we think about our children, nearly a third of them in this country are overweight or obese, and a third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lifetimes. In the African-American and Hispanic communities, that number goes up to half,” she said during one recent speech on health care and childhood obesity.

And in speeches and interviews, she has also addressed the issue of unsafe neighborhoods and often framed the problem as a particularly urban one.

She spoke of the difficulty some children have getting daily exercise. “Urban sprawl and fears about safety often mean the only walking they do is out their front door to a bus or a car,” she said when she launched the program earlier this month.

Speaking of the lack of healthy food options in some urban neighborhoods, Obama said, “And we certainly can’t ask parents who are living in the midst of food deserts without the resources to buy the products and the items for their families, we definitely can’t put them into that trick bag of telling them that they need to do something that is completely out of their reach.”

And she told of her own experiences as the mother of two young daughters. "I was fortunate enough to have a pediatrician who worked in an urban environment in the African-American community," she told CNN’s Larry King about how she came to the issue. "And he was tracking BMI [Body Mass Index]. And he saw a little uptick in the kids' BMI and he kind of pulled me aside."

East Wing aides worked with the White House Office of Urban Affairs in planning for the trip to Philadelphia. And on Saturday the first lady will address the National Governors Association convention in Washington, and appear on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show, as she ramps up her national public education initiative to fight childhood obesity.

The effort marks her first full foray into policy after a year marked by sustained outreach to metro Washington. She has visited schools, started a mentoring program for young women and invited students to help cultivate and harvest the garden on the South Lawn.

And even when the first lady traveled abroad last spring to London, she made her first speech to a group of inner-city minority students, telling them that she was raised in the “real part of Chicago” and that it was “important for the world to know that there are wonderful girls like you all over the world."

It was similar to what she told a group of students at Anacostia High School as she sat with them in a classroom, recalling that she had been ribbed for talking like a white girl.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said that Obama "plunged into the district" and hasn't been content to see "D.C. as a nice backdrop with a lot of black and Hispanic faces."

"In a country where race rules, she is seen over and over with black children, but it doesn't send out the same racial vibes," Norton said. "Barack hasn't hung back, but she does have greater license to go into the black community without seeming to cut off white people as the president might. And he wouldn't be doing that, but perception is reality."

It is an approach, both symbolic and substantive, that hasn't gone unnoticed by observers of race and urban policy, who had hoped that her husband would live up to his tag of being the first big city, urban president, but have since been disappointed.

For some, Obama's four-hour trip to New Orleans exemplified his approach to the issues confronting urban America. Critics say that though he created the White House Office of Urban Affairs, he has yet to articulate an urban agenda that has taken hold in the public consciousness.

Last year in a White House meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, Barack Obama privately told the group “we have to do something about obesity among our people.”

Speaking more broadly, he told American Urban Radio Networks recently that: "The only thing I cannot do is, by law I can't pass laws that say I'm just helping black folks. I'm the president of the entire United States.”

Aides insist Michelle Obama’s approach complements the president’s approach, and there is little daylight between the East and West Wings in discussions of race or an urban agenda.

“We haven’t necessarily been of the view that there are issues that we can talk about that he can’t. I just think that we often say that part of the role that the first lady plays is to try to demonstrate how different policy choices have an impact,” said Jocelyn Frye, the first lady’s top policy adviser. “What we are doing is driven by the importance of the issue, as opposed to race or an urban agenda.”

But in Michelle Obama, many observers see an unexpected ally — an urban first lady.

"So far, she seems to be very adept at highlighting problems particularly entrenched in cities and particularly identified with cities without raising alarms about an administration fearful of urban decline or overly deferential to a certain population," said Harry Moroz of the Drum Major Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on big-city issues. "The first lady can’t make up for what the White House Office of Urban Affairs is not doing. The more the first lady talks about model local policies, the more cities will be seen as problem solvers, instead of problems."

The four major goals of the first lady's initiative are increasing the number of "healthy schools," providing more opportunities for kids to be active, ensuring that affordable and healthy foods are available and making sure that parents have nutrition facts.

In her discussions so far, she has raised issues that have concerned urban activists for decades — unsafe neighborhoods that discourage outside activities and limited access to good grocery stores, or “food deserts.” a term popularized by a Chicago-based researcher.

Yet childhood obesity is not an overtly racialized issue, unlike the anti-gang initiative that Laura Bush launched, for instance. Everyone can identify.

“A black person might see it as a racial justice issue, and somebody interested in class could see it from a poverty perspective, but the suburban white housewife with chubby kids can identify with it as well,” said Andra Gillespie, who specializes in politics and race at Emory University. “It’s about her being an everywoman, though she has a different sensibility and thinks about cities and issues through an urban perspective.”

In some ways, the first lady, who nudged the president to more clearly address the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., can say things the president can’t, some observers assert.

"She knows she has a separate bully pulpit, and she doesn't use hers to step on his," Norton said.

WaPo: "'We've gotten a lot done,' Michelle Obama says of year one as first lady"

Robin Givhan (WaPo):

In a Wednesday afternoon interview that informally marked the beginning of her second year in the White House, first lady Michelle Obama declared her intent in 2010 to lead the administration's efforts to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity. Through advocacy and outreach to businesses, nonprofit organizations and government officials, she personally hopes to nurture a generation of healthier children.

"I want to leave something behind that says because of the time that this person spent here, this thing has changed," she said. "I hope that will be in the area of childhood obesity."

And if she has to go to Capitol Hill, lobby lawmakers and delve into policy issues, she will do it. Whatever it takes, she said. Obama will begin her campaign by addressing the nation's mayors on the subject next week when the United States Conference of Mayors meets in Washington. They will not come to the White House; the first lady will go to them.

Obama sat down with a group of seven print reporters in the Old Family Dining Room for more than an hour to talk about the year that has passed and her plans for the future. The conversation, over coffee and pastries, was part of a typical work day, this one filled with meetings -- some on childhood obesity -- as well as hosting duties for a group of Brazilian exchange students. Dressed in a russet-colored, cap-sleeve dress and over-the-knee brown suede Jimmy Choo boots -- a fine alternative to pantyhose, she said -- Obama, with a new shorter bob, assessed her first year at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and declared herself "pleased."

"We've gotten a lot done," she said and listed her work with military families, the planting of the White House Kitchen Garden and the launch of an East Wing mentoring program for young women as key accomplishments.

She described the security breach that marred her debut as the nation's hostess as a "footnote" to an otherwise outstanding state dinner. And, she waded into the contretemps caused by the recently published remarks by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) in which he described then-candidate Barack Obama's presidential chances as much improved because he is a "light-skinned" African American who had "no Negro dialect."

But of the some 200 events she has hosted as first lady, of all the experiences to be logged into a journal or inscribed in history, she was proudest and happiest that "my kids are sane."

"I'm happy that when I look at my daughters, I recognize them as the kids that they were before we got here."

She is also relieved that her mother, Marian Robinson, who had never lived anywhere other than Chicago, had settled into life in Washington.

Obama said she has also worked hard to maintain her connection to life outside the White House bubble -- without afflicting average folks with closed streets and snarled traffic -- and to shed her celebrity skin. Sometimes she reclaims her authentic self through excursions for burgers or when visiting students in her new home town. Sometimes it's by sitting down with old friends.

"It's more comfortable for me to be Michelle than it is for me to be the first lady. And I think I am a better first lady when I'm Michelle than when I'm somebody else that is in a magazine," she said.

"I ask people who have seen us over the years, friends -- I even check in. It's like, do you still recognize me? When we sit down, does this -- do I still feel like Michelle, or are you tripping?"

Given the opportunity, there's nothing from 2009 for which she's craving a do-over. She's not longing for a few generous mulligans. Not even for the athletic shorts she wore disembarking from Air Force One at the Grand Canyon. Or for her unsuccessful lobbying efforts on behalf of Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid. Not even for the state dinner honoring India that was marked by two uninvited guests -- and possibly a third -- and that has drawn mea culpas from the Secret Service, launched a grand jury investigation and sparked harsh criticism of social secretary Desirée Rogers, whose friendship with the first couple dates back to their days in Chicago.

"The state dinner was an outstanding success. It's just the follow-up after it. I look at the reporting on the state dinner and go, 'Is that all that happened? Really?' Because I sat in a phenomenal dinner where the prime minister and his wife were, felt, so connected to the United States and they were so proud to be there. And the evening was so wonderful and it was so well-orchestrated," she said. "For me the other stuff that everyone is talking about is a footnote to what the state dinner actually was. So I wouldn't do that over."

The first lady also dismissed the suggestion that the security breach had left her especially unnerved or upset. "We have dealt with the Secret Service for many years now, because I mean, Barack got Secret Service during the course of the campaign," she said. "These folks are good at what they do. But, with that said, the White House and the Secret Service are working to ensure that processes are in place so that something like that never happens again. And you know, I agree."

That work includes close scrutiny of the Office of the Social Secretary. "When I say the White House, I mean everyone in the White House," Obama said.

She also played down another political brouhaha of the day: Reid's remarks about the president and race.

"Harry Reid had no need to apologize to me. Because I know Harry Reid. I measure people more so on what they do, rather than the things that they say," she said. "Each and every one of us around the table has probably said something in their lifetime that they regret or didn't accurately reflect what they actually meant at the time or it was taken out of context and so on and so on."

But issues related to race, particularly as they speak to her historic role as the nation's first African American first lady, is not something she takes lightly. "You feel the palpability of this change throughout the house and throughout the country."

The history that she and her family are making is part of the ongoing dialogue about race -- a conversation that did not end with the election of the first African American president, she said.

"The problems aren't solved," Obama said. "But we're still new at this. Civil rights, the movement, happened in my lifetime. It feels like it's been a long time but it hasn't.

"My great-great-great-grandmother was actually a slave. We're still very connected to slavery in a way that's very powerful. . . . That's my grandfather's grandmother. That's not very far away. I could have known that woman."

We need to turn theories into practice and assumptions into understanding, she said. "We need to keep having conversations until we get it right."

Howie P.S.: I'm still a big Michelle fan. One question: Why don't reporters write about clothes and hair when doing a story on Mr. Obama?

Wanda Sykes on how the media covers Michelle Obama (video)

NBC-The Tonight Show, video (01:38).

Michelle Obama's First Hundred Days (video)

NBC Nightly News, video (02:14).

Howie P.S.: I have written before of the privilege of having spent some time "up close" with Michelle Obama when she visited Seattle during the primary campaign. Those who know me will be surprised to learn I could not find the courage to utter a single word to her, just based on my gut reaction to her presence even as I observed her talking easily with others.