MICHELLE OBAMA HAS hit back at allegations that she sparked tensions among White House staff, saying that people have tried to portray her as “some kind of angry black woman”.
Mrs. Obama told CBS News she hasn’t read New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor’s new book that characterizes her as a behind-the-scenes force in the White House, whose strong views often draw her into conflict with President Barack Obama’s top advisers.
“I never read these books,” she told CBS’s Gayle King in an interview broadcast Wednesday. “So I’ve just gotten in the habit of not reading other people’s impressions of people.”
In the book, Mrs Obama is said to have occasionally bristled at some of the demands and constraints of life in the White House.
In the interview, Mrs Obama said, “I love this job. It has been a privilege from day one.”
“Now there are challenges,” she added. “If there’s any anxiety that I feel, it’s because I want to make sure that my girls (Malia and Sasha) come out of this on the other end whole.”
The Kantor book portrays a White House where tensions developed between Michella Obama and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary and presidential adviser Robert Gibbs. Titled The Obamas, it describes Michelle Obama as having gone through an evolution from struggle to fulfilment in her role at the White House, while labelling her an “unrecognised force” in pursuing the president’s goals. Neither the president nor his wife agreed to be interviewed for the book.
“I do care deeply about my husband,” Michelle Obama said in the CBS appearance. “I am one of his biggest allies. I am one of his biggest confidants.” But she sought to put aside “this notion that I sit in meetings.”
“I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” she said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.”
“There will always be people who don’t like me,” Mrs Obama added, and said she could live with that.
Mrs Obama said that she’s “just trying to be me, and I just hope that over time, that people get to know me.”
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