Posted on 03/26/2014 4:09:08 AM PDT by mgist
White House ex-aide: First Lady Michelle Obama has turned East Wing into 'worst wing'
Reid Cherlin describes Michelle Obama's office as a "miserable place to work," where every meeting was an identity crisis and the wrong dress was just as bad as a failed policy initiative.
The glamorous First Lady cares so much about her clothes, the wrong skirt is considered a serious 'f--k up,' an ex-aide dishes. Playing the role of First Lady has squelched Michelle Obama’s spirit, and she’s turned the East Wing into the “worst wing,” a former White House aide claims.
The First Lady’s office has become a “confining, frustrating, even miserable place to work,” according to Reid Cherlin, a former West Wing assistant press secretary, who provided a rare account of the inner workings of the East Wing department in an essay for The New Republic.
Cherlin, who worked for the Obamas from 2007 to 2011 but has since become a writer, dished about the First Lady’s high expectations and staffers’ sense that everything has to be just right.
“The First Lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a f--k-up as someone speaking on the record when they didn’t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,” Cherlin wrote, quoting an unnamed former colleague.
He said that it’s “no big revelation” that the job of First Lady is an embarrassing anachronism.
After the 2008 election, he said, “there were hopes that Michelle Obama’s political appeal and charisma would enable her to transform it into something that reflected the role of modern women as equal participants in the political process.”
That never happened, he suggests, because Michelle decided to play it safe — having been burned by the intense criticism she received on the campaign trail when she said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”
Staffers long for access to the First Lady, Cherlin says. Meetings with her are rare. When she did invite a staffer to a meeting, it became a “vital status symbol, a way for staffers to measure their worth.”
“Every meeting was like an identity crisis, whether you got invited or not,” one former East Winger said.
Former White House aid Reid Cherlin has claimed that Michelle Obama's office is a confining, frustrating and miserable place to work. “They don’t want to work for her; they want to be friends with her,” another said.
The restrictions Obama reportedly put on her own time created “jealousy and discontentment” among staffers, who squabbled over what little “access and responsibility” she would dispense, Cherlin claimed.
“How can we be the caliber that we’re expected to be with no attention and no resources and being an afterthought,” a former aide said. “All that can make for sparks.”
Obama, some of her subordinates told Cherlin, was good at setting a high bar but bad at conveying specific details she desired to see executed — a contradiction one former staffer said created a lot of “friction.”
Team members are constantly under pressure to plan her events months in advance and her entire operation is guided by the mantra, “Don’t do it if it’s not going to be perfect” — a saying that often created “paralyzing” anxiety among staffers.
For its part, the White House defended the way the First Lady has run the office.
“From day one, the First Lady ambitiously set out to make a measurable impact on the lives of everyday American families,” a spokesperson for her office said in a statement given to The New Republic. “The First Lady is laser-focused on moving the needle wherever and whenever possible."
When your “boss” is a miserable human being, your workplace becomes a miserable place to work. It is that simple. When Zero was first running for POTUS, there were myriad threads on this site about Michelle’s facial expressions and body language. She is a very unhappy person, and it comes through. I am not surprised that it is not a fun job to work for her. Only if you bought the BS that the media was serving up to us; would you be surprised by this article.
“It’s warm under the wing of a dragon.”
This brings me to the human condition and I still do not understand part of it. The First Lady has certainly not found "The Bird of Happiness". True, being from Canada, she is not my First Lady. Prime Minister Harper has a country bred girl, Lauren, as First Lady. She sure seems happy and keeps away from the (expletive deleted) press.
Now to Michelle Obama. Say what one will, but she certainly "went places". She will never have to worry in her lifetime about hearth and home, with all the comforts. She dotes on her daughters and surely is a good mother. How then does she seem so disturbed about life?
I wish her well. What is important is that we are probably looking at the human condition. We see Hollywood actresses with looks and a figure that is a gift from the Gods. Anything they want, including male admirers, mansions, the worship of the mob, they have. How many of them are really content?
I hope to be excused this somewhat of a ramble, but I would like to know just who are persons seemingly content. Even taking into account that life sometimes gives anyone a heck of shakeup.
Not a practicing Christian myself, I no longer accept ye olde Church of England, I notice this. Seemingly happy people where I live that stand out, are practicing Christians. Perhaps they have found the secret! I am not saying though, that others cannot be absolutely happy from other beliefs. The most miserable people I see today in one instance, are the hard faced Imams....... Oh well, I had better quit. Once again excuse this ramble.
There are a lot of black women like that! It’s no excuse, but just the truth.
A double wide!
“From day one, the First Lady ambitiously set out to make a measurable impact on the lives of everyday American families,”
________________________________________
Oh she did that in spades...
those multi million dollar trips “make a measurable impact on the lives of everyday American families” in the taxes they have to pay to keep Michelle “movin”
“there were hopes that Michelle Obama’s political appeal and charisma would enable her to transform it into something that reflected the role of modern women as equal participants in the political process.” IF SHE WANTED A SAY SHE SHOULD HAVE RUN FOR VICE PRESIDENT OR ANOTHER OFFICE .. NOBODY ELECTED HER ... SHE HAS NO SAY!! she is a “bitter clinger”
I read a great deal. I have read a great deal. I have edited a lot of other peoples' written work over a lifetime.
If you do that, you develop something like an ear for music or an eye that recognizes faces, and troll writings have a particular sound. For one thing, they are often infantile, of poor vocabulary, are unimaginative. In a word, boring.
And I have read enough on the internet to pick out what I am convinced are the writings of bored people just posting for the sake of it--and I believe it is for money, and probably not much money.
Sometime sift through the archives of David Horowitz's research on Frontpagemag.com an you will see that the oligarchs who have tens of billions of dollars would think about as much of a few millions on shill posters as you and I would think of latte money.
It takes a lot of work planning and implementing all her vacations.
Can’t recall a first lady who spent so much of our money vacationing.
must be nice to be the queen.
Are these people sending out warnings and SOSs? Reminds of a Carey Grant scene where he is giving a radio broadcast with secret warnings about the Nazis.. “The German people's desire to meet their neighbors knows no borders!”
For me, Nurse Ratched is the movie character that came to mind.
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