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."
You can take the girl outta the ghetto....
Uppity just like her mama.
Because she’s CLASSLESS and she dresses like a CRAZY PERSON!
So courtiers measure their worth by how much time they get to spend with the queen?
Who woulda thunk it!?
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!”
Ya we’re movin on up,
To the east wing
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Ya we’re movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.
Fish don’t fry in the kitchen;
Beans don’t burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin’,
Just to get up that hill.
Now we’re up in the big leagues,
It’s my turn at bat.
As long as we live, it’s you and me baby,
There ain’t nothin wrong with that.
While in the Oval Office the mantra is
Half ass it and get it out there! We can fix it later! And while your at it kill the damn tomahawk program!
LOL
So—all of these people who are working for her……..if they hate it so much, why don’t they find other employment.
I’m certainly no fan of the O’’s, but they are who they are and where they are, and we all have to deal with that, to a certain extent.
If working for them is such a horrible thing, I’d go sling hash or take any job I could find to get away from those “horrible” conditions in the WH.
This sounds exactly like the old European courts, where intrigues and plots were hatched to gain recognition and power. When King Barack took the throne, it put the USA back two centuries. Shame on us for allowing the Regressive Party to take us back two centuries in governance.
Interesting to read the comments after the article of all those defending her. She is a disgrace but liberals will never admit it.
Cherlin should be getting an IRS audit letter about now.
You have it right. The term is courtiers........ those who compose the royal court. They were the landed nobility.
It was the Queen, Marie Antoinette that was hated by the French sans culottes for her excesses. Marie Antoinette however had royal blood, a genuine princess. She was neglected by her husband, a sexually inadequate place holder. She was a beauty. She did not have to put on airs, she was the genuine article.
From the start, from someone who enjoys a little nice fashion now and then, her awfulness has been startling. Her clothes are too tight, always draw too much attention to her junk and her thighs. She scowls, she clomps around bowlegged (teach her to WALK!!). She always embarrasses.
And it's just a darn shame that her upper-middle-class Chicago mamma and daddy wouldn't get her braces for that bulldog underbite.
Yup, this queen has no clothes.
I believe the Dems hire armies of internet posters to give the impression of crowds of support where there is only contempt and indifference. Think how cheap it would be, just a few unemployed telemarketers who maybe earn $5 a post...
I’m no fan of Michelle, but this tattling reflects as poorly on the aide as on her.
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