The Rock of the Obama Campaign: Michelle is This Week's Wings of Justice Honoree

WINGS OF JUSTICE

Our Next First Lady Michelle Obama

An incredibly smart woman who went to Princeton and Harvard Law, Michelle Obama began on the path to become a high-powered downtown attorney. Soon she returned to Chicago's South Side, where she grew up and worked to better the community and its most needy citizens. And now, we are honored to have her as our next First Lady.

Michelle is a powerful, compassionate voice for American families, speaking often about the troubles that fall hardest on single-parent households and military families. She brings a great deal of passion and talent to the White House. While her role there is as yet unclear, her position as First Mom is not to be questioned. 

Malia and Sasha do not have a nanny. Balancing her career, and later her husband's presidential campaign, with motherhood, Michelle goes to every one of her daughters' dance recitals and soccer games that she can. Her schedule revolves around her girls.

Her perfectly coiffed hair, stylish clothes, and fierce protection of her children are reminiscent of Jackie O. Her honesty and opinionated nature guarantee her mark won't be merely one of style, however. Michelle is, above all, a woman of substance. Never do you get the feeling, when watching her give a speech or an interview, that she's mailing it in. Sometimes it even feels like she's talking directly to you.

And when the going got tough, Michelle got tougher. When a loving moment of victory she shared with her husband was characterized as a "terrorist fist jab," when a video of her was fabricated to make it appear as if she uttered a racist remark, when her words were twisted to make her seem unpatriotic, Michelle continued to be a rock for her husband and the campaign.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Michelle is that she tells it like it is. Take the introduction she gave her husband at a campaign event last year in Iowa. She talked about the agonizing choice she and Barack made to sacrifice their familial peace and security to a greater good for their country:

"The reason I said yes is that I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we've made in the last ten years wasn't for something but it was because people told us we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different from us. Fear people who believed things that were different from us. Fear of one another right here in our own backyards. I am so tired of fear. And I don't want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear. And that's why, and we have to admit it, that's why we are in this war. We are in this war because for eight years we were told to be afraid... The game of politics is to make you afraid so you don't think.  And what we need right now isn't political rhetoric, isn't game playing; we need leadership."

When a woman with as much reason to fear as Michelle Obama tells you to be unafraid, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. 

WINGS OF JUSTICE

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Nominated by BuzzFlash staff.

For more, watch this touching video biography produced by the Obama campaign.