The FLOTUS, the Oscars, and the art of ‘leaning in’
At first, I thought the only mildly interesting thing about Michelle Obama’s surprise appearance at the Academy Awards, via satellite, was that it required her co-presenter, Jack Nicholson, to be on his best behavior. He seemed a little nervous in her virtual presence, actually, like he was afraid he might blurt out something inappropriate with her looming over him like that.
Otherwise, it was just our first lady in a shimmery evening dress saying, in effect, “Woohoo, movie industry” — just as Laura Bush had done when she appeared in a short video, “What Do the Movies Mean To You?” shown at the Oscars in 2002. (“Giant,” Mrs. Bush said the movies meant to her, in an on-message reference to the 1956 film with Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson, about a Texas rancher turned oilman.)
The current FLOTUS popped in and announced that the last statue of the night, for best picture, was going to “Argo,” then diplomatically behaved like she was thrilled to bits about this, though from what she told Jimmy Fallon, she’d been rooting for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Her remarks were an unbroken string of cliche’s — yes, she actually said, “They made us laugh. They made us weep…” And by the standards of the evening, her Naeem Khan gown was downright demure.
Nevertheless, her not-very-exciting appearance was a late-night venti mocha for some conservatives. Breitbart.com called it “an unprecedented cultural power grab by the Obamas,” and Rush Limbaugh, complaining that she had used the members of the military who appeared with her as props, said her appearance evoked the “Dear leader” of a totalitarian state: “She looked much more bigger than — bigger than life,” he sputtered, and “in one bite could have swallowed the whole room.” (Fear of being eaten alive by a powerful woman means what again?)

Oscar host Seth MacFarlane (John Shearer/Invision/AP)
Yes, I get that some of this was supposedly self-mocking from MacFarlane, the creator of “Family Guy,” who I liked just fine as long as he was dancing. When he said 9-year-old Quvenzhane’ Wallis will soon be too old for George Clooney, it’s definitely wasn’t Wallis he was mocking.

Jessica Chastain as the brilliant but friendless heroine of the brilliant but snubbed ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ (Columbia Pictures)
The night needed no book-end to match the boob tune with which it began, but got one anyway, in a tweet from the humor site, the Onion, which somehow thought to direct the slur many women find most offensive at 9-year-old Wallis. It was soon deleted, and later apologized for, but the message had already been received — throughout the evening.
Now, unfortunately, I won’t be able to discuss any of this in the feminist “Lean In” consciousness-raising circle I’m so looking forward to joining, because it doesn’t have a happy ending yet, so I might get written off as one of the “flakes,” who the “Lean In” author, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, warns we mustn’t let in.

Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln in Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln.’ (Photo by David James/DreamWorks)
Seth, what you call “every woman’s innate inability to never ever let anything go,” I call knowing when not to back down. It may even be what Sandberg, who’s already been annoying lots of us with a book that isn’t even out yet, calls “leaning in.”
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