At Deep Glamour, Virginia Postrel asks, does Michelle Obama Know that the Carolee jewelry company is equating her with Evita Peron to sell jewelry?
Walking through Bloomingdale’s, I was struck by this sign in the jewelry department. The Carolee jewelry company is pitching its line of pearls with photos of four pearl-wearing style icons: two American first ladies, Jackie Kennedy and Michelle Obama, both Democrats, and two foreign consorts, Eva Peron and Wallis Simpson, who, to put it politely, leaned fascist. (What, no Imelda Marcos? Too famous for shoes I guess.)
Because you just can’t wear a Che T-shirt everywhere.
Does Carolee know the connections they’re tacitly making? Perhaps not; as Mr. Obama has set the baseline for recent historical knowledge pretty low himself.
Postrel seems to ask the question as though the big MO might be put off by the analogy with Peron and Simpson — but has there been even the tiniest sign that Michelle would (does) object to the promotion of herself as a cult figure deserving of rabid, toadying devotion and the pleasures and prerogatives of royalty? Quite the contrary!
And while she and her husband (and the adoring media), I’m sure, would scream bloody murder if conservatives and libertarians were to consistently point out this administration’s affinity for so many of the political tactics favored by the fascists of old, in fact their greater divergence from those fascist models seems to be in the area of everyday competence — and that difference does not flatter the Obamas.