So, plenty being written these days about Michelle Obama. Will she be a help or a hindrance to her husband's campaign? Is she too outspoken? Does she need to soften her image? Case in point from yesterday's NYT story,

She says she intends to evoke a John F. Kennedy-like idealism and highlight her own journey, but in her commanding cadences, some people — and not just conservatives — hear a lecture. To appeal to voters who may be put off or not know of her biography, the campaign hopes to display Mrs. Obama as an ordinary American mom.

To that end (one imagines), in a week that will also see her and Barack on the cover of US Weekly(!), Obama appeared as co-host on today's View (video after the jump) where she good-humoredly requested that she be greeted "properly" with fist bumps before attempting to clarify exactly what she meant by her now infamous comment about being "really proud of her country for the first time in her life."

No where in America would my story be possible...When I spoke I think I was referring to having a pride in the political process.

She also revealed herself to be a fan of Laura Bush, describing her as calm and rational, and agreed that there had been plenty of sexism in the campaign coverage, saying Hillary had taken the hits so that when her girls came along they wouldn't have to.

Was she soft enough? Or better yet, do we actually want soft? At yesterday's Paley Center panel Christiane Amanpour pointed out that despite the fact that the media kept declaring the Primary process to be over, record numbers of people still kept turning out to vote, meaning that perhaps the media should "really be thinking about who we're serving." Not to mention, just out of curiosity, what qualifies these days as "ordinary American mom?"