CNN's Jack Cafferty Confesses His 'Crush on Michelle Obama'

March 3rd, 2009 1:47 PM

Jack Cafferty, CNN Commentator | NewsBusters.orgCNN commentator Jack Cafferty flat out admitted in a CNN.com commentary on Tuesday that he is “developing a crush on America’s first lady,” Michelle Obama: “Michelle Obama is more compelling than her husband. He’s good, but she’s utterly fascinating....Mrs. Obama has blown away the stale air in a White House musty from eight years of the Bushes. It’s like the sun came out and a fresh spring breeze began wafting through the open windows.”

Such high praise for a member of the Obama family isn’t something new for Cafferty. Almost a week earlier, the CNN commentator gushed over President Obama’s seeming calm in the midst of all the serious issues that the country faces: “...[O]ur president seems remarkably unruffled by all of this, serene in an inner confidence that he’s got what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight.”

After admitting his crush and comparing her to fair weather, Cafferty pushed Mrs. Obama’s populist credentials, compared to past First Ladies: “It’s the people’s house, and Michelle Obama totally gets it. So much so that she has taken to inviting people in from the streets to see her home. Nice touch -- one completely lacking in her recent predecessors.”

The commentator then focused the next few paragraphs to how well people react to the current First Lady, all the time exuding his admiration for her: “Watch her when she visits a local school and you see the warmth and affection she instantly triggers in people. Kids are pretty much totally honest with very good BS-detectors. If they sense you’re a phony, forget it. But around the first lady, they want to hug her and laugh with her and tell her stories.”

He also extended this admiration to the entire Obama family: “You can see the same qualities these kids recognize in her daughters. She is the consummate mother as evidenced by the poised, polite smiling children she and her husband are raising. I have four daughters, and trust me -- they don’t turn out like the Obama children without devoted parents....The Obamas bring a humanity and humility to their tasks which sets them far apart from the run-of-the mill phonies who populate Washington. It's exactly what the doctor ordered for this wounded nation.”

He concluded his commentary by recounting how his colleagues in the fashion media are likewise raving over Mrs. Obama:

Michelle Obama’s unassuming, but dead-on, sense of style has the fashion press gushing all over itself.

Her arms are becoming the stuff of legend. Who appears sleeveless on the cover of Vogue, let alone in front of a joint session of Congress while her husband delivers one of the most important speeches of his life? And the reviews were rave.

Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine gushed, “Oh my god! The first lady has bare arms in Congress in February at night!” If she keeps it up, Seventh Avenue will soon stop making women’s clothes with sleeves.

Ok, I admit it. When it comes to the first lady, I’m smitten.

The only conclusion you can draw from this is that Jack loves Michelle Obama as much as he loathes Sarah Palin.