As shown above, Michelle Obama recently appeared on the TV show The View, seated next to Matthew Broderick, husband of Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker.

The only reason she was there, of course, is because of her husband Barack. Nobody was the least bit interested in having her on network TV before he became a household name in politics, and nobody is interested in her now for any other reason. She appeared on the show for a crass political purpose, willfully injecting herself into the campaign and trying to soften her image to make herself more palatable to mainstream voters.

Why does it need softening? Well, for instance Michelle wrote a thesis paper in college in which “she basically says that she fears she and other educated black people will never be fully accepted in a white-dominant society but will also abandon their black culture.” And more recently, she said that she had never been proud of her country until it decided to embrace her husband — about as selfish and arrogant a statement as has ever been made in the history of American politics.

Truly, the hypocrisy of this woman and her defenders is breathtaking. Having injected herself into the process, routinely appearing on the campaign trail with her husband, she’s now “shocked, shocked” to find that her hostile attitude towards the country causes her to come under hostile attack.

In a column in the Washington Post Mary C. Curtis, a columnist for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, decries feminists for failing to support Michelle in her hour of need. She all but accuses anyone who attacks Michelle of racism (”in America, there’s seldom a cost for disrespecting black women”).

That’s nice, Mary. But where was your outrage — and where is it — concerning Condoleezza Rice? Ms. Rice comes under at least as much heated attack on the left-wing blogs as Michelle does on those of the right, yet neither Mary nor anyone else lifts a finger to stop it. So what’s apparent is that Mary is speaking not from solidarity with her “sisters” but from rank partisanship, because she wants Obama to become president, because she agrees with and admires Michelle. All her principles about “sisterhood” go right out the window as soon as she disagrees with the target of abuse.

And is Michelle really being abused by being considered for the position of First Lady of the United States of America? Shouldn’t she be proud and pleased that a country dominated by white voters has given her husband the chance to become president, and shouldn’t she fully expect exactly the same kind of brutal hazing all other candidates for president receive?

Was there a racial explanation when Bill and Hillary were pilloried over Bill’s disgusting sexual promiscuity? Are the relentless, savage attacks on George Bush today motivated by racial or gender-based animus?

Grow up, Mary. Welcome to the real world of American politics. Michelle’s husband has just seized the presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton even though she won all three of the top electoral states, mainly because of the freak occurrence that the votes of two other top states, Michigan and Florida, were disqualified. Women are annoyed by that, and patriotic women are disgusted by Michelle’s unwillingness to praise her own country. They don’t trust her motivations and they’re right not to.

In other words, they’re abandoning Michelle for the same reason they’re abandoning George Bush. They don’t like either one of them, for a very defensible set of fact-based reasons.

There’s not one single word in Mary’s partisan diatribe about what Michelle might need to change about her attitudes and behavior or what mistakes she may have made. The attempt to deflect valid criticism of a valid target by relying on race or gender is outrageous, and if George Bush tried it people would only gape and laugh.

Feminists need to at least try to get a clue. They are arguing about two women, Hillary and Michelle, whose only reason for being in the national spotlight is the coattails of their husbands. They need to get some leaders, like Carly Fiorina, who are self-made national superstars, and only then worry about mounting defenses when they are attacked. They need to realize that they hold more than 50% of the population but less than 20% of the seats in Congress, and starting thinking about actually getting power before they worry about defending it.