Michelle Obama vs. Diana vs. Jackie

I never understood why people were gaga over Diana; maybe because I have no conception of nor do I care about how different she was from past British royalty.

For me, that always seemed more a deficiency in her predecessors than any notable distinction in her.

Besides which, Diana always seemed so much more about herself, her clothes, her loveless marriage, then any sort of real issues.

Unlike Michelle Obama, as the Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr pointed out this week:

There was a strange stillness last week in Islington's Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College on the last day of term. It wasn't just that the school had finished a day early and it was a training day for staff and a revision day for pupils soon to take their GCSEs. Nor even that the sun had finally decided to shine for the start of the Easter holidays.

It was that, 24 hours earlier, an event so surprising and extraordinary had happened in this very ordinary-looking London school that the few people milling around its lobby had the air of having experienced some freak natural phenomenon - a hurricane, perhaps, or a tidal wave or, as actually happened, a visit by the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

At the culmination of the Obamas' first visit to Britain, she visited the school on Thursday and, the next day, staff and students all seemed to be suffering some sort of post-traumatic international celebrity icon syndrome. In the hallway, I met Nuria Afonso, 15, and Shereka Phipps, 15, both wearing the dazed expressions of people who still can't quite believe what has just happened.

"She hugged us!" said Nuria. "Can you believe that? She. Hugged. Us! It was amazing. Amazing." ...

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic endlessly commented on her clothes, her shoes, her fashion choices, the "controversial" blue plaid cardigan that she wore to visit the school, even though the only remotely "controversial" aspect of it was that certain female, waspish fashion writers decided not to like it and, which, according to Google, has so far drawn 1,925 news articles all its own, including one from the Huffington Post, which gave it the inevitable moniker "Argyle-gate".

And yet, what the fashion commentators nearly missed was that the visit to the school not only produced the most emotional moments of her entire visit, but that the speech was also a profoundly moving, very personal statement of her political purpose and the new role that she is still in the process of creating as the president's wife.

It was the only speech she made during her trip, and the school had, apparently, been deliberately chosen: girls-only, inner-city, its pupils, of whom 20% are the children of refugees or asylum seekers, speak a total of 55 different languages and 92% of whom are from a black or minority background. It was her first speech, she pointed out, as first lady on a foreign visit; she mentioned it several times, in fact, as if she was having problems believing it herself. And then, carefully, using personal stories and anecdotes, she drew parallels between her life and those of the girls in front of her, at times appearing close to tears.

"I want you to know that we have very much in common. For nothing in my life's path would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first lady of the United States of America. There was nothing in my story that would land me here. I wasn't raised with wealth or resources of any social standing to speak of...

"If you want to know the reason why I'm standing here, it's because of education. I never cut class. Sorry I don't know if anybody here is cutting class. I never did. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I loved being on time. I loved getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world." ...

Both Nuria and Shereka closely followed the US presidential election and said that, even before her visit, Michelle Obama had inspired them both, girls born thousands of miles away, personally.

"You can relate to her story. She said, 'I'm a working-class girl.' And more or less all of us are working-class. She made it. And it made me think: if she can do it, so can I."

For a lesson in how to empower young women, you could do no better than to listen to Michelle Obama's speech in its entirety. The news bulletins picked up its highlights, the point where, very close to tears, she said: "When I look at a performance like this, it just reminds me that there are diamonds like this all over the world. All of you are jewels. You are precious and you touch my heart. And it's important for the world to know that there are wonderful girls like you all over the world." ...

But for all the hugs, Michelle Obama is no Diana and it was her visit to the school, and more particularly the speech that she delivered there, that thwarted the attempt by the Anglo-American press to reduce her Democratic politics and feminist principles into nothing more than a fashion cypher whose sole purpose is to have her clothing choices beatified by their mutual consent.

She's as much an ideologue as her husband and, while Barack Obama is having to make hard choices in an ever-worsening economic climate, what the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson speech demonstrated is how Michelle Obama has become the political yin to his yang; the up to his down.

Really, the dumbing-down of our society occurs when blogs like the Huffington Post and papers like the Washington Post choose to feature breathless pieces on Michelle Obama's outfits or lack thereof, rather than pay real attention to what she says and does while wearing clothes.

One of the great things about the Obamas is how focused they are on substance; aware of style and symbols, but always more interested in reality.

I think it's slowly starting to dawn on people around the world that they're a once-in-a-lifetime political phenomenon, not because of the glitz or celebrity-like coverage, but because of who they really are.

They're no Kennedys--they're much better.

AP photo