Michelle Obama: A Legacy Built on Salad

By J. Robert Smith

The Washington Post devotes plenty of column inches to Michelle Obama's "unfolding legacy" in this morning's edition. From what can be gathered from the lengthy story, the First Lady's legacy thus far involves burning through senior staffers and waging an epic campaign against childhood obesity.

It seems the thrust of Mrs. Obama anti-fat kids' campaign is pushing for salad bars in public schools and sweet-talking Wal-Mart, among others, into lowering their prices on fruits and vegetables, because anyone with half a brain knows that a kid with spare change will buy a prune over a Twinkie if the price is right.

Of course, no one thinks flabby kids are good things. Proper diet and exercise are the tickets to slim, trim youngsters. But the problem with the First Lady putting so much weight on the childhood obesity issue is it begs the question: Is fat the greatest, most pressing problem among all the problems facing the nation's youth?

The answer is an unqualified "no."

Of what good are salad bars in inner-city schools like Detroit, Newark, and Camden where too many kids are dropouts or truants? Will arugula, toasted sesame seeds, and splashes of raspberry vinaigrette really draw these kids back to classrooms? Or even lunchrooms?

And what about the drug and gang violence that's snuffing out the lives of mostly young black and minority males -- again, principally in the nation's inner-cities? Or the sky-high number of illegitimate children born to girls in a place like East St. Louis? And what about the legion of inner-city kids who don't know their fathers?

What about the degenerate urban culture that nourishes the great, ongoing moral crime being perpetrated against inner-city kids, skinny or fat?

As the first African-American First Lady in the nation's history, Michelle Obama is uniquely positioned to bring her appeal and unprecedented influence to bear in the fight to end the debauching and destruction of inner-city black and minority kids. These kids don't need a steady diet of tofu and bean sprouts. What they need are discipline, structure, strong values, intact families, church, safe streets, and public schools that actually educate. That's a menu for the First Lady to promote.