EPA photo via UK Daily MailFirst Lady Michelle Obama was in catwoman fine-form, as she and the presdient hosted 2000 excited Halloween trick-or-treaters at the White House Saturday night.

AFP/Getty Imges via Daily Mail UKThe White House looked spooky, bathed in orange light and draped in fake spiders. A huge stuffed black spider dangled in the doorway. One wonders whether presidential ghosts were horrified or laughing themselves back to death.

The word is that George Washington’s painting remained taut against the wall, amid the revelry. If you remember, George and Martha also knew how to have a good time.

Most Americans celebrate having a joyful, inspiring “traditional” family in the White House.

The subject of the Obama marriage is a feature in today’s New York Times magazine.

Posted online since Thursday, the article remains in the low top 10. Generally positive, we learn not much new about the Obama’s, except for the correct call that their marriage is central to the Obama brand and Michelle is a very traditional First Lady in gender relations.

Since he first began running for office in 1995, Barack and Michelle Obama have never really stopped struggling over how to combine politics and marriage: how to navigate the long absences, lack of privacy, ossified gender roles and generally stultifying rules that result when public opinion comes to bear on private relationships.

Michelle is honest about withdrawing from POTUS’s campaigning for years. The Obama’s have admitted that their union was shaky times, especially when the First Lady felt that she carried the majority of the burden of childrearing and saw little of her husband.

Reuters photo via Daily Mail UKIn response to Allison Samuels, who wrote in last week’s Newsweek that Michelle is ending up a very traditional if wonderfully likeable First Lady, Maureen Dowd says:

The First Couple is trying to let America digest the huge change that they signify. They know that Fox News is always ready to pounce with that “radical” label.

That’s not the online consensus, in terms of comments and lack of interest in the article. The comments on the NYT Obama marriage article generally promote that the concept that their’s is a highly inspiring, very traditional marriage, and I agree.”

“Radical” may apply to the president’s approach to managing the economy, in some people’s minds.

The Obama marriage isn’t “radical” in any way, except that Barack and Michelle have worked through their challenges, rather than becoming a divorce statistic. That’s a Bravo. Sorry Maureen.

I admit being annoyed by the White House’s constant statements that Michelle can’t be a Hillary Clinton in the nation’s eyes.

Not only is Hillary America’s Secretary of State but her daughter Chelsea is hardly in rehab. By every measure, Hillary has been a fantastic mother to Chelsea and a longtime, global leader on international women’s issues.

Clinton owes no one an apology for carving out new visions of the political wife.

Like the Obamas, the resolution of the Clinton marital chaos didn’t end up in divorce court, which was their choice — Hillary’s choice — not ours.

The top reader-recommended “editor’s choice” comment on The Obamas’ Marriage comes from the UK.

All week, following the release of the Economic Forum’s 2009 Gender Gap Report, I’ve written that women’s lives in Europe are significantly more progressive than in America.

A friend of mine is a top gender-law consultant in England, although he didn’t write this comment. He finds America far behind Europe in gender relations.

The most popular Obama article comment is published in its entirety and written by ORS:

The comparison between Hillary and Michelle is an interesting one. Both come from middle class Chicago. Both are incredibly bright women who attended Ivy League law schools. Both married charismatic, ambitious men. Both had successful careers independent of their husbands.
And, yet, Michelle is more culturally appealing to us because she has enacted a dynamic that we recognize and find comforting - that of the nurturing mother, adoring wife, smiling Lady Stepford. Contrary to what this article says, I don’t find the Obama marriage to be modern AT ALL. It is highly traditional and regressive in the extreme, with Barack playing the provider and Michelle playing the nurturer.

Hillary, on the other hand, is problematic for people because she has never put herself in the secondary role. We don’t quite know what to make of Hillary because she flouts our expectations of how we think women in these roles should act. She doesn’t gush about her children or fuss about with her clothes or smile adoringly at her husband from the background, as Michelle tends to do. And, because we don’t understand her, we resort to calling her names, as op-ed columnists from this newspaper have shown.
For these reasons, I see Hillary as the truly modern and transformational first lady in history. Michelle is certainly transformational by virtue of her race, but in all other regards, she has (much to my disappointment) proven to be utterly conventional.

The NYTimes is Obama country. How relevant that a major POTUS-FLOTUS article like this one is a reader-response dud. Anne

Update on 2009-11-02 17:59 by Anne

As if on cue yesterday, the London times wrote a post: The good wife charter - and how to be a good husband. In our post liberation glow, husbands often come at the bottom of our priorities. Let’s have more kissing, less criticising.

Who’s the featured good wife? None other than our dear First Lady Michelle Obama. Clearly Mrs. Obama is one with a certain, ummmm … reputation, shall we say. I don’t think she’s worried.

I’ll be writing about this subject of “the good wife” soon in my journal. Meanwhile, in her article Shane Watson references a NYTimes Modern Love essay, written by Ayelet Waldman called Truly, Madly, Guiltily.

The essay was a blowout on the NYT. Comments are now gone, but Waldman — still happily married to her husband Michael Chabon — was nearly crucified, tarred and feathered, pushed off a tall building for admitting that while she loved her children, she loved her husband even more.

What a Fifties kind of idea!

Watson is correct is saying that research confirms that women put time with their husbands last. I’m digging out the studies now, but women would rather work late when the big presentation isn’t for two weeks, than admit that spending time (date night or whatever you want to call it) with hubby is really important to them.

ayelet waldmanIn the battle of the sexes — now just a simmering bonfire, not a roaring fire at all — women have never explained the why of this priority reality.