I was two-thirds of the way through a piece on TIFs and the need for decentralized control of the city, when I picked up the tabloid pied piper, the "Bright One" Sun-Times, this morning. On the cover was a picture of Michelle Obama sitting on a stage, and the headline "Marketing Michelle Obama."

I had to have a say on this topic, despite my oath to not write about federal politics so long as we have enough work to do here in the city. (And also because I cannot stand the extent to which a class of media and public relations professionals has essentially infiltrated the political process to such a degree that elections are designed with that class as the constituency, instead of the people. I mean, has it never crossed your mind why media operations that receive billions of dollars of revenue from the political parties would ignore a candidate who hasn't raised sufficient millions of dollars to spend on... buying advertising from them? This is the type of conflict of interest that would make a city zoning attorney blush [see how I tied it back there?]. The federal political process has very little to do with democracy.)

Nevertheless, this issue at least relates to our day-to-day life in an interesting way. I'm probably going to be preaching largely to the converted in this space, I realize that. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that this entire "makeover" idea took a turn into dangerous as it headed to absurdity. Something absurd is basically harmless; the fact that it is absurd means nobody can take it seriously, even if they wanted to. What exactly has Michelle Obama done that she needs to be made over? The answer, I think is immediately obvious: she was born a woman.

But it is dishonest — and, worse, lazy — to just accuse "the media" of sexism. This isn't really a matter of sexism, it's a matter of authority, and it is not journalists and editors perpetuating it per se, but rather a corporate approach to information. The corporate approach to everything is authority. And obedience. The media establishment — the literally handful of media conglomerates that dominate public information in this country — don't operate in a vacuum. They operate according to a spirit of domination. Whether or not they actually convince themselves that what they're doing is "serving the needs" of "the consumers" (ie, "people") is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that public information has become about enforcing obedience in exchange for exposure. And an accomplished and intelligent woman like Michelle Obama should not have to have a "makeover." Paris Hilton needs a Michelle Obama makeover (I imagine that conversation starting with a phrase like, "For the love of God, respect yourself just a little bit").

Stop and consider for a moment that it is the media itself reporting on efforts to use the media to present a new "side" of Michelle Obama. How crazy is this? If they know that is what she's "trying" to do, how does the effort make any sense?

It makes sense because the current media system is about subjectivity and "consciousness-raising," not material reality and fact. Michelle Obama has to "be relatable." What does that mean? When I think of my mother, who has worked at hospitals most of her life while raising two kids, I don't think she feels particular close to a woman because they both shop at Target. "Relatability," like "Electability" or subjective nothings that give the media establishment immense power to enforce conformity.

Because who would push the idea that Michelle Obama wasn't "likable" or "relatable" if she didn't go on this demeaning "makeover" tour? The same media establishment — in fact, in a lot of cases, the exact same "journalists" — that are currently reporting and editorializing about her makeover tour.

When you run for an office of public trust, you do to a great extent agree to live a public life. You do this because you think you warrant the public trust to do what is right for the people; it is what free societies do to keep their leaders honest. This is vastly preferable, we should pause to note, to what unfree societies do to keep their leaders honest, which is either nothing or periodic, blood-soaked uprisings. But the "femininity" or "womanness" as defined by — the 1950s? I guess? — has nothing to do with the qualifications for holding office. Some would say because she is actively campaigning for her husband. But this is hardly fair; the context of Michelle Obama's advocacy for her husband is as a proxy (to stand in for him) not as an public figure in her own right, using that authority to make a case for someone else.

Why is Michelle Obama in need of a makeover (as opposed to say, Laura Bush)? She's a young woman, first of all. She's an Ivy League-educated young woman, secondly. And, of course, she's a professional, Ivy League-educated woman. You get the sense from Michelle Obama that if she was still Michelle Robinson, she'd be at the top of her game wherever she was. The "makeover tour" is not about making Michelle Obama seem nice, it's about making her seem more "womanly" (or, really, wifely). And you can bet this has more to do with how men perceive Senator Obama than how women view Michelle Obama.

In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft brilliantly dissected arguments for women's "natural" domesticity, although some of her arguments would seem antiquated today. If you pause to consider the adverb "domesticity" and its relationship to the verb "domesticated," you can appreciate the enormous task Wollstonecraft faced in Vindication. The heart of her argument was essentially that the state of "domestic" subservience enforced on women made society less moral, not more moral, because so long as one group of humankind was kept forcibly from public participation, the group that benefitted from their servitude would not be forced to account for their leadership:

There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equality will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance, or pride.

The result is a practical Catch-22; women in public must show that they aren't too "forceful" or "grating" — but lack of those very qualities are cited, through increasingly euphemistic phrasing, for why they aren't natural leaders of others, or why people can't get "used" to them in positions of authority. Because Hillary Clinton was a candidate, she got caught in the trap. She couldn't afford to go on a "makeover" tour of her own without reinforcing the very typecasting that would keep her from getting elected in the first place. Not that that was why she lost, but it happened nevertheless.

On what authority do we accept "facts" like this:

Evelyn Simien, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut, said Obama is wise to stress her "Suzy Homemaker side" because "it's the side that married women can relate to. She's got to be strategic."

I don't know how accurately Evelyn Simien was quoted in that Sun-Times article, but this is dismal reasoning. How do we "know" that married women (a bloc of humanity that encompasses well over 50 percent of women of all races, religions, and social classes over the age of 15) can only relate to a woman who complains about panty hose and talks about where she shops? Do you think that a married woman in Inverness relates the same way to a political figure as a married woman in Tunica, Mississippi? No. "Married woman" as an interest group does not exist. The "married woman" as someone you need to relate to does not exist. It is an idealistic, made up nothing, an artificial standard imposed on women in politics and government and in positions of authority generally.

Months ago, supposedly "brilliant" poster Frank Luntz revealed himself to the obvious fraud that thinking people have known him to be for years. Luntz is the boy-wonder who supposedly created the grammar of the 1994 Republican "Revolution," the Contract with America. He has since gone on to a lucrative career advising Republicans and appearing as a talking head "expert" on the opinions of the "average" of American. But of course, there is no such person as the "average" American. Luntz's real purpose as part of the Fox News propaganda operation was not to report opinions but to create them by arbitrarily assigning them to "average Americans." He was exposed when bloggers discovered that he had used "undecided American" actors to repeat talking points about the candidates after debates. In the same way, "Suzy Homemaker" becomes the "married woman." But there is nothing that necessarily connects the two.

Tell me: who undermines the institution of marriage more? Homosexuals who want access to it? Or a power structure that associates getting married with submitting to the authority of another person?

Certainly lots of people reading this are saying, "So, what? Is this new?" And of course it isn't. But what makes it more immediately obvious is the way that the media continues with the charade despite the fact that they are explicitly aware that it is a charade. Is the point of a public relations effort to convince people that something is true? Or is it to just satisfy a requirement of conformity? If Michelle Obama (or whoever) told a group of reporters, "I'm happily married because I love my children and husband, and while I don't choose to work in the home, people should be free to arrange their own home life," would married women revolt?

Or, would contingents in the media fabricate a "scandal" and start to rhetorically ask everybody within shouting distance, "Is Michelle Obama insulting married women!?"

Which seems more likely?

Seventy percent of women with children under the age of 18 are employed outside the home. Starting with this fact (and it is a fact), would you assume that the "average" American woman would be scandalized by a woman who sought to establish herself in a career, excel in her profession, and fight for social causes she believed in, while raising two daughters? To accept that fact, you would have to accept that the "average" American woman loathes her life outside the home and considers "Suzy Homemaker" to be a role model, or the only way another woman can relate to her. Because if 10 women, unknown to each other, are ever in the same place, the only thing we can reasonably expect them to talk about are their children, shopping at Target, and what their perfect date is.

The standard is artificial and, as stated earlier, has more to do with making women like Michelle Obama "obey" than it has to do, strictly speaking, with sex. One wonders, also: is the Suzy Homemaker thing more about making men comfortable with Michelle Obama, rather than women? Did John Kerry suffer because he was seen as a weakling — in part because he was married to a woman like Theresa Heinz Kerry?

It gets too conspiratorial at this point, so we'll drop it; but it is at least an interesting intellectual exercise to consider; does the First Lady makeover tour have more to do with assuaging men's concerns about the type of man the candidate is than the type of woman the First Lady is? A little too adorable a premise, so we'll leave it alone. But, reasonably speaking, does it take more self-confidence, charm and ambition for a man to marry a strong-willed, presumably picky woman like Michelle Obama? Or a docile "domesticated" woman?

The Obama campaign can't be faulted for following the Piper's tune. But let's don't forget that the Piper took all those kids into a cave at the end of that story.