Mrs. Obama says she didn't always agree with the Rev. Wright. OK. But her own riff on American life, delivered time and again on the stump, is grim. Here is the New Yorker description:

"Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we're a divided country, we're a country that is 'just downright mean,' we are 'guided by fear,' we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. 'We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,' she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. 'Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I'm young. Forty-four!'"

Now highlighting problems and looking for solutions does not make you unpatriotic. But Mrs. Obama does seem to have more than her share of whines for a woman who attended Princeton and Harvard Law and was able to snag jobs at the most prestigious firms. "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Obama told one audience. "See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund."

Does she really think this a great country? Asked if she worried about her husband being assassinated, Mrs. Obama said "as a black man, Barack could be shot going to the gas station," as if this were 1950 Alabama. "The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl."

She opened her home to William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. She sat in the Rev. Wright's church for 20 years. She told the Democratic convention that she loves America. Is that the real Michelle Obama? Or was it the woman who hoped her husband could deliver this country because "our souls are broken in this nation."