Bob Schwartz

Washington Post:

Michelle Obama swore when criticizing Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘lean in’ mantra, and the Internet lost it

In front of a sold-out crowd at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday night, Michelle Obama looked like a woman who had it all. The Ivy League-educated former first lady, mother of two and now best-selling author was met with thunderous applause as she walked onstage to promote her recently released memoir, “Becoming.”

But in a brief moment of uninhibited candor — complete with some spontaneous swearing — that set the Internet ablaze, Obama said the belief that women can always “have it all” is “a lie” and voiced an unexpectedly frank rebuke of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg’s controversial “lean in” mantra.

“It’s not always enough to lean in because that s— doesn’t work all the time,” she reportedly said.

Talk about setting folks straight with disarming charm. This is what so many didn’t understand and still don’t: If the great Eleanor Roosevelt was reincarnated, she would not come back as Hillary Clinton. She would come back as a brilliant and incandescent black former First Lady, with a pitch-perfect sense of public balance. As much as some of us enjoy seeing Barack, wishing that he was still in the White House, we warmly welcome Michelle into our lives too.