“Barack? He Looked Like a Nerd”

Michelle Obama: “It does not matter much what people think of him.”

WASHINGTON

Who meets Barack Obama for the first time and has the impression of finding herself in front of a nerd with a funny name? Those are the words of Michelle Obama, the wife of the President-elect of the United States, who talked about the first time she met her future husband in an interview with CNN.

“At first,” Michelle said, “I did what many people do when they meet Barack Obama: I thought what a strange name ‘Barack Obama’ was. My impression was this guy must be a little strange, maybe even a little nerdish. I already had an impression of this intellectual nerd. When we worked together for the law firm of Sidley Austin in Chicago, I got to know him better, I changed my mind. We understood each other immediately,” says the future First Lady. “When he told me of his past, it deepened further,” she continued, “I discovered that his father was from Kenya, his mother was a white Kansas woman and that he had spent part of his life in Indonesia.”

“He was amusing, self-critical and did not take himself too seriously. He kept his feet firmly on the ground, despite having a very exotic past, compared to mine.” Michelle then talked about how community organizing work shaped her husband: it gave him a different air from those other professionals with their Wall Street-style clothing. Since then, she said, “he has not changed much.” Even his wardrobe has remained the same: “He wears the same shirts and pants as when we got married. Some of his pants have holes. It does not much matter what people think of him or his fashion: he has always been a man without frills on his mind. “