The track record for First Lady legacies isn’t encouraging. Jackie Kennedy redecorated the White House and then we had a long, dry spell. Ladybird Johnson talked about beautifying highways, but I can’t recall if the effort was confined to Texas or was nationwide. In any event it occurred so long ago that Democrats still supported building highways.

Pat Nixon had that coat, but I think it was a carry over from vice presidential days. Betty Ford had her center. Rosalynn Carter was innocuous. Nancy Reagan just said “No.” Barbara Bush carried on in the tradition of Pat Nixon. Hillary Clinton was publicly spurned inside and outside the White House. Laura Bush always gave the impression she was slumming when surrounded by Republicans.

And Michelle Obama decided to bully school kids. She thought forcing teenagers to subsist on the same fare enjoyed by Eastern mystics would cure America’s obesity problem.

Prior to the US Dept. of Agriculture foisting the “settled science” of the Food Pyramid on a trusting public, the nation’s individual weight distribution looked like the typical Bell Curve. At one extreme of the graph were anorexics and on the other extreme were the morbidly obese. The vast majority was in the middle with an average weight.

Now, after 40 years of having carbohydrates stuffed down our gullet like geese in a pe¢te© factory, Americans look like an upside down Bell Curve, only the curve now follows the sag in our collective behinds.

The good news for those who make a career in “public service” is the same government that caused the obesity epidemic is prepared to spend billions trying to reverse their epidemic. Michelle’s legacy is part of that effort. The “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” passed in 2012, was designed to bypass local authority and seize control of school lunch menus.

In the future kids wouldn’t be hungry due to incompetent parents. They would be hungry as a result of Michelle’s One-Size-Fits-All menu mandate.

Thank God Michelle didn’t choose clothing for her legacy. Kids attending government schools would look like Red Guards.

Michelle might be able to keep the menus running on time in the White House where she has the Secret Service to back her up, but in Deplorable America teenagers are much more obstinate.

The Washington Free Beacon reports in Indiana that “students are avoiding cafeteria food. More students bring their lunch, and a few parents even ‘check out’ their child from campus, taking them to a local fast-food restaurant or home for lunch.”

The University of Vermont conducted a study of her menu in action and found food waste increased by 56 percent. Michelle even managed to turn formerly law-abiding children into salt pushers as flavor advocates sold take-out packets to an eager client base.

Michelle even managed to make biscuits taste bad, but what would you expect from a woman that demands diners eat grits without butter or brown sugar?

This is why if you passed by any school gullible enough to adopt her school lunch program you could see Michelle’s legacy being tossed from school cafeteria trash cans into the dumpster.

Now the Trump administration is calling a ceasefire in the War on Flavor by halting new ingredient regulations in favor of requiring all government schools to serve borscht.

Naturally, Michelle isn’t happy. At the Partnership for a Healthier America summit recently she protested, “Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap,” and she wasn’t talking about her menu.

Michelle thinks that if it weren’t for her benevolent intervention mealtime in America would be a giant blindfolded taste test. Employing her usual drill sergeant delivery, she equates halting regulations that produce labels and menus no one bothers to read with totally clandestine cuisine, “You shouldn’t know what you’re eating.’ Think about that. Stop there, think about that. ‘You shouldn’t know what you’re eating.’ You’re OK with that?…You want to talk about nanny state and government intervention? Well, you just buy the food and be quiet…They think you don’t care because what they hear from are the people who want their kids to eat whatever they want to eat.”

People who want their kids to have a choice? Why those are the people who should be deported! Parents who question orders from Washington regarding what to eat might start questioning why Washington gives those orders in the first place.

Michelle’s real legacy is utter contempt for the average American. Personally, I can get along without the hectoring presence of the First Drill Sergeant. I know what I’m buying in the grocery store without consulting the USDA hotline.

If Michelle’s cuisine control causes local school boards to question the role of the feds in education, then she will have left a legacy I can actually support.

© Copyright 2017 Michael Shannon, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of “A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at [email protected].

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