Let us eat s'mores! Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, and desserts

By Alexandra Petri

"This is in honor of Michelle Obama who said the other day we should not have dessert." --Sarah Palin

America has two mommies. There's Cool Mom. "We give our kids a lot of freedom," Cool Mom says. "We're all gonna make mistakes." Then there's Mother Knows Best. "Eat your vegetables!" she is fond of saying. "Get up off the couch and move!"

Guess which one America prefers?

Well, Michelle Obama, actually. But who knows how long that will last! The dessert war is just getting started.

Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" health initiative has stirred much ire, from everyone from Glenn Beck to Sarah Palin. "Get away from my French fries, Mrs. Obama!" Beck bellowed. "First politician that comes up to me with a carrot stick, I've got a place for it. And it's not in my tummy."

Hear, hear, say I.

Like most of America, I am functionally a six year-old child, and I will eat whatever I want to eat. Michelle wants me to move and eat greens? She can take those greens and shove them! Sarah's making me s'mores!

This symbolizes so much about our country -- and about the differences between these two figures.

Michelle and Barack Obama labor under the misguided notion that explaining to the American people that things are good for us is an effective way of getting things done! That's ridiculous! You'd think they would have learned from having kids. I can see President Obama waking up Sasha and Malia by going into their room and offering logical reasons why sleeping later would serve no purpose. Then I can see the girls ignore him and go back to sleep. Somehow, the weakness of this approach hasn't penetrated.

Americans hate being told that others know best -- even people we otherwise revere, such as Michelle Obama. Ever since King George asked us to tighten our belts, we've been on the defensive. And we will defend, tooth and nail, our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of Hostess products -- at least until that tooth falls out from all the sugar.

There's a reason Garfield is the most widely syndicated comic strip. As a nation, we hate diets and Mondays and doing our jobs. We just want to lie down and sleep and decimate the local population of lasagna.

Michelle Obama's crusade to encourage healthy kids has become, for many, the symbol of everything that's wrong with the Obama administration: Its Father Knows Best tone. It's the administration of Take Your Vitamins, Swallow This Castor Oil, You'll Feel Better, Trust Us.

"Eat your vegetables!" President Obama says, metaphorically, pointing to a complicated series of graphs about health-care reform. Eat your vegetables! The New START Treaty needs to pass! Eat your vegetables! The deficit needs to be reduced, somehow! Eat your vegetables!

Then, to make things worse, Eat Your Vegetables, says Michelle Obama, literally. If Michelle Obama had a campaign to give America a later bedtime, or to encourage it to watch more television, it wouldn't have emerged as the defining metaphor of the Obama presidency so far. But those green vegetables Michelle has planted near the White House? She might as well be planting them in the shape of an easy target. This analogy is being served to us on a silver platter with a glass of water and some parsley as a garnish. "Want to go jogging now?" Michelle and Barack ask us, not noticing that anything is wrong.

At some point, promoting vegetables slipped into outright war on dessert. People were only moderately afraid of death panels. But when Cookie Monster announced that "cookies are a sometimes food," we erupted into the streets in outright rebellion. Take away our dessert, and we become violent and angry, probably from sugar deprivation. "Get off my lawn!" we shout. "Don't touch my junk! Leave Britney alone! Let us eat cake!"

Why behead Marie Antoinette? Those French peasants don't know how good they had it. Sure, "Let them eat cake" seemed insensitive at the time, but the alternative - "Don't let them eat cake!" is infinitely worse.

Let us eat cake! This is our new rallying cry. It's no longer a vague subjunctive. It's a singular demand, aimed at one person: Michelle Obama.

If you don't, Sarah Palin will.