The mythology surrounding iconic figures is so powerfully entrenched in American culture that many people probably have trouble remembering that these are actually real people. As I watch the innocent daughters of Barack and Michelle Obama -- 10-year-old Sasha and 7-year-old Malia, I cannot help but tremble for their futures.
Not only will they suddenly be thrust into the role of "first daughters" -- a concept that surely is unimaginable to them -- their family life, as they have known it, will soon be shattered, never to be put back together again.
They will be black children living in the "White" House!
The girls will get a puppy. Their Dad will be downstairs, doing what he must as the most powerful man in the world. Their Mom will be both downstairs, as first lady, and upstairs, as their Mom, no doubt feeling tensions most of us never experience, since, to be truthful, most of the time nobody cares what we do or how we do it, save those closest around us.
Michelle Obama will not have that kind of privacy.
That's the problem for these little girls, I suspect. By all accounts, theirs is the kind of intimate nuclear family many of us have aspired to. But how can any family carry on under the glare not only of this country's 24/7 media, but the world's?
I, for one, do not know.
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