Sick Obama Love

This from New York Times writer Judith Warner.

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right
when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he
was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It
was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president's
health or jealous because of the cigarette.

The other day a friend of mine confided that in the weeks leading up
to the election, the Obamas' apparent joy as a couple had made her
just miserable. Their marriage looked so much happier than hers. Their
life seemed so perfect. "I was at a place where I was tempted daily to
throttle my husband," she said. "This coincided with Michelle saying
the most beautiful things about Barack. Each time I heard her speak
about him I got tears in my eyes -- because I felt so far away from
that kind of bliss in my own life and perhaps even more, because I was
so moved by her expressions of devotion to him. And unlike previous
presidential couples, they are our age, have children the same age and
(just imagine the stress of daily life on the campaign) by all
accounts should have been fighting even more than we were."

As we all know, in journalism, two anecdotes are just one short of a
national trend. I figured that my friend and I couldn't possibly be
the only ones dreaming, brooding or otherwise obsessing about the
Obamas. Were other people, I wondered, being possessed by our new
first family?

I launched an e-mail inquiry. And learned that they were. Often, in
strikingly similar ways.

Many women -- not too surprisingly -- were dreaming about sex with the
president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater
or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North
Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully
above-board solution: "Michelle had divorced Barack because he had
become 'too much of a star.' He then married my mother, who was oh so
proud to be the first lady," the daughter wrote me.