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I want to draw your attention to something incredibly suspicious Barack Obama did on social media last week. He wished his wife of 32 years a happy birthday.
“Happy birthday to the love of my life, @MichelleObama,” the former president wrote, shadily. “You fill every room with warmth, wisdom, humor, and grace—and you look good doing it. I’m so lucky to be able to take on life’s adventures with you. Love you!”
What exactly is so outrageous about this post? Well, for reasons I don’t fully understand but will attempt to summarize anyway, some tea-leaf readers decided that it’s evidence that the Obamas’ marriage is in trouble. See how weird it is that he said “love you!” instead of “I love you”? See how awkward it is that in the accompanying photo the two are sitting on opposite sides of a dining room table, their hands stretching to meet in the middle? It’s giving divorce, you might say, if you were the kind of person who used the phrase “It’s giving …” (I’m still not sure if I am.) Coming so close on the heels of Michelle mysteriously skipping Jimmy Carter’s funeral, this post was an obvious attempt at damage control, according to some, only it hadn’t worked.
I don’t want to be a “many people are saying” guy, so let’s talk about who specifically is saying this. Meghan McCain is among the most prominent; as reported in the Daily Beast, this week she went on one of the website Puck’s podcasts and told host Tara Palmeri that there were “very serious journalists telling me that they’re hearing that the Obama divorce rumors are true.” If this still sounds like hearsay to you, I agree, it very much is, but Palmeri, a political reporter, offered some validation. “We’ve heard that for a long time,” she said. “Like I just heard that they live separate lives.” Palmeri added that she thought the rumors could be politically motivated. That would make sense coming from McCain, who usually doesn’t have many nice things to say about Democrats, and for Jessica Reed Kraus, the influencer turned conservative Substack writer who recently sent her 400,000-plus subscribers a newsletter about the rumor. She included the further completely unsubstantiated tidbit that Obama is having an affair with Jennifer Aniston, which Aniston denied months ago. Otherwise, the gossip hasn’t been picked up much by mainstream publications, meaning it exists in that sort of nether region where it’s not a real story, but it also hasn’t been fully debunked (because it can only really be debunked with time anyway); for that reason, you may have seen your friends who don’t have conservative agendas speculating about it on social media.
Listen, I get that engaging in a little irresponsible rumormongering about people’s relationships can be fun. I’ve even been known to partake in it myself from time to time. I also get that it’s been a hard week, and a hard month, and it’s poised to be a hard four years. I totally understand the temptation to feel cynical. So I’m going to try to be nice when I say the following: Guys, I think some of us have lost the plot. A perfectly nice birthday message a boomer wrote for his wife is evidence of marital strife now? Oof. Are we really going to take Meghan McCain’s word for anything? “I would kill Ben [Domenech, her husband] if he put a picture of me looking like no makeup with that lighting on social media,” McCain also said on the podcast, which is both mean—Michelle looks fine!—and, to be a little mean ourselves, surprising, given ample photographic evidence of McCain’s many hair crimes over the years.
It’s not that it’s so hard to believe that the Obamas would be having marital problems; staying happily married is hard for anyone, and it’s surely even harder when you’re in the public eye. Factor in adult children who render the cliché of staying together for the kids moot, and you start to see the vision. Michelle, as Palmeri pointed out, has professed to have never liked politics, but as evidenced by Obama’s reported role in engineering Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race, Barack can’t stay away. Is this Tom Brady refusing to retire from football and losing his wife over it all over again? It certainly could be. But is there any real evidence that it’s true, beyond that Michelle didn’t show up at a funeral, and then didn’t show up a few days later to an inauguration that any right-thinking person would not want to attend? What are the chances they even write their own Instagram captions, anyway?
I’m not going to pretend I don’t have a vested interest in this news not being true. I like the Obamas together. I want to believe in love. While I don’t consider them a full personal emotional support couple the way I do, say, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, I think it would be sad for one of America’s few remaining old-school political powerhouse couples to break up in the Trump years. I’m aware that makes me a parasocial freak—so be it. I guess I’d just rather not put the thought into the world. Have I finally found the one worry I’m unwilling to borrow? If the Obamas do break up, feel free to remind me of this post with a big fat “Told you so!,” but I hope future me will understand present me’s position that we can cross that bridge when and if we come to it.
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