Michelle Obama Traumatizes Children At Farm

Now that summer is over, America's children are once again spending their days piled into classrooms, learning about the great Holy War between man and the dinosaurs. Of course, school field trips are part of the great American education tradition, and while most children would be lucky to get a glimpse of a pumpkin patch, local river or toxic landfill these days, the privileged third-graders of John F. Kennedy Magnet School in New York spent last Friday afternoon at a farm with our FLOTUS and 31 other important ladies, picking tomatoes and being attacked by chickens.

Michelle Obama, who plans to ban French fries forever, wanted to take children to the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture so they could learn where food comes from, before it arrives at Walmart. Unfortunately, she did not realize just how terrifying this experience would be for youngsters who can only identify animals by the names given to them in Pixar movies.

As Mrs. Obama and Elisabeth D. Préval, wife of the Haitian president, helped the children collect the eggs, one child on the other side of a movable chicken coop was squawking, not unlike a chicken. A bird had either pecked or scratched him, though later he was seen tentatively nestling a different chicken in his arms.

And a likely case of bird flu wasn't the only awful part of the day. Earlier on, Michelle Obama attempted to sabotage a pasta-making class, because she hates carbs.

Earlier, when Mrs. Obama had dropped by the kitchen to see one of the children's cooking classes, pesto and cavatelli were being prepared from scratch. But as the little sous-chefs were about to begin cutting the pasta dough, the Secret Service arrived and told them they had to put away all the knives. The cavatelli preparation had to wait until Mrs. Obama left.

In addition to the physical dangers on the farm and getting their knives taken away, the fragile schoolchildren were forced to spend the day surrounded by the wives of various world leaders whose giant, foreign hats and inappropriate footwear could have sent them toppling over at any moment.

The first lady’s foreign guests had been advised to wear "farm-appropriate clothing." Mrs. Obama, wearing a floral and foliage-patterned Tracy Feith dress that she also had worn to her first public event after President Obama's inauguration, had on silver ballet flats. But not everyone complied: not the women in their five-inch heels, nor the ones in their special-occasion native costumes with elaborate headdresses.

It appears that if Michelle Obama is unsuccessful in her efforts to make salad the after-school snack of choice, she will get her Army of First Ladies to end America's tradition of microwavable fudge brownies once and for all. [ NYT ]

 Blair Burke (blairelinor@gmail.com) obsessively follows Michelle Obama's every move for "The FLOTUS Files," which appears every Monday here at your Wonkette.