The company we keep and the company which keeps us tend to define the kept. That point of popular wisdom may not always be true in real life but in political lives it is a constnt and invariably as valid as political treachery.

As they should, most political wives studiously maintain a low profile. Usually.

First ladies, especially, tend to busy themselves with innocuous causes and projects ranging from Jackie Kennedy's White House beautification after the dowdy Mamie Eisenhower ruled that roost to former librarian Laura Bush's campaign for education and literacy to Michelle Obama's quest to eradicate fat kids from the American landscape.

Michelle, however, despite her childhood obesity fixation and her White House vegetable garden. planned, no doubt, to inspire America's youth to forego Clintonian Big Macs and to discover the joy of veggies, is a FLOTUS literally and figuratively of a whole different color.

No stranger to controversy before and during her White House tenure, the president's bride continues to outdo herself. From her "racially-conscious" Princeton undergrad thesis to her stated lack of national pride before Barack ascended to the presidency to her extravagant vacations on the taxpayer dime and borderline bizarre tastes in first lady garb during her personal reign, Mrs. Obama has been a real trip.

Any more than Barack's gaffes. inanities, and "misquotes" get much MSM play, few of Michelle's questionably-proper activities and statements get much attention from her husband's mainstream media, which doesn't mitigate Michelle's improprieties any more than they do her husband's. Both seem to abide by the conviction that they do and say what they do and say because they can.

For example, how many Americans have heard of Mrs. Obama's electioneering outside a Chicago polling place in 2008? How many have read about such breaches of protocol as her touching Indonesian Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring last year, something which simply is not done with Indonesian men? President George W. Bush was ridiculed for winking at Queen Elizabeth II but Michelle Obama actually slapping a big hug on the Queen of England was attributed to her natural inclination of just being folksy.

Still, those are small potatoes in the greater scheme of political things as contrasted with a more recent violation not of protocol but of decorous common sense. The first lady has invited Chicago "poet" and rapper, Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA "Common" to the executive mansion. That invite to a poetry reading far exceeds the impropriety of her previous social faux pas, that is unless one considers "poetry" that which "includes threats to shoot police and at least one passage calling for the 'burn[ing]' of then-President George W. Bush."

Excerpts from the work of the aptly-nicknamed "Common" include such uplifting "poetically" artistic expression as, "Whatcha gon do if ya got one gun?/ I sing a song for the hero unsung/ . . . I got the black strap to make the cops run/ They watching me, I'm watching them/ Them dick boys got a lock of cock in them . . . Burn a Bush cos' for peace he no push no button/ Killing over oil and grease/ no weapons of destruction/ How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one/ The government's a g-unit and they might buck young black people/ Black people In the urban area one/ I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun./ Peace, ya'll:" http://bit.ly/l4vRLO

Good stuff, huh?

What lyrics could better inspire excellence, ambition, and the highest of aspirations in the black community than those of a foul-mouthed, frustrated cop-killer and presidential assassin wannabe?

(I mentioned this article to my wife who remarked, "See why I don't watch the news?" I had to remind her that she wouldn't be seeing or hearing much if anything about it on "the news.")