First Lady Michelle Obama And The North Carolina School Lunch Incident

Call it pushback for the boatlads of positive press coverage First Lady Michelle Obama got for the second anniversary celebration of the Let's Move! campaign: Her imaginary role as the Chief of the Food Police has been making internet headlines since Feb. 14th. On that day, Drudge Report featured a story about a North Carolina pre-schooler who had her home-packed lunch replaced with a lunch from her school's cafeteria, ostensibly due to an official deeming it nutritionally unsound. Responses to the story have been ongoing and over the top; this cartoon, sent in by an Obama Foodorama reader, is the latest of many.

This morning, I was on Houston radio host Michael Berry's morning show on KTRH to discuss the North Carolina event, but barely got a word in as Berry and his other guest, a representative of the conservative Cato Institute, blasted the federal government and Mrs. Obama for intruding on parental rights with school lunch standards, which they claimed includes the mandate for officials to "confiscate" home-made lunches. Mrs. Obama was the most high-profile champion for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act 2010, which updates the federal school nutrition standards. It is the legislative centerpiece of the Let's Move! campaign, but does NOT include any mandates for school, state or federal officials to take away home-made school lunches from students.

North Carolina's The Fayetteville Observer ran a more objective story about the school lunch incident than the one Drudge Report linked to: Replacing the child's lunch of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice with the cafeteria's chicken nugget luncheon was a "mix-up," according to a spokesman for e school. That hasn't stopped the outcry: On Thursday, The National Center for Public Policy Research hosted a “lunch-in” at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, which featured a "protester" holding a sign that read "Hands off my turkey sandwich." Drudge Report featured a headline linking to that story, too. (Above: The first Feb. 14 Drudge headline about the North Carolina story was massive)

*The creator of the cartoon at top is unknown.