Michelle Obama targeted by critics

CHICAGO, June 12 (UPI) -- Now that the presidential race is under way in earnest, Michelle Obama knows she can look forward to stepped-up criticism.

She now must come to grips with her new status of the Barack Obama campaign's leading saleswoman, who's also emerging as an enticing target for conservative critics, the Chicago Tribune says.

She has heard a lot of it already, from the whispering campaign to thinly sourced, evidence-free dissections of things she says or does to remarks like the TV anchor made comparing her playful "knuckle-bump" with her husband on a victorious campaign night to a "terrorist fist jab," the report said.

Obama finally took to the air to tell critics to "lay off" his wife. And, the campaign set up a special force to fight criticism.

So cutting is the fault-finding of late, the Tribune said, that first lady Laura Bush came to her defense, pointing out that in the new world she now travels, "everything you say is looked at and, in many cases, misconstrued."