"Obama's Wife Decries Blackness Question"

Huffington Post:

The wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Sunday admonished those who question her biracial husband's credentials as a black man, calling the issue "nonsense."

"We're still playing around with the question: Is he black enough?" Michelle Obama told a campaign event on Chicago's South Side. "Stop that nonsense."

Michelle Obama, who was raised on the South Side, was speaking at a predominantly black "Women for Obama" rally, which cheered her comment about the U.S. senator from Illinois.

She added that raising the specter of whether her husband _ whose mother was white and whose father was Kenyan _ was sufficiently black sent a confusing message to kids.

"We are messing with the heads of our children," she said.

At the gathering, Michelle Obama also thanked the South Side community for supporting her family over the years.

"This community of people has raised us ... has helped create our moral fabric," she said. "We couldn't do it without the South Side."

She also told the several hundred people at the elaborately decorated Grand Ballroom that she hoped her husband serves as a role model in how he helps raise their two young daughters.

"If you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House," she said.