James Taranto writes:

For all the hype about Barack Obama being some new kind of politician, in one respect he is very similar to recent Democratic presidential nominees: He takes criticism very badly, responding to it by getting both defensive and nasty. It is a most unattractive quality.

Michelle Obama: …working in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, worked for years in neighborhoods where people had a reason to give up hope, because their jobs had been lost, steel mills shut down, living in brown fields left by those closed steel plants, unsafe streets, schools deteriorating, grandparents raising grandkids. Barack spent years working with churches, busing single mothers down to City Hall to help them find their voice, building the kind of operations on the ground, just like he’s doing in this race, block by block, person by person. Now you tell me whether there’s anybody in this race who can claim to have made the same choice with their lives. You tell me. But I think that Barack Obama is the only person that can claim that kind of choice…so trust me, we’ve seen it all. Barack has seen it all.

Hugh Hewitt: Mark Steyn?

Mark Steyn: (laughing) Well, you know, that’s…I don’t know…Chicago doesn’t sound like part of America. It sounds like we need to fly in some U.N. relief agency. They should all pull out of Burma and fly into these derelict parts of Chicago. The fact is, community organizer is a bogus term. She ought to knock it off. Real people…one of the most pathetic aspects of this race is that somehow, a guy like Mitt Romney, who runs successful companies, he’s regarded as Mr. Bloated Plutocrat like the guy in the top hat on the Monopoly board. A guy like that actually makes a contribution to people’s lives, to generating the great wealth in corporate America that pays for everything else. And a community organizer, which most functioning communities in the United States don’t have the need for, is an entirely bogus term. She is becoming, I miss Teresa Heinz Kerry.

HH: (laughing)

MS: God bless here. I used to love going to John Kerry events, and John Kerry would be droning I say to George Bush, bring it on, and Teresa used to stand there next to him looking board out of her skull. God bless her. She was a, you know, she’s a genuine, a very genuine woman. And Michelle Obama by contrast seems to have all the condescension of Teresa Heinz Kerry, plus this weird bitterness and anger. I think she’s a very strange woman.