Target Michelle (and Carls Jr. Mitt)

Based on the info available, I’ve got to agree with the wingers that Michelle’s supposedly stealth trip to Target was a photo-op. (Feel free to on click the pic and scan around; it’s the jumbo size.)

If you read the WAPO Lifestyle piece, the writer is clearly trying to have it both ways. What tips the balance for me, though, are those tidbits about a.) how Target doesn’t let anybody photograph without permission, b.) the White House isn’t talking, c.) AP photographer Charles Dharapak isn’t talking, and d.) I can’t imagine that Dharapak, and no other DC wire photographer, would have figured out where FLOTUS was going without being tipped.  And then, examining the photo itself, there is the curious point that e.) Michelle seems to be looking right at Charlie (with a little too circumspect an expression).

So, before reading up on this Target business, I also hadn’t heard about the sniping going on by the right-wing over Michelle borrowing all that jewelry the other day, but here’s what I’m sure of. With Obama playing “the millionaire card” in the budget wars and the Wall Street protests taking root, politicians across the spectrum are now falling all over themselves (more than they even were before) to look “all Wal-Mart.”

To come back to the question: was Michelle ducking out to spend an hour as a civilian? Well, for my money, dwindling as it is, I put Romney’s common man schtick with the mall-centric tweets and Michelle’s foray to Tar-jay in the same bucket.

(photo: Charles Dharapak/AP.)