So Michelle Obama took a fancy trip to Spain with her daughter and friends. Is she history's greatest monster for this extravagance? Irate Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros sure thinks so! Why can't Michelle Obama travel like an "average" person?

Michelle Obama's trip, which is basically a personal shopping trip with some events scattered around, requires the booking of 60 to 70 five-star hotel rooms, with 40 of her friends. While the government will have to cover for her security detail, her and her friends' lodging will be paid for privately, it seems.

So it's okay to criticize her for whatever cost the government is still paying. But must we really get into the whole "this fancy vacation is insulting to struggling Americans" faux-outrage? Andrea Tantaros sure thinks so!

Perhaps it could be that the Obamas, who seem to fancy themselves more along the lines of international celebrities than actual leaders, espouse a different view of sacrifice. When Michelle Obama accompanied her husband to Copenhagen along with best buddy Oprah Winfrey, she billed the trip - an ultimately unsuccessful bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago - as follows: "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the President to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home."

A quick jaunt to Denmark is a sacrifice? What portraits in courage!

The Obama modus operandi is becoming clear. From lavish trips to Spain to reportedly flying Bo, the President's Portuguese water dog, on a separate aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a date night in New York City that perhaps cost nearly $100,000, their idea of austerity is really just the lap of luxury, at least for ordinary folks.

[...]

Michelle Obama seems more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette - the French queen who spent extravagantly on clothes and jewels without a thought for her subjects' plight - than an average mother of two.

Indeed, Michelle Obama is not exactly an "average mother of two." She's the First Lady of the United States. This makes her a fancy person and, accordingly, she does fancy person things, like live in the White House and ride in limousines and go on vacation in Europe. It's really not that strange.

[via CBS News; Image via AP]