Michelle Obama’s appearance Wednesday on The View is a very interesting and intricate case study in Public Relations Management and personal branding.  Over the past few days pundits have described her appearance as an effort to show off her “softer side.”  When I first heard it positioned that way, a series of random thoughts and questions began to scroll through my head:  ”Why does she have to show her ’softer’ side?  What exactly does that mean?  Why do black women always have to compromise their strong personas just to make society feel more comfortable and less threatened by them?” 

While a number of speakers -- such as Railroad Commission chairman Michael Williams and Mike Huckabee -- have praised the advance of Barack Obama and what it means towards a colorblind society, at least one vendor hasn't gotten the message.

CHICAGO - In a Father's Day address heavy with personal and political meaning, Democrat Barack Obama told worshipers at a Chicago church Sunday that government must do more to help families---but he also exhorted parents, especially fathers, to play their part by raising healthy children. In a popular South Side church, Obama (D-Ill.) decried the shortage of police on the streets and money for schools, as well as a proliferation of guns in the wrong hands. But America needs more than jobs and opportunity in its communities, the presidential candidate told the hometown congregation. "We also need families to raise our children," he said. "We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. It's the courage to raise one."

Wonderful timeline from slavery up to Obama's bid for presidency.

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.

Virginia's Sen. Jim Webb, rumored to be on the Democratic VP list, explains how the "two Americas" paradigm must be updated. CSI: Miami star Emily Procter talks about the division in her large family between Sens. McCain and Obama for president.

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s face fills the front page of Kenya’s Daily Metro newspaper having won his party's nomination for the White House. Obama’s father was born in a remote village in Kenya and his grandmother, Sarah Obama, still lives there.