HERE'S TO YOU, MRS ROBINSON

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 17th 2012

When the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in April 2010, and an ash cloud spread across Europe, closing down the airspace, there were plenty of business executives on holiday in the Caribbean who found they were unable to get home. Worse things could happen, you might think.

But I overheard a group of businessmen in a hotel in Antigua discussing the idea of hiring a plane to fly 4,000 miles back to London. They were thinking of pitching in ten grand each. I asked one of them how urgent it was to get back. "How urgent?" he replied, in disbelief, "I'm here with my mother-in-law."

In Britain, the idea of the mother-in-law as a figure from hell, once the favourite target for the comedian Les Dawson, received another boost last summer when a future mother-in-law sent her future daughter-in-law an angry email, which went viral, accusing her of a "staggering lack of grace" and suggesting she attend a finishing school before she could become "accepted" as a member of her family.

But in America, the image of the mother-in-law looks in better shape—thanks to the First Mother-in-Law. Everyone could see, when the Obamas moved in to the White House, that this historic moment would change public perceptions in many areas. But mothers-in-law was not one of them.

In 2009 Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, who had raised her children in Chicago, left her bungalow on the South Side and moved into the third floor of the White House, to help look after Malia and Sasha. A new book about the First Marriage reveals that Barack Obama's mother-in-law is remarkably modest and unpretentious. In his review, the New Yorker's editor David Remnick, says Mrs Robinson emerges as "the most endearing figure in the book".

At the White House, the First Mother-in-Law insists on doing her own laundry, and, when she slips into D.C. on her own and someone stops her on the street to say she looks like the First Lady’s mother, she just smiles and says, “I get that a lot.”

Robert Butler is online editor of Intelligent Life