SQUEE alert! WaPo art critic's Obama portrait fawning rises to 'North Korean-level'

Doug P. | 1:38 PM on February 12, 2018

Official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled earlier to highly mixed reviews, but count the Washington Post among those who offered raves:

Review: The Obamas’ portraits are not what you’d expect and that’s why they’re great https://t.co/qMfoVWGiAl

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 12, 2018

NOT unexpectedly:

Would WAPO have any other response.

— lori kern (@chestertown3) February 12, 2018

Highly unlikely.

https://twitter.com/JammieWF/status/963099602768596992

Is sure is!

This is some world-class attempted turd-polishing by the @washingtonpost about the Obamas portraits. Were the writer not in love with the subjects he might've noticed how bad Michelle's painting really is. pic.twitter.com/NXHHsHkmG1

— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) February 12, 2018

It sounds a little like the WaPo critic is saying the portraits are so bad they’re GOOD. The review closes this way:

The Obamas’ potential to change the tone and political culture of this country was blunted by the persistence of that racism before and during their time at the country’s political apex. Now that they have left office, now that their fundamental decency is in high relief by contrast with the new political order, memory is refreshed. They look a bit older than the two people who carried so much collective fantasy of a different America with them to Washington nine years ago. That fantasy was premature and unrealistic, and it is only now clear how powerfully it animated the meanest impulses of those who reject it. But these portraits will remind future generations how much wish fulfillment was embodied in the Obamas, and how gracefully they bore that burden.