The short and short of it: Mrs. O's legs.

What a week. We saw another round of shouting over health care reform. The Scots let the only Lockerbie bombing prisoner go home because of cancer and the terrorist got a hero’s welcome in Libya. Locally, we had a freak tornado that hit Kohl’s, Wal-Mart and the Parkdale Mall. And of course, we had the First Lady’s legs.

Yes. As a “Time” magazine article proclaimed: “Michelle Obama and the Shorts Heard Round the World.” Yes. The golden rule of journalism is “Let no news hole go unfilled.” And fill it they did when the First Lady deplaned Air Force One in Arizona sporting a pair of shorts. Would the world have been anymore shocked had she walked down the steps of the presidential jet wearing a wet T-shirt and hot pants? Okay. We will just let that image hang for a minute.

The controversy was one mostly invented a bored White House media who had nothing better to do while following the First Family. I mean, I didn’t hear many REAL people who were up in arms about Michelle Obama’s legs.

“While nobody would make Mrs. O wear couture in Arizona in August, the truth is, she just didn’t look particularly good in shorts. Her arms are much admired. Her legs are just, you know, legs,” opined “Time’s” Belinda Luscombe in her piece about the shorts flap.

The criticisms of Michelle Obama incensed editors of the “Jamaica Observer” who saw racism as a possible motive why the media and Obama critics made her shorts such a big deal.

“That the US first lady created such a stir though is, in itself, quite remarkable and instructive.

For on reading through the streams of commentary, we couldn’t help detecting a rather nasty streak of something that bears a close resemblance to racism.”

Wow. Criticism and criticism about the criticism. All over a pair of shorts.

Although I  support the Obamas I must say that I rather admire the First Lady for being comfortable in her own skin. With that said, I am also a very big supporter of shorts, probably more than the average American.

I wear shorts — a lot. The mean annual temperature where I live is 72 degrees. Mean doesn’t mean it is 72 year-round. But it is comfortable enough down here on the upper Texas coast that I can and do wear shorts every month of the year. Shorts are my official pants even though blue jeans were once reserved for that title. If I am not working or at least if I am not working outside my abode, and if the weather isn’t too cold, you will likely find me in a pair of shorts.

My legs aren’t as shapley as Mrs. Obama’s, I must admit, even though the “Time” correspondent doesn’t seem taken with the First Lady legs. But I don’t care. I wear shorts for comfort not for style. And like Mrs. Obama — to paraphrase ZZ Top — I’ve … “got legs. I know how to use them.”

Quite simply, I walk on them — mostly wearing shorts.