The First Lady wants to hear some Christmas music like “The Christmas Song” and “Sleigh Ride,” Osborne told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
But she also wants Adele’s 2011 hit “Someone Like You,” and Stevie Wonder’s classic ballads “Overjoyed” and “Ribbon in the Sky.” Showing her tastes are varied, Obama also listed the much-loved Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.C.”
So abundant are the decorations for visitors to the Obama White House to view that the first family needed more than 100 volunteers to fly in from all over the country to help set up the numerous displays, including photos and letters from military families and even some aluminum cans.
The theme the first lady chose for the decorations was "Share, Give, Shine."
Of course, every administration decorates the White House in some way for holidays, from green fountain water in mid-March to evergreen wreaths come December.
During the 2010 Gulf oil spill when Obama was urging Americans to patronize the coastal area's devastated tourism facilities, Mrs. Obama flew off to a luxury resort in Spain with a large entourage. The family later briefly visited the Gulf coast where the president was photographed swimming with a daughter.
As the Nobel Peace Prize winner launched American planes and missiles against Libya in last spring's war, he took his family, mother-in-law and her friend to tour South America. In the summer Obama said the issue of creating new jobs had become so urgent that he would give another speech about it -- a month later after his island vacation on Martha's Vineyard.
In September he then told Congress his jobs bill was so urgent, that members needed to pass it right then. Turns out, that was impossible because his urgent legislation had yet to be written.
The extravagance of 2011's decorations, however, are striking given the widespread joblessness, pale economic growth, home foreclosures and grim outlook for 2012, not to mention the incumbent president's historically low approval rating heading into his reelection bid.
How simple, politically astute, symbolically helpful and cost-effective it would have been for the Obamas this year to say that in sympathy with so many struggling countrymen, they were curtailing holiday decorations to match the sacrifices of others.
Mrs. Obama took another tack, however. She said the massive holiday displays in her White House are designed to make others feel better, especially military families.
"I know for some of you, this holiday season will be tough," she told some visitors. "But hopefully, it's times like this that make you know that you live in a grateful nation, and that we are just so inspired by your sacrifice. And hopefully, this is a memory that will stay with you every holiday season."
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