Amid the paroxysm of gasping that gripped the nation this week when Michelle Obama told  "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King that she's not "some angry black woman," political pundits may have lost some historical perspective. Exhibit A: their breathless discussion of the ‘salacious' details in Jodi Kantor's recently released chronicle of the First Couple, The Obamas.  It's understandable that everyone's a little giddy about the book — reports of lavish Alice in Wonderland fetes and simmering conflict between the First Lady and prominent White House staffers is for TV's talking heads what a weekend run on the out-of-town parents' liquor cabinet and a lunchroom break up is to middle schoolers.  Liza Mundy, however, in her review of Kantor's book, puts the revelations about Michelle Obama in perspective.  She writes,

In the annals of irregularities that first ladies have been justly or unjustly accused of, sparring with a chief of staff, particularly one as combative as Rahm Emanuel, hardly registers as shocking or unexpected.

Reports of contention with Emanuel hardly seem egregious because, well, with those dark circles around his eyes he looks like a Batman villain who cleverly infiltrated the White House in order to distribute school lunch vouchers for deep dish pizza with the aim of sabotaging Michelle Obama's efforts to fight childhood obesity.  Mundy goes on to explain that more scandalous First Ladies have waded into the running current of American history and that Michelle Obama's boisterous tête-à-têtes with White House staffers are hardly the stuff of legendary gossip.  In an effort, therefore, to recalibrate the national dialogue about the embattled First Lady, we've compiled a handy guide to some of the country's most gossiped about First Ladies, who, fairly or not, drew scandalized whispers from contemporary observers.