Michelle Obama Meets Parker, the Little Girl Who Loved Her Official Portrait

Best dance ever.

Last Thursday, internet hearts collectively melted over a photo of a young girl staring in awe at Michelle Obama’s official portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C.  “All I wanted was just one pic,” Jessica Curry, the mother of 2-year-old Parker, told the Washington Post after the image went viral. “She was just so fixated on the portrait and wouldn’t turn away from it.”

That one photo has now resulted in a meeting with Obama herself, who tweeted the following video of their Tuesday encounter, adorable dance moves and all. 

The lightening-fast sharing of both the photo and Parker’s meeting with the former first lady underscores Obama’s own words during the portrait’s unveiling last month, in which she expressed hope that seeing her portrait would inspire young women everywhere.

“I’m also thinking about all of the young people, particularly girls and girls of color, who, in years ahead, will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution,” Obama said in February. “I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls.”

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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