Michelle Obama's first book -- American Grown:  The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America -- hits bookstores today, undoubtedly with the standard prominence afforded leftist authors.   Naturally, no Obama exploit would be complete without a taxpayer-funded campaign swing, including appearances on Good Morning America, The View, Live! With Kelly, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and Rachael Ray, sandwiched between Mrs. Obama's weekend jaunt to the Beyonce concert, and an upcoming fundraiser at the NYC home of Sarah Jessica Parker.   

All this fanfare and travel begs the inevitable question; what is the cost to America's taxpayers for a First Lady to promote the easiest, cheapest, venerable beacon of personal responsibility and means to safe, convenient, healthy food, outside capitalism and free markets, commonly known as gardening?   Yes, gardening -- the original green movement -- once a necessity for the hungry and self-reliant, and now the apparent brainchild of liberal elites, and one First Lady who never gardened before she had taxpayers to foot the bill for her dirty work. 

Of course, to be fair, were Michelle Obama to promote what she knows -- as did librarian, Laura Bush, when she shared her passion while First Lady for reading and books -- she would be showing hospitals how to offload low-income, uninsured patients and call it an Urban Health Initiative.  As it is, Mrs. Obama -- the self-appointed long arm of the food law -- is pushing another tyranny, and bringing unsuspecting produce along.  The same produce she claims underserved communities in the fattest nation on earth, are unfairly denied.

And gardening isn't just cover for the food oppression narrative required for wealth redistribution, it also goes a long way in helping Mrs. Obama's incessant efforts to shed her image as bitter loather of all things Americana -- photo ops in Target, a strategic embrace of military families, and now harvesting alongside schoolchildren and swapping recipes with America's moms.

Mrs. Obama gardens for the same reason she appears to take her wardrobe cues from the set of an early 60's sitcom, even if it looks as though she's been shopping at the Jackie Kennedy Big and Tall shop.  It takes a real narrative to convince people that those purportedly denied healthy food require millions from taxpayers to turn their supposed food deserts into community gardens.   After all, if gardening is the panacea Mrs. Obama claims -- as personal responsibility is, of course -- she could solve the entitlement crisis and obesity epidemic in one fell swoop, and quite inexpensively, with a packet of seeds in every pot; if only that were her goal.

So what is the cost of Mrs. Obama's gardening?   There is travel and security for the First Lady's book tour media blitz; social media and websites to staff; garden guides to write; partnerships with prominent chefs and foodies; filming with Jimmy Kimmel, Biggest Losers, and innumerable school groups; hosting a kids' "State Dinner" with healthy recipe contest winners; and compost Czars.  But the ultimate cost to taxpayers is, of course, ingratiating children to government as the overseer of food, exercise, and economic fairness -- the notion that American Grown is government inspired.

Nothing is as it seems with the Obamas, even when it comes to the pleasurable and economical pastime most of us know to be gardening, be it hobby, livelihood, or necessity.  American Grown isn't just a book.  It is more convoluted means to the same fundamental and transformative end.  Mrs. Obama's kitchen garden is to food accessibility what Republicans are to the Democrat operative's war on women; Bain Capital is to class warfare; the mainstream media is to Barack Obama; and the occupier to chaos.  In a word - cover - very expensive, insulting, tyrannical cover.

When is a garden not just a garden?   Any time it is the Obamas sowing its seeds.