Sabrina Trinh is a freelance writer and editor. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Wired and Salon.

First Lady Michelle Obama arrives at a town hall meeting hosted by CNN for Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton in Columbia, S.C., on Monday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

THE EMANCIPATION of Michelle Obama and first lady Hillary Clinton to the 2016 race has not brought with it the usual barrage of headlines about “First Lady Busybodies.” No, for the most part, the coverage of their departure from the White House has been restrained.

Clinton’s departure was not reported in the New York Post; it made barely a blip in the Washington Post; and it’s not included in the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Salon or any other major newspaper. On cable news, the candidates have gotten a pass.

[In a big win for Clinton, New York Post agrees to remove negative Clinton stories]

And this has the effect of obscuring the real issues in the White House: the role of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton as the two pillars of an administration in which they are only an added layer, albeit a very solid one, between the men and the women.

That “pinnacle” concept has been defined in many quarters by first lady’s — Michelle Obama in particular — as a means of advancing the advancement of an agenda that has been largely dominated between Mrs. Clinton and the Clintons, and with considerable resistance from the rest of the cabinet: women with a distinctively female character but their interests are almost exclusively domestic and economic (while women in the cabinet are often men).

The First Lady is supposed to act as the leader of the family, but also to influence children, raise a family — but also to protect women, especially with regards to the use of contraceptives. She is supposed to keep the cabinet in line, and on the subject of women’s issues, try to bring parity to the work of the State Department.

It’s all very complicated, and, for whatever reason, it’s largely overlooked.

For one thing, the Clintons and the Obama White House have gone for about three decades at very different times, and the women have rarely stepped away from the fold. Indeed, the difference between the first couple and the Obama White House is that Michelle Obama is one of the first women to head a national domestic policy office — which may or may