Now that Barack Obama has pretty much wrapped up the nomination, it's time to raise a question that lots of people have been talking about privately but not publicly. Is it possible that Michelle Obama is the force behind Barack Obama's refusal to embrace traditional patriotic symbols? Could Obama's wife be largely responsible for the candidate's damaging associations with crackpot race-baiters like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Reverend Michael Pfleger? In sum, could Obama's wife be a large part of his political problem?
Obama himself seems, at least on the surface, relatively free of the kind of corrosive racial resentment that is so common among African American activists of our day. This resentment is especially puzzling as it often comes from people who, far from being victims, have actually enjoyed benefits and privileges that they would probably never get if they happened to be white.
Consider the case of Michelle Obama. She was raised in a two-parent, middle-class family. She applied to one of America's top universities, Princeton, and was admitted. Of this experience, Michelle says on the stump, "All my life I have confronted people who had a certain expectation of me. Every step of the way, there has been people telling me what I couldn't do. When I applied to Princeton, they said: you can't go there, your test scores aren't high enough."
Which is all very moving, except that her test scores weren't high enough. Michelle Obama is part of the affirmative action generation of above-average but far-from-stellar performers who were granted preferential admission to America's most elite institutions.
Michelle notes that she graduated with honors in her major. Again, the problem is that her undergraduate thesis is on the web. You might expect that she wrote about Shakespeare's sonnets or the political evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois. Well, no. Essentially Michelle Obama wrote about the problems of being a black woman at an Ivy League university.
Here is a typical passage: "By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight."
Alas, the grammar is all wrong here. More than once, the tenses are garbled. People are ignorant "of" the plight of the lower class, not ignorant "to" their plight. And"desparation" should be spelled "desperation." To wreak so much havoc on the English language in one sentence, without conveying anything of substance, is perhaps deserving of a prize. Is this what her professors were thinking when they granted her honors? Whatever the Obamorons say, let's remember that that these are not mere typos; they reflect an estranged relationship to the English language. Moreover they appear not in a daily blog but in a thesis that is supposed to reflect the culmination of one's college career.
Subsequently Michelle went on to further appointments and even managed to cash in big time on her skin color and marriage to Barack Obama. She was hired by the University of Chicago hospitals to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outrecah, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting." Here her salary was $400,000 a year.
One might expect that the reaction of someone who gets so many privileges to be grateful to a society that makes them possible. But no. Michelle Obama thinks that her very success is an example of white oppression. By a bizarre twist of logic, she converts "you're not good enough, but we'll take you anyway" into a message of "they said I wasn't good enough, but I proved them wrong."
Ordinarily these psychological peculiarities may be of little interest, except perhaps to a therapist. But Michelle now stands next to a man that may be elected president of the United States. Barack Obama wants everyone to "lay off" his wife. He doesn't seem to realize that this is not a reasonable request concerning a woman who clearly influences him and who stands to have public influence in her own right. Moreover, for months the media has been laying off her precisely because she is his wife. Like Michelle, Obama seems to confuse preferential treatment with ill treatment.
Of course we've had controversial first ladies in the White House before. The Obamas, however, aren't there yet. Will Barack Obama be ultimately forced to distance himself not just from the Reverend Wright and the Reverend Pfleger but also from his own wife?
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 55)
61. Sorry Moke, the making fun of ears thing. I read it as a deliberately childish poke at DD. Then I read today's post and still have the flavor of coffee in my nostrils.
Robert at 4:52PM on Jun 4th 2008
62. Secular American,
I'm opposed to almost any "zero tolerance" policy. They seem to demand maximum punishment and minimal investigation. Keep a little tolerance, please.
Mokele Mbembe at 4:56PM on Jun 4th 2008
63. brandon; take it easy. A simple 'yes' would have done the job. I'm just like b/o's grandma; 'typical white'. You shouldn't get offended so easily.
fanman at 5:01PM on Jun 4th 2008
64. Oh, and another thing... is THIS the BIG BOMBSHELL about Mrs. O that Bob Blowhard insinuated yesterday? I have FARTS that are more devastating!
P.S. Yes, I know what GHB said about 'fart jokes' once... I can't disappooint him, now, can I?
Robert at 5:03PM on Jun 4th 2008
65. Shes a BIGOT SKANK!!
REGINA MARTIN at 9:15PM on Jun 4th 2008
66. I stear away from negative articles, but this caught my eye because with so much else to talk about, you took on Michelle Obama. She is not a linquist nor does she pretend to be one. Pick on someone your own size, or not! We have the opportunitie to lift people up, the other stuff will automatically turn up, if something is there.
Vee at 5:19PM on Jun 4th 2008
67. "Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
No one. Dinesh has left the building.
Wow- I AM bored...
Robert at 5:23PM on Jun 4th 2008
68. Dinesh’s Superiority Complex.
It’s hard to believe that a man, whose posts are constantly dissected and invariably revealed as hateful, irresponsible or just outright untrue, can continue to compose these idiotic diatribes as if they were the wisely considered opinions of Solomon himself.
First things first.
I make occasional mistakes in spelling and punctuation when I write these responses which is why I never point out Dinesh’s errors but this case calls for it. Dinesh misspelled “stump” and he either never noticed or made clear whether the quote in which “outreach” is misspelled was written by Michelle Obama or someone else and therefore we can’t know if it is in fact a transcription error made by Dinesh.
Now on to the vivisection, (I can dream).
If it is true that Michelle Obama was able to get into Princeton via affirmative action, is that any worse than Monkey Boy’s ascendancy to the Whitehouse? Prior to his presidency, Monkey Boy pretty much did very little on his own to get there as he has always relied on his family’s vast political and business influences to get ahead.
Furthermore, Monkey Boy went to Harvard on a legacy (affirmative action for rich people) and Yale due to his familial ties (also affirmative action for rich people) and at each school he was at best, a mediocre student (McCain himself graduated 894th out of 899 from the Naval Academy). Monkey Boy’s familial ties also came in handy when it came to avoiding combat in Vietnam, an option not available to my non-wealthy or affluent father and cousin.
As far as touting his record as the governor of Texas is concerned, let me just state that not all governorships are created equal and the governorship of Texas is one of the weakest in the union as the true political power there is actually wielded by the lieutenant governor. Those of you who believe this to be an absurd lie on my part can look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Governor_of_Texas
It can also be demonstrated that Monkey Boy failed at everything he laid his hands on, yet he kept climbing up the ladder until he was installed by the supreme court not, as the presidential spouse, but as the actual President of the USA. Affirmative action strikes again!
Dinesh would have us believe that Michelle Obama has not undergone the same metamorphosis that we’ve all experienced, from an awkward young adult with unsophisticated views of the world fueled by youthful passions into a well-adjusted adult, in order to cast her as some bizarre Angela Davis/Lady Macbeth hybrid whispering poison into Obama’s ear. But then again there is the question of whether or not Dinesh himself has undergone this same metamorphosis as indicated by these invectives written with all the logic and reason of a panicked cockroach fearfully writhing on its back.
It’s obvious that in drafting these posts, it never occurs to Dinesh to expand his imagination beyond his personal experiences in an attempt to understand the subjects of his derision. Is he capable of understanding that there is a particular type of disappointment, experienced by some African Americans who have played by all the rules, worked very hard, some in such highly respected fields as law and medicine and yet at times still suffer the same or nearly the same bigotry as a barely literate thug? This may not be as much an issue today as it was in the past but one must remember that both Michelle and Barrack, despite their youth relative to McCain are still of an age where this still was an issue.
Dinesh himself is from that era and though he, as an Indian immigrant may be able to point out his own personal incidents of discrimination, as a New Yorker I can merely respond by relating dozens of anecdotes about how I have personally witnessed, professionally attired African Americans, sometimes in their 50’s and 60’s, behaving no differently than anybody else, get followed around stores owned and operated by immigrants of various countries (even India) as if they were just there shop lift, yet the overwhelming majority of these people still manage to soldier on in spite of this treatment.
The fact that they soldier on however, does not necessarily mean they do not harbor resentments (to varying degrees) in spite of all that they have been able to achieve, and it is important to keep in mind that these resentments in and of themselves do does not necessarily indicate a hatred of America or Americans. It merely means that like any normal thinking and feeling American, particularly those with a bittersweet personal history, they struggle to reconcile what is right with America with what is wrong with America.
Neocons like Dinesh like to PRETEND that they believe there is nothing wrong with America (just with certain Americans) because neocons thrive on what is wrong with America as it fuels their political machine. It is also very important for them to categorize any one who points out America’s flaws as an America hater because in doing so they believe they decrease the occurrence of any meaningful dialog that may address these flaws. To those of you too stubborn to understand this I ask; if your house’s paint is peeling and your spouse points it out, does that mean they hate the house or are they pointing out that it needs a paint job?
Given the performance of the current resident of the Whitehouse and the looming spectre of Bush III disguised as a McCain administration, perhaps it’s high time for the presidency itself to receive a paintjob.
rabidmccain at 5:30PM on Jun 4th 2008
69. Was it just yesterday or Monday, McCain was talking about wanting the Divestment of Iran as sanctions, but then it came out that his campaign manager is involved in investments with Tehran by the way of
xxxx
Before you even go there, Rachael Maddow pointed out that the Divestment used to be called the Obama-Brownback bill, and Mcsame voted against it!
so he was against it before he was for it. And now, he was apparently against Obama but now he's for it.
Why didn't you hindbrain guys run Paulie Shore or Pam Anderson or something instead? Are you that afraid of elitist intellectuals? At least if they made a speech like last night you could say, hey, whattya expect, it was Paulie Shore!
McSame still wants the same permanent tax breaks for multimillionaires and wants corporate tax relief for the beleaguered oil companies and offshore job outsourcers and has this great healthcare plan - he gives you a tax break, makes group insurance untenable and forces each of you to bargain as individuals with hmo's the size of european countries.
He was against these, but now he's for 'em, like torture. 54 corporate lobbyists in his freakin' campaign. Many of them represent foreign terrorists and despots and his pal Gramm funded terrorists who tried to profit from selling short before 911. Also he created the housing and banking and credit card crises.
I think getting to dump his wife for a richer model and having a middle management career in the senate was reward enough for his torture episodes. He shouldn't be permitted to pay it forward. Go vote for a statesman and not another scuttling neocon.
Clif Kuplen at 5:33PM on Jun 4th 2008
70. I can assure you that McCain doesn't want his mistress...I mean wife's flaws to be upfront for the world to judge. If we were to speak about ghastly mistakes, she would have been his first. So, as a GOP member I don't expect John to start with the wife issues, because his wife is FAR from being the Step-ford Wife she portrays.
Tip at 5:46PM on Jun 4th 2008
71. Cindy's a ghastly mistake? But Tip; where would all the $ come from if it weren't for Cindy?
fanman at 5:52PM on Jun 4th 2008
72. DD, your own grammer sucks to the nth degree. Mnay posters have made specific references, which saves me the trouble. Likewise your use of logical fallicies are equally shabby. Your logic is chronically flawed.
You appear to have benefitted from affirmative action yourself, dear boy. Let us have a look at some of your own acedemic papers.
On second thought,never mind, I'm sure I'd be bored to tears.
in credible at 5:53PM on Jun 4th 2008
73. wow, my own spelling betrayed my irritation. lol
in credible at 10:00PM on Jun 4th 2008
74. Ahh so this is where the far left bloggers rant about DD and the "neocons". So I am guessing the Turks blog is filled with far right bloggers ranting about "libertards". It appears DD is doing what he is paid to do, keep you guys bitching about something.
Brad at 6:27PM on Jun 4th 2008
75. Dinesh,
I am extremely confused. Could you please explain to me how you came to this conclusion?
“This resentment is especially puzzling as it often comes from people who, far from being victims, have actually enjoyed benefits and privileges that they would probably never get if they happened to be white.”
Is especially puzzling to me that you think that people that were ostracized, hated, threatened, denied basic liberties, and had to fight for a modicum of equality could under the burden of all of that still manage to excel, would be able to do less if they had been white. I do not know how you can take one paper that was written when she was twenty years old and hold that up as an example for the person that she is today. I can not believe that you can hold anyone responsible for the beliefs or actions of another whether it is in a church or anywhere else. Do you hold people responsible that sit in their homes and espouse hateful, racist, vengeful ideals and beliefs to their children? Do you send the parents to jail instead of the child if they commit a crime? Do you expect all Catholics to leave the church because of the actions of some wicked priest? Or do you think that the women that all of the people on Capital Hill sleep with should be interrogated for fear that they may sway a decision one way or another. I have heard that pillow talk is a lot more dangerous then communication between spouses. Maybe we should call Heidi and see if we can start rounding some of those gals up. Or maybe you can just admit that what you have written is just a bit of racist fluff and propaganda. I wish you could have seen me when I was twenty. Michelle Obama could not have held a candle to me. I was bitter, angry, vocal and active. I can even remember saying, “I hate Whitey!” and “Don’t shoot until you see the blue of their eyes!” When I was a child I thought as a child. I am very pleased to say that like the hippies of the “Make Love Not War!” generation, I too grew up, matured and learned that all in life isn’t as simple as others would like to make it out to be and life can not be capsulated into a sound bite. It may please you to know that not only do I have wonderful white friends, my soul mate also happed to be a victim of that genetic condition, yet I never noticed. Funny what love can do isn’t it? I am not going to write you off. I would like to see you write another piece, after you have actually met with Mrs. Obama and talked to her. How can you make a characterization of a person that you don’t even know? I am not going to judge you by this offering. I have even overlooked some of your typos and errors in grammar as I am sure you will do mine.
Linda at 6:34PM on Jun 4th 2008