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Oh Look: Michelle Obama’s Complaining Again
Last week, first lady Michelle Obama lectured the leaders of The Whitney Museum at their grand opening, insisting that American museums are unwelcoming to “people who look like (her).” Her stable, middle-class childhood and her Ivy League education — topped with wealth, power, and privilege — can ‘t mitigate her fury at perceived ill-treatment at the hands of a racist America.
This week, FLOTUS registered a new complaint about the bad hand America has dealt her. In a commencement address, she inspired graduates of Alabama’s Tuskegee University by lamenting the pain and emotional distress she has endured as the first African-American First Lady.
“You might remember the on-stage celebratory fist bump between me and my husband after a primary win that was referred to as a ‘terrorist fist jab,’ ” she said.
“And over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited ‘a little bit of uppity-ism.’ Another noted that I was one of my husband’s ‘cronies of color.’ Cable news once charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s Baby Mama.’ ”
Obama said she was subjected to a different set of expectations on the campaign trail in 2008 compared with other candidates’ wives.
“‘What kind of First Lady would I be? What kinds of issues would I take on?’ … The truth is, those same questions would have been posed to any candidate’s spouse,” she said.
“But, as potentially the first African-American First Lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?”
In the end, she said, she realized all the negativity was just “noise.”
Though she calls it “noise,” it’s obvious she carries a chip on her shoulder about every single comment. Though she pins the blame on racism, other first ladies have received far more criticism than Michelle.
Laura Bush was ridiculed about a fatal car accident from her youth, Barbara Bush was mocked over her appearance, Nancy Reagan was demonized as a horoscope-consulting Marie Antoinette, and Hillary Clinton was attacked for being, well, Hillary Clinton. And the more politically active a first lady, the more flak they take. Had she lived in the era of social media, I expect Eleanor Roosevelt would have shouldered far more criticism than Michelle could imagine. Moving to other women in politics, would our first lady swap her media treatment with Sarah Palin’s?
Despite all the evidence, Ms. Obama insists that America’s intractable racism means that she has suffered worse than all of them. The citizens who twice sent her to the White House and place her on the cover of all the grocery store glam magazines are obviously white supremacists.
Now it’s one thing for the First Lady to wallow in a bit of self-pity as she lounges in her taxpayper-funded mansion, taxpayper-funded private jet, or taxpayper-funded presidential suite on the Costa del Sol. But the truly toxic part of her speech is what she told the successful graduates of the historically black school famed for the heroic pilots it sent to fight World War II:
So there will be times, just like for those Airmen, when you feel like folks look right past you, or they see just a fraction of who you really are.
The world won’t always see you in those caps and gowns. They won’t know how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed to make it to this day — the countless hours you spent studying to get this diploma, the multiple jobs you worked to pay for school, the times you had to drive home and take care of your grandma, the evenings you gave up to volunteer at a food bank or organize a campus fundraiser. They don’t know that part of you.
Doesn’t that last paragraph apply to everyone? She continues:
Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world. And my husband and I know how frustrating that experience can be. We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives — the folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety; the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores; the people at formal events who assumed we were the “help” — and those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country.
And I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day — those nagging worries that you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason; the fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds; the agony of sending your kids to schools that may no longer be separate, but are far from equal; the realization that no matter how far you rise in life, how hard you work to be a good person, a good parent, a good citizen — for some folks, it will never be enough.
And all of that is going to be a heavy burden to carry. It can feel isolating. It can make you feel like your life somehow doesn’t matter — that you’re like the invisible man that Tuskegee grad Ralph Ellison wrote about all those years ago. And as we’ve seen over the past few years, those feelings are real. They’re rooted in decades of structural challenges that have made too many folks feel frustrated and invisible. And those feelings are playing out in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson and so many others across this country.
Each Tuskegee graduate studied hard to be accepted into college, invested tens of thousands of dollars to remain there, and worked their posteriors off to get a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate from that school. Each diploma is proof that a person can achieve great things with a little initiative and hard work.
But the First Lady of the United States insists none of that matters. The graduates must never forget that first and foremost they are victims. They are but pawns destined to live under the boot of a cruel nation that will always hate them. Sure, anyone can grow up to be President, but even then you will suffer slights and distrust from America’s real power structure.
What a contemptible message to send to these successful young men and women. What a tremendous disservice to the families who sent them there and the employers who will hire them. What cruelty.
Published in Education, Politics
There are relatively few players on the public stage who are truly disgusting. Michelle Obama is one of them.
Please tell me more about your rich girl problems.
Honestly, I feel sorry for her. I’m not sure anything in this world could ever make her happy.
Best line on Ricochet all day. Probably all week. Sort of sums up the entire thing, doesn’t it? I’d love to hear Michelle Obama address this question, phrased exactly the same way. Too bad nobody will ever ask it.
Rush played a clip today from the 2008 campaign where Michelle introduced Barack at a rally as “my babies’ daddy.”
You have it right there in the middle of your piece:
So why pile on? Was it awesome when the media mocked Nancy Reagan? No? Then why do we care if Michelle Obama wants to fire up a bunch of college students by making thinly-veiled attempts to associate herself with the various movements surrounding victimhood that have popped up on campus recently? What good does this do?
A contemptible message from a contemptible person.
Adam, this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this same comment from you in different contexts… I’m again going to call BS on it, though.
Here’s why: when liberals do this kind of thing to conservatives, they often think that it can take the place of substantive arguments. They didn’t criticize Sarah Palin for very much except the personal attacks. I couldn’t care less whether they want to talk about her appearance or her personal life on twitter or on Huffington Post or other places “where liberals gather.” That is all a part of rallying the base, of telling each other that you’re right, of finding a common enemy so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with that. When they bring up that kind of thing in professional interviews, though? That’s nonsense, and there I think your criticism would be a bit more appropriate. But conservatives don’t tend to do that, because we actually have substantive arguments that we can win. But over here in our little corner of the web, where everyone is right-of-center, but for the occasional interlocutor, there is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out someone’s idiocy, hypocrisy, unpleasantness, or even the ugliness of her face when she scrunches it all up as she tells us how ashamed she is of America. We get to do that kind of thing because those are real observations about real people. Do those things make her wrong on the merits? Of course not. If Jon Gabriel goes on CNN during campaign season and starts ragging on Hillary for her pants suits or the stupidity of some remark that directly contradicts something she said in 2008, I’ll say that conservatives are better than that. But if I do it around here, it just sounds self-righteous. There is nothing about being a conservative that says we can’t point out when the other side is being stupid.
ALSO – what Jon is saying is not that the media should attack Michelle (or anyone), but that she is flatly wrong when she claims some sort of special status as being uniquely attacked (her implication is that she is attacked solely because she’s black). That is false. It is perfectly appropriate to point that out.
I believe that all first ladies are worthy of criticism and expect it. I’m not piling on and I care greatly about the horrible message Michelle Obama is giving to these college students.
What a great way of getting a job out of college: Just hand the potential employer a copy of Michelle’s speech.
Race-baiting hasn’t just recently “popped up.” It’s been a staple of Democrat politics for years. It needs to be called out.
Yes. Might a prospective employer reasonably be concerned whether a person has been marinating in this type of thinking, and thus the employer might have a reasonable reluctance to bring that attitude into the workplace?
I have to wonder if it’s all a put-on. If Michelle Obama goes to a restaurant and orders a lemonade and they tell her they are out, does she honestly believe they’re just giving her a hard time because she’s black? Or does she think that they are actually out of lemonade, but she’s going to mentally file this story away so she can later tell a story about how she was denied a lemonade because of her race?
Liberalism is a mental disorder. Remember that. Liberals use whatever comes to hand to express their anger at having to live in this world. This is an entirely human trait that afflicts us all but the adults in the room learn to accept the world as it is.
There are some advantages in our modern culture to being black. Does that ever occur to her? How does she think her completely un-qualified husband ever got to be president? It would never have happened if he had not been half black. Never.
“Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world.”
I’d wager she views conservatives in this exact way.
Larry,
Let’s see. George Zimmerman’s father was White and his mother was Hispanic. This makes George a White Hispanic. Obama’s father was Black and his mother was White.
QED Obama is a Black White Man.
Elizabeth Warren is a Women with one 32nd American Indian ancestry, however, the one 32nd turned out to be a Fraud. She has ridden this Fraud to the United States Senate and possibly a run at the White House.
I think you are right about Liberalism being a mental disorder. Clearly mass psychosis is involved.
And then there is Michelle Obama:
Quota-based Affirmative Law School, Tony Resco, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Surrender of her License to Practice Law. Mrs. Obama has never for one minute of her adult career been judged by the content of her character or the quality of her work. She whines because on a daily basis human beings who she interacts with are less than perfect.
It all is a test of our patience from Gd. These trivial people too shall pass.
Regards,
Jim
I would bet that any H.R. professional worth his salt combs over a resume looking for clues that an applicant exhibits the very same attitudes that our FLOTUS spews every time she opens her mouth. The entitlement, the victimhood, the self absorbed attitude; all destined for the round file. Black or white who needs that kind of attitude around the workplace? Employees like Michelle Obama are just one perceived slight away from saddling the company with a lawsuit. Better to hire the white guy. You can fire him with impunity.
She forgot to ask herself if she was too self-absorbed.
Michelle “For the first time in my life I’m proud of my country” Obama is upset that people question her love of this country?
Michelle seems to be the type of person who assigns bad motives to everything. I assume she has experienced plenty of real racism in her life. But I get the feeling she thinks bad experiences that occur to everyone is racism as well. Not sure how to write about this, so I’ll just plow ahead…
I’ve had co-workers who just don’t like me for no apparent reason. Or, I’m in a crowd and someone scowls at me randomly. A fast-food server treats me poorly. All common situations with no direct explanation. Regardless of the race/gender/orientation/religion of these people, I just figure they’re having a bad day, or are lunatics who don’t comprehend how awesome I am.
I wonder if Michelle would treat all these personal slights as examples of racism. That guy in accounting must not like black people. The woman in the crowd is a white supremacist. The fast-food server resents a successful black woman. It’s not just random weirdos being random weirdos, but systematic oppression by The Man.
There are people of every background who have this victim mentality. A Jewish guy who blames everything on antisemitism, the rarely employed guy who blames rich people, and so forth. We’ve all known grouchy, negative people like this and for my part I try to excise them from my life wherever possible.
I can elicit some sympathy for seriously negative people who have been dealt a lot of bad breaks: the poor, the gravely ill, the laid-off single mom with 3 kids. But when a fabulously wealthy super-celeb like Michelle is that ungrateful? It chafes.
I guess it’s a little tough to ask Biden to play the race card. Hard sell.
There’s a cure for this when it chafes. It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
I heard parts of her speech today on the John Gibson Show. I was appalled. Michelle Obama gave the worst kind of speech possible to a group of hard working, high achieving young people as they begin their careers. I cannot understand how someone who has so little ability and has been so lucky to achieve her current economically comfortable situation can be so angry and vindictive. She is a graceless shrew. In addition to a failed presidency, we have a first lady who has also failed miserably. I will be very happy when she and her husband are both gone from the White House in January 2017. Unfortunately, she will be giving the same kind of speeches when her husband is out of office.
It is still all about their post presidency as the leaders of an enraged black community. By the time they leave office I fear we will be one incident away from a full on one sided race war.
Maybe she’s just steamed because Reggie Love gets more love from her “man” than she does. Me thinks if Obama would take care of his “homework,” then she’d probably lighten up.
I think the worst part of this is not so much her view of her personal persecutions but the license it seems to give to so many black people to raise their own objections. When I taught school I heard this kind of rhetoric from the kids. It was obviously coming from what they heard at home. However, it was rarely spoken outloud by adults. Now, it has become the fashion among black people to blame Whitey for all of their failings, for all of the failings of the black community, including the 70 some percent of black babies born out of wedlock.
I taught in a special education classroom that dealt with children classified as emotionally/behaviorally disabled. The majority over the forty+ years I taught were black, and the vast majority of them came from single parent households. By the time they reached their early teens which is when they entered my classroom they were feral and years behind in essential academic skills. Overcoming a four or five year deficit in reading, writing and arithmetic skills would require immense self discipline and real desire to achieve. I saw little or no motivation, as most figured that they would be taken care of or become professional athletes. That doesn’t strike me as being due to a white, racist society.
Michelle repeat after me: The children of married college-educated black parents are better off than 99.99% of people who have ever walked this earth.
I would cross the street any day, any time–not out of fear–rather for my own sanity, to not have to hear that woman speak. Perhaps when “her peeps” stop committing crimes at about 3 to 4 times the per capita rate as any other group in this country, store clerks will stop paying special attention. When the first time one is “proud” of their country is the time one is elected by the people of that country to be its leader, well why wouldn’t your patriotism be questioned? So why does Michelle Obama strike many as being angry and mean spirited? Perhaps because she is. It is quite a shame for her to use her unearned position in an attempt to instill victim hood and negativity into the bright young minds of these potentially very positive future adult citizens. Good post, Jon. I heard just a snippet of that speech the other day. It was, as usual, cringe worthy.
I have no pithy comments about Michelle (or her husband for that matter). I just have profound regret that I ever came to know of them and even more dread for what they will say or do until the far distant future. Sadly, they will not disappear quietly even after 2016.