Remember when Michelle Obama stood before a crowd in Milwaukee and said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country”? The date was February 18, 2008, and the moment her quote reached my ears I knew she and I would not get along. In one fell swoop she had dismissed the inherent greatness of this nation, our brave military personnel, and the accomplishments of prominent black public figures like Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Ultimately, her words betrayed a sense of entitlement. As an aspiring member of the upper echelon of the ruling class she could not be “really proud” of her country until the spotlight shone on her; until journalists and television personalities praised her “style,” and fawning crowds applauded her elocution. Therefore, the truth is that Renee Martin of Globalcomment.com was on to something when she worried that people were going to see Mrs. Obama as an “angry black woman.” Mrs. Obama came across as both angry and haughty.
In addition to just now becoming proud of her country, which is also my country, Mrs. Obama stands side by side with her husband in criticizing corporate America although they “are [both] products of corporate America,” according to Paul Ibrahim. “Both launched their careers in corporate law,” and Michelle went “on to serve on the board of TreeHouse Foods, Inc., which supplied most of its pickle and pepper products to Wal-Mart.”
Isn’t it just like a liberal to make their fortune in a given economic sphere, corporate America in this case, before coming out against the very avenue they used to make their fortune, as if to ensure that their esoteric surrounding doesn’t become overcrowded with commoners? And that’s just what Mrs. Obama is doing when she calls on women to turn away from lucrative careers and serve others instead (as if those who have a lucrative career won’t also be able to serve others).
I failed to point out that our great crusader for service to others is also a “former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin,” according to Byron York. And while the law profession is known for being lucrative, it is not well-known for providing the “community service” which Mrs. Obama calls other women to undertake.
Because Mrs. Obama is a liberal, community service means one thing for her and another thing for others. For instance, on February 29, 2008, in Zanesville, Ohio, she called on women to “become teachers [and to] work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. [Because] those are the careers that we need.” But when it came to her own community service, Mrs. Obama “served” as “vice president for community affairs” at the University of Chicago Hospital, where her salary climbed from “$121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.”
Will any of the women from Zanesville, Ohio, whom Mrs. Obama directed to go into “social work” make $316,962 a year? Not as social workers they won’t.
When the left-loving Vogue magazine recently decided to put Mrs. Obama on the cover, my suspicions about her leftist credentials were proven valid. They were actually proven valid on March 10, 2008, when Lauren Collins of The New Yorker described Mrs. Obama thus: “Her lack of pretense has made her popular with the portion of the electorate, and the media, for whom prim Laura Bush seems out of touch.” (Only leftists refer to other leftists with phrases like “lack of pretense” when comparing them to any given Republican.)
The Huffington Post’s Bonnie Fuller recently pushed the sycophancy even further by describing Mrs. Obama’s “well-defined biceps” thus: “Michelle’s strong arms convey the message that if she can personally hug and lift us out of a lousy economy, and a lack of top healthcare or education for everyone, she will.”
With Vogue praising Mrs. Obama’s looks and fashion sense, long forgotten is the “abrasive image” which Times Online (UK) noted as recently as October 30, 2008. The witch has become a princess and we are now supposed to believe that we will all live happily ever after. But I find this focus on her looks quite strange, considering that it was Mrs. Obama herself who told people in Charlotte, North Carolina, not to vote for Sarah Palin just because Palin was “cute.” I guess it’s okay to return the focus to looks now that a real beauty queen like Palin is no longer the competition.
Reuters’ Joshua Roberts recently wrote a column titled, “Michelle Obama makes the rounds in D.C.” It described Mrs. Obama in such a way as to make us believe we are lucky to have her in our capital city. According to Roberts, Mrs. Obama has already taken a “listening tour of the federal bureaucracy,” and read a number of books to a number of children in various schools around the city. She has even moved her mother into the White House to help watch the Obama children.
Where’s the article from someone inside the D.C. beltway which reminds us that just two weeks after saying she was proud of her country “for the first time” in her adult life, Mrs. Obama said America was “just downright mean”? I’m looking for anyone, even an all but forgotten news outlet like MSNBC, to run an honest story informing us that Mrs. Obama is pretentious and conducts herself in a manner that betrays her belief that she’s entitled to special treatment.
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