Michelle, is that you?
Posted on 12/30/2014 12:25:40 PM PST by Osage Orange
The first lady's disappointing story revision by The Oklahoman Editorial Board Published: December 30, 2014
MICHELLE Obama’s tale of a shopping trip she made in September 2011 is still generating some head scratching.
In 2012 on national television, she was laughing about going almost unnoticed during the trip to Target. Months later, with some time to think about it, the first lady has told People magazine that she was perhaps the target of some mild bigotry.
Her first version of the story, told to late-night host David Letterman, was probably the most accurate. To recap, most believe she made the trip to show the world that the Obamas were just average folks. After all, there was an election around the corner in 2012. She didn’t enter the Target with all the trappings of first lady. Photographs of the trip show her dressed incognito.
Most likely, Obama was still worried about being recognized and the embarrassment of dealing with the attention. Yet just one woman approached her. That woman asked Obama to help her reach a brand of detergent from an upper shelf. Here’s account No. 1, told to Letterman in 2012:
“I reached up, ’cause she was short, and I reached up, pulled it down — she said, ‘Well, you didn’t have to make it look so easy.’ That was my interaction. I felt so good. … She had no idea who I was. I thought, as soon as she walked up — I was with my assistant, and I said, ‘This is it, it’s over. We’re going to have to leave.’ She just needed the detergent.”
And here is the second version, as reported in People two weeks ago:
“I tell this story — I mean, even as the first lady during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised — the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. These incidents in the black community, this is the regular course of life.”
The magazine also quoted her husband as saying, “There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.” Yes, said the president, it had happened to him.
As usual, President and Mrs. Obama have it wrong. It’s common for many people, regardless of race, to be mistaken for an employee instead of a customer. And so what if they are? In Mrs. Obama’s case, she went into the Target hoping not to be recognized. The customer she helped had her attention on the shelves and shopping. She wasn’t there in search of a celebrity sighting.
The Obamas’ comments smack of trying a little too hard to become part of racial bias narrative that’s been flaring since the Ferguson, Mo., killing of a black youth by a white police officer. They too, you see, have experienced racism — albeit in the mildest form.
Back in 2011, Michelle Obama did a good deed for someone. Bless her. She should have left it at that. But the supreme self-regard the Obamas have wouldn’t permit her to do so.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Instead of impugning a whole race, which is wrong, let’s resort to paraphrasing the old Salem cigarette commercial from now on!
You can take Michelle Obama out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of Michelle Obama!
Michelle, is that you?
Seriously, tell me that isn’t real! If it is, I will be sick.
What a horribly racist thing to do.
Off with her head!
Well then. By now you should have a garage full of cool cars, eh?
Imagine if that had been Laura Bush lamenting that a peasant didn’t recognize her and asked her to reach something on a shelf. This woman is every bit as narcissistic as her husband. And perhaps she never heard of Google to help her keep her stories straight. And what incompetent staff the Obamas must have to allow them to continually put their feet in their mouths.
She probably doesn’t even realize that the vast majority of us don’t eat at restaurants that have valet parking.
What is most amazing is that this is the only example of Racism against her she can remember.
Little old ladies ask me to help them get things off the top shelf ALL THE TIME! I am mostly white. I enjoy helping them, common human courtesy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that is gross!
I have both been asked by strangers for help and have asked strangers for help. Never really occurred to me to tell folks about it. But then it must be because I’m a white guy.
Really?? I’ve always waited in my car until they opened the door for me....The keys were in the ignition.
Ha!!.....Zero is half white...and half Kenyan.
You’re “mostly white”?
/s
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