Posted on 03/04/2008 9:13:51 AM PST by K-oneTexas
The Woman Who Would be First Lady
By: DiscoverTheNetworks.org [Home Page http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/default.asp]
A look at Michelle Obama.
Born in Chicago on January 17, 1964, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an attorney who has been married to Barack Hussein Obama since 1992.
In 1985 Miss Robinson received her B.A. in Sociology from Princeton University, where she minored in African American Studies. According to FrontPageMagazine reporter Jacob Laksin, “In a [February 2008] interview with Newsweek, [Michelle] Obama reveals that she got into Princeton … not on the strength of her grades, which she admits were unexceptional, but thanks to her brother Craig, a star athlete and gifted student who preceded her to the school. As a ‘legacy’ candidate and a beneficiary of affirmative action, Michelle Obama was granted an opportunity that others more accomplished were denied.”
At Princeton, Miss Robinson wrote a senior thesis entitled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” (see complete thesis under the Resources column on the left-hand side of this page). Some excerpts from the thesis include the following:
After graduating from Princeton, Miss Robinson went on to attend Harvard Law School, where she was accepted under the aegis of a minority outreach program. As one of her friends would later reflect, Robinson recognized that she had been privileged by affirmative action and was very comfortable with that.
After law school, Miss Robinson returned to Chicago to work for the law firm Sidley Austin. There she met her future husband, Barack Obama, who was working for the firm as a summer associate. In the summer of 1991 she joined the staff of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
In 1992, as noted earlier, Miss Robinson wed Barack Obama.
In 1993 she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of the organization Public Allies, an entity that sought to cultivate future community activist leaders by arranging apprenticeships for young adults with non-profit organizations.
In 2002, Mrs. Obama began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals (UCH), first as Executive Director for Community Affairs and later, beginning in May 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs. In these roles, she was heavily involved in managing UCH’s “business diversity program.” In early 2005, shortly after her husband had been sworn in as a Democratic U.S. Senator representing Illinois, Mrs. Obama’s annual salary at UCH was suddenly raised from $121,910 to $316,962.
Mrs. Obama also served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc., a major Wal-Mart supplier with whom she cut ties immediately after her husband made comments critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.
Mrs. Obama was honored by Essence magazine in May 2006 as one of the “World's Most Inspiring Women”; by Vanity Fair in July 2007 as one of the “World's Best-Dressed Women”; and by 02138 magazine in September 2007 as #58 in "The Harvard 100" list of that university’s most influential alumni.
In a February 2007 appearance with her husband on 60 Minutes, Mrs. Obama implied that America’s allegedly rampant white racism posed a great physical threat to her husband, who had just announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential race. Said Mrs. Obama: “As a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station.” (Mrs. Obama’s implication ignored the fact that the vast majority of violence against black Americans is committed by other blacks. According to the U.S. Justice Department, for instance, between 1976 and 2005, fully 94 percent of black murder victims were killed by black attackers.)
On February 1, 2008, Mrs. Obama said, “I don't think there is a person of color in this country that doesn't struggle with what it means to be a part of your race versus what the majority thinks is right.”
During a February 18, 2008 speech in Milwaukee on behalf of her husband's presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama declared, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
On another campaign stop that same month, Mrs. Obama told a Zanesville, Ohio audience: “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt. So you’re in your forties, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids. Barack and I were in that position. The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books.… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.” “We left corporate America,” Mrs. Obama added, “which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”
RESOURCES:
Key Writing by Michelle Obama:
"Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community" - Part I (pdf)
(Michelle Obama's Princeton Thesis)
By Michelle LaVaughn Robinson
1985
Part II (pdf)
Part III (pdf)
Part IV (pdf)
Analyzing Michelle Obama's Thesis:
Michelle Obama Thesis Was on Racial Divide
By Jeffrey Ressner
February 22, 2008
Articles:
Michelle's Struggle
By Byron York
February 29, 2008
Michelle Obama and the Rage of a Privileged Class
By Steve Sailer
February 25, 2008
Explaining to the Obamas Why They Should Be Proud of Their Country
By John Hawkins
February 22, 2008
The Divider
By Jacob Laksin
February 21, 2008
I've Always Been Proud of America
By Rich Galen
February 20, 2008
Michelle Obama's America -- And Mine
By Michelle Malkin
February 20, 2008
The attitude of the Ladies Who Lunch and their insulated coterie is the primary argument against allowing one’s children to associate ONLY with people their own age and their own social class. If all you hear is an echo of your own beliefs, you cannot help but assume that what you hear must be the truth. We still chuckle (50 years later!) at the faux pas of my 12 year old cousin, pampered only child of wealthy parents, who, after listening to her elders discussing poverty in the small rural town where Mama’s family has lived since the 1600s, asked “Well, if poor people don’t have money, why don’t they just charge things? That’s what my Mama does.”
And of course we have Pauline Kael who could not understand why Nixon was elected since nobody she knew had voted for him.
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