Moms's Mabley
Posted on 05/06/2008 1:01:43 PM PDT by The_Republican
This past Friday Michelle Obama gave essentially the same stump speech in Charlotte, North Carolina that she had given the week earlier in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Based on the stump speech, Yuval Levin calls Mrs. Obama "The unhappiest millionaire." Levin's NRO column carries a link to the C-SPAN video of Mrs. Obama's North Carolina speech. It is well worth watching.
Levin characterizes the pervasive themes of Mrs. Obama's stump speech as the "gospel of bitterness." Levin finds Barack Obama to be preaching a similar gospel, albeit one that benefits from "a peppier and more upbeat stump speech[.]" Senator Obama's enormous political skills make it much more difficult to discern the somewhat repulsive views and attitudes that are nakedly on display in Mrs. Obama's stump speech.
Michelle Obama seethes with bitterness. While she preaches the gospel according to Barack, she wears resentment and bitterness on her sleeve. It is therefore painful to listen to her. She's apparently even still angry about her SAT scores. She didn't test well in school, she explains. Somehow, she has overcome.
Mrs. Obama seeks to convey convey the impression -- she expands on the theme at great length -- that Senator Obama's campaign is, to borrow Joe McCarthy's formulation, the victim of "a conspiracy so immense..." It is not clear whether the Obama campaign can overcome the power of these sinister forces.
According to Mrs. Obama, the Obama campaign has been constrained by nameless forces constantly changing the rules of the game and thereby preventing Senator Obama from securing the nomination. Who are "they"? Mrs. Obama says just enough about these nameless forces for us to infer that "they" include the Clintons and their supporters. "They" seem also (incredibly) to include the mainstream media. These nameless forces have approximately the same specificity as the names on Joe McCarthy's list.
In her North Carolina speech Mrs. Obama reiterates the condescending political sociology that she elaborated in her Fort Wayne remarks and that Barack Obama preached at his closed-door fundraiser with the San Francisco Democrats. Given the modesty of her and her husband's family backgrounds, Mrs. Obama denies that she or her husband could be elitists.
Yet Mrs. Obama's political sociology comfortably fits the What's the Matter With Kansas? school of thought held by the Demoratic Party's liberal elite. Indeed, it was an elite group of wealthy San Francisco Democrats to whom Barack Obama was preaching the gospel of bitterness in San Francisco.
Mrs. Obama mocks the notion that she and her husband are elitists. She implicitly asserts that only those born to wealth are capable of looking down their noses at their fellow citizens. She does not think highly of those of us who want to be left alone by advocates of the administrative welfare state such as she and her husband. Moreover, she finds us guilty of making our children the victims of our fears. We are raising "young doubters." (I confess!)
But aren't those in her audience afraid of the sinister forces struggling to hold the Obamas down? Apparently not any more than she is. If her remarks were to be believed, they would by themselves instill deep fears. Her audience seems to understand that her impassioned whining is not to be taken seriously.
She says that she and Barack were born to parents of modest means, not with "silver spoons" in their mouths. Nobody knows the trouble they've seen. The burden of paying for her undergraduate education at Princeton and her law school education at Harvard has scarred her. It remains a motif of her stump speech. No one is accorded a chance to ask her if she thought about attending the University of Illinois, or if she's grateful for any of the financial assistance that facilitated her and her husband's attendance at the finest institutions of higher learning in the United States.
It appears that no one in the Obama campaign has the nerve to speak frankly with Mrs. Obama about how her stump speech might be improved. She could benefit from constructive criticism, because she is woefully deficient in the ability to see herself as others see her. She has just enough self-awareness to omit her admonition to the Los Angeles disciples of Barack:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed. As I said last week about Mrs. Obama's Fort Wayne remarks: As long as Senator Obama won't require us to listen to the missus, I might be willing to settle for the compulsory mental readjustments.
PAUL adds: So Michelle Obama didn't do very well on her SATs but was admitted to Princeton? No wonder she's sore.
One of the problems with lowering the bar pursuant to "affirmative action" is that placing the bar back where it was requires raising it.
She does seem like a weak mind and an “affirmative action” baby, no matter how much that may upset the politically correct liberals to hear it. From what Christopher Hitchens describes of her undergrad “theis” it was atrocious (he described it a “unreadable in any language”) yet somehow she was passed onward and upward to law school. Looking at some of her statements and speeches, I have to wonder if she is even a high school graduate..... yet she managed to be admitted to Princeton (passing over many more qualified applicants who were not of the correct skin color or genitalia). Somehow she graduates from Princeton and is supposed to be the cream of the crop, although there are countless students from supposedly “lesser” colleges who are far superior to her in intellect, judgment, and learning.
This is just anecdotal BUT it happens all the time.... In her generation (I am just a couple of years older) I know someone, a family friend, wait-listed (not admitted but given the “honorable mention” pat on the back) at Princeton (probably the same year she was admitted), a “white male” who was a top student in h.s., SAT scores in the high 700s range on each test, class officer and many leadership activities, etc. People like that are regularly passed over (so many top Asian students too!!) so that weak minds like Michelle (Robinson) Obama can get passed ahead for such opportunities. Of course, it happens in so many areas, at every level of society, for police and fire departments, all sorts of educational and employment opportunities..... all in the name of reverse discrimination, er, “affirmative action” as the politically correct leftists prefer to call it. All done in the name of liberal social engineering, but then they wonder why a lot of resentments and tensions build as people see bozos like Michelle Obama advanced far beyond their competence. Not saying it doesn’t also happen plenty with children of the rich and famous, politically connected, etc. but the solution is not to make society LESS meritiocratic by making our institutions more racist as well....
It was his childhood nick hame. Barok, Barry, kind of the same.
I’m not sure Michelle Obama’s an affirmative action casualty; however, I am sure that she notices how very, very rich Oprah is...
Where the hell is h@ll?
Since she’s been complaining about her SAT scores being low, there’s no way she’d have gotten into Princeton unless she’d had some other outstanding quality. And if she had, I haven’t heard about it.
Somewhere deep down inside Michelle Obama realizes that without “affirmative action” she would be cleaning toilets somewhere and that knowledge is eating her guts out.
Somehow she graduates from Princeton and is supposed to be the cream of the crop, although there are countless students from supposedly “lesser” colleges who are far superior to her in intellect, judgment, and learning.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There are countless high school dropouts who are “far superior to her in intellect, judgement and learning”.
Well, as I said, I’m not sure; I hadn’t heard that particular tale...
Agree 100%.
My kid has a friend whose sistre applied to Princeton last year. White blonde girl, legacy for generations, family money, yet she only had 2 5s and 3 4s on AP tests and no higher than 700 each on her SATs. She was waitlisted and ended up going elsewhere.
No affirmative action for the blonde chicks either.
Read the 3rd paragraph of the article above - then wonder how she made it into Princeton on the basis of poor test scores.
Moms's Mabley
Jeez, now you’re expecting me to read the posted article? What next? Will I have to read one or two of the comments, too? Sheesh...
Courtesy comment:
Did you mean that like when my dad told me to quit trying to be cute or do you think she is MS. Black America?
As a man I find her cute. It started with this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=M-mLO0ZgOwc
Michelle Obama is right - she and her husband are not elitists — except in their own minds. They are, quite simply, bitter underachievers who have coasted to wealth and prominence through the back door of Chicago politics. Neither one of them could ‘cut it’ in the competitive marketplace, and both would eventually sink to their level of competence — fast food managers, at best.
I think you nailed it. I was trying to figure out who she reminded me of. Thanks.
oops, typo, should have read “thesis”
note to self: spell check is my friend - use it!
Well heck, pops, do I gots ta read it for ya ? :)
“Michelle is a bigger problem for Barry than Wright.”
Yep.
If he’s elected — she will be running the country!
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