Michelle Obama not as perfect as she appears
By ROSIE BUCHERATI
October 2008
Many in the media claim it is in inappropriate to focus on the families of political candidates, that their private lives should be respected. However, in the case of aspiring first ladies, this must be overlooked due to the vital role they play on the campaign trail. The wife of our next president will be one of the most influential women in the country and voters need to be almost as familiar with her as with her husband.
In many ways, Michelle Obama, the Harvard-educated lawyer married to Barack Obama, has become almost as big a celebrity as her political rock star husband. She has played a much larger role in her husband’s campaign than the typical candidate’s wife, putting herself in the public eye as much as her husband has, thus making her a factor in the coming election.
Because of this, Michelle Obama must allow herself to be scrutinized as closely as any presidential hopeful. But while the media attempts to focus more on her sense of style, voters must listen to the words coming out of her mouth.
“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”
These were the words uttered not once, but twice by Michelle Obama in February 2008 during two speeches in Milwaukee. Outrage ensued. It seemed everyone, including Barack Obama and one of his advisors, but the woman herself tried to cover up her patriotic slip.
“Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of context and make a great big deal out of it, and that isn’t at all what she meant,” Barack Obama said a few days after the controversial statement was made. “What she meant was this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America.”
Michelle Obama finally tried to take responsibility for her actions during the her opening night speech for the 2008 Democratic National Convention by repeatedly stating how proud she was of her country, but the attempt felt too forced to be taken seriously.
It is unsurprising that the wife of a man who refuses to wear an American flag pin or place his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance would admit to not always being proud of her country. It was also not the smartest comment to make when Michelle Obama’s husband is running against a former American soldier who spent five years as a P.O.W. in service for his country.
Michelle Obama’s comments shed light on a sacred truth of liberals: “I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth,” Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist wrote in response to the controversy. “In this case, it’s what happens when an elite Democrat politician’s wife says what a significant portion of the party’s base really believes to be the truth: that America is more a source of shame than pride.”
So how did Michelle Obama feel when America came together after 9/11 or rushed to the aid of the 2005 tsunami victims? Or when Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled was pulled down and Iraqi women were allowed to vote for the first time? Or watching fireworks on the Fourth of July? Michelle Obama is the perfect example of the American dream, yet the immigrants who struggle for years just to call themselves American citizens love this country more.
Michelle Obama had another verbal mishap later in February 2008. During a speech at UCLA, she delivered a frightening, 1984-esque speech to the enthralled crowd.
“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,” she said.
I thought that we were voting for the next president, not the new Big Brother.
Another hot topic is Michelle Obama’s senior thesis, entitled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” Princeton University restricted access to the document until after the 2008 presidential election.
“A thesis can be restricted or unrestricted for a variety of reasons, including at the request of alumni,” Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt explained. “It falls within the purview of alumni to discuss their academic work.”
The restriction ignited dozens of rumors as to the content of the thesis. In a surprisingly smart move, the Obama campaign released a copy of the document to politico.com, which caused Princeton to lift the restriction.
The thesis was done after Michelle Obama surveyed black students at Princeton to see how their attitudes changed during their years at the university, observing that most students identified less with the black community.
“Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments,” she wrote in her thesis. “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.”
While some claim that the university was much more ‘conservative’ in 1985 when the thesis was written than today, could her views really have changed that much? This must be kept in mind as the race card continues to be thrown around.
There is no doubt that Michelle Obama is an amazing woman who has fulfilled the American dream, a girl out of the south side of Chicago now poised to move into the White House this January, but like her husband, lacks the experience to set up as our nation’s first lady. Malkin put it best, stating, “Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence, and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League-educated, she’s been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World’s Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the ‘10 World’s Best Dressed People’; and named one of ‘The Harvard 100’ top influencers. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But you wouldn’t know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping over her and her husband’s student loans.”
They say that behind every great man is an even greater woman, but neither Barack nor Michelle Obama fit either of those roles. And in today’s troubled world, America needs that great man and greater woman. We simply cannot afford to have the Obamas in the White House.