This country seems to see everything through the prism of beer. Beer is the official drink of America, and the kind of beer you drink sends a statement. Yes, the Blind Boar has really good barbecue even with the departure of Chopped winner Jay Lippin and Arrogant Bastard Ale. But the beers associated with America, the beers that people have in mind when they say the President is a guy you'd want to have a beer with, are more the kind of stuff poured out at the Dog House Saloon, the Budweisers and Coors and such pulled for guys who will spend the entire afternoon at a really friendly bar eating the best damn bar food in the county. Beer has become a metaphor for America.

So if you were to ask yourself who you'd rather have a beer with, what would be your answer? Would you rather have a beer with the sea of white faces you saw last week, their faces twisted with hate and fear and loathing and resentment; with the speakers who had to resort to demonstrable lies in their lust for power because no one in their right mind would hand the keys back to them if they thought about the truth? Or would you rather have a beer with Deval Patrick, talking about a teacher who didn't just teach kids to memorize the "I Have a Dream" speech but understand what it meant? Would you rather have a beer with what's left of Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair, or would you rather have a beer with Kal Penn, who may very well in four short minutes have energized the youth vote all by himself. (And please note that I said "beer", not "bong", because unlike Republicans, our side understands that there is a difference between the character an actor plays in the movies and who the actor is as a person.) Would you rather have a beer with the dour Marco Rubio, whose mother was illiterate but who has embraced fully the I Got Mine And Fuck You doctrine of the GOP, or with Juliàn Castro, who eloquently encapsulated a nation that gave his Mexican mother and grandmother and himself the opportunities to better their family for the future and want to perpetuate those opportunities for everyone?

But perhaps most of all, would you rather have a beer with Ann Romney, daughter of an affluent family, who expects us to believe that she and Willard were one step away from homelessness in their early married years, never once mentioning the $400,000 they had in the bank; who doesn't feel wealthy despite her family's quarter of a billion dollars, and doesn't believe that Americans have a right to know whether a man who wants to be president has so little faith in it that he stashes his money in offshore accounts? Or would you rather have a beer with Michelle Obama, even though it might mean you have to do this before you get to the beer?



I know who I'm choosing:



Oh, and there's one other difference: Our folks know that you aren't going to have a beer with the President -- or the First Lady. We understand that people who reach the top tiers of politics no longer have to worry about how the bills are going to be paid. We understand that the images we see on TV are just that. We know that Clint Eastwood isn't really Dirty Harry, just as we understood that John Wayne wasn't a war hero and Ronald Reagan wasn't the Gipper and we understand that Kal Penn isn't really a stoned-out slacker. Because we know the difference between image and reality, between fact and fantasy. We understand that what we saw last week and what we're seeing this week is about 80% stagecraft and 20% reality. But we have also not forgotten eight years of Republican wars and Republican debt and Republican tax cuts for Willard Rmoney and reduced services for everyone else. We know that the Democrats aren't perfect. But we also know from the sea of faces in the arena in Charlotte this week; a sea that is black and brown and white and Asian and male and female and straight and gay and transgendered; that is veterans and civilians, stay-at-home moms and career women; union workers and white-collar workers; all enjoying this festival of commonality instead of difference, that at the very least, we DO have a responsibility to take care of each other, and that we would rather live in a society where people do so instead of one where your only value is in how many zeroes you have in your net worth. We understand that those who have already succeeded on our side don't feel they have to pull the ladder up so no one else can climb it.

And THAT is the difference.

Labels: Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, sheer awesomeness

Forget about who the President is. Can't we just make Michelle Obama First Lady-For-Life? This is not new, but it's awesome just the same.



Of course this song it so catchy that it could make ME start dancing, but it's hard to imagine someone married to a robot or married to a religious fanatic having this kind of just plain fun. Mrs. Obama is so cool and so charming and so just plain awesome in this kind of setting, it makes me want a second term for her husband just so we get more of HER.

Labels: Michelle Obama, sheer awesomeness

This story gave ME chills and made me go all weepy, I can't even imagine what it must be like to piece together your own history like this:

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

Yesterday I wrote about how Germany doesn't flinch from the less-savory aspects of its past, while we insist on sweeping ours under the rug. Here we have a situation in which the First Lady of the United States is a reminder and descendant of the part of American history in which human beings thought they OWNED other human beings, and in which rape was a common occurrence, and the American discomfort with this reality seeps into the research:

It is difficult to say who might have impregnated Melvinia, who gave birth to Dolphus around 1859, when she was perhaps as young as 15. At the time, Henry Shields was in his late 40s and had four sons ages 19 to 24, but other men may have spent time on the farm.

“No one should be surprised anymore to hear about the number of rapes and the amount of sexual exploitation that took place under slavery; it was an everyday experience, “ said Jason A. Gillmer, a law professor at Texas Wesleyan University, who has researched liaisons between slave owners and slaves. “But we do find that some of these relationships can be very complex.”

In 1870, three of Melvinia’s four children, including Dolphus, were listed on the census as mulatto. One was born four years after emancipation, suggesting that the liaison that produced those children endured after slavery. She gave her children the Shields name, which may have hinted at their paternity or simply been the custom of former slaves taking their master’s surnames.

The relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is the highest-profile indication that what began as rape, or at the very least, exploitation based on the idea of humans-as-chattel may evolve into something resembling genuine affection. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no such thing as consent when one person OWNS another under the prevailing law of the land. And the possibility of an "enduring relationship" doesn't mitigate one bit that the slave Melvinia was for all intents and purposes raped by a white man.

There's something profoundly moving, though, and "uniquely American" about the elegant, cool, self-possessed, smart, educated woman currently in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tracing her ancestry, now with faces and names, back to the single biggest blot on American history. It's too bad that in the environment of fear and loathing in which we now live, we've already lost sight of what the First Couple represents.

Labels: Michelle Obama, slavery

The mainstream media have absolutely no idea what to do with Barack and Michelle Obama. The talking heads of cable news are so accustomed to being able to control the narrative, and now that the American people have finally decided not to heed them anymore, they just don't know what to do.

Americans believed the media during the Clinton years when they were told that Bill Clinton splooging all over a blue dress was far more important than the fact that they were living in a country that was prosperous and at peace. They believed the media when they were told that because a vaguely skeevey California Democratic Congressman had at the very least an inappropriate relationship with an intern, it meant by definition that he was her killer -- while at the same time they not only ignored an equally convenient, equally coincidental death of a young woman linked to a REPUBLICAN congressman, but they hired him to be one of their own. They believed the media that told them that if they dared to swim in the ocean, they were certain to be attacked by sharks. They believed a media that told them that everyone is a predator just waiting out there to snatch their daughters -- but only if said daughters were white. If said daughters were black, the media didn't care.

What they DID care about was the fact that fear meant eyeballs and eyeballs meant dollars. And so, after 9/11, there was nonstop coverage not just of actual news, but also of speculation that cows, pens, and model airplanes might be used as weapons; coverage of threats at midwestern schools and shopping malls. If the Bush Administration put out a press release, it was covered as news. Much of it was a corporate media the ownership of which benefitted from having Republicans in power, but at least some of it was a simple case of fear sells. And Americans bought it hook, line, and sinker. And so we ended up with an unnecessary war and a ruined economy.

Perhaps the people have wised up.

Enter the Obamas. Enter a President who isn't a buffoon and a First Lady who has no intention of being doped up on Thorazine and kept stuffed in a corner like a mannequin. Enter Michelle Obama, a woman so awesome that she ought to intimidate the hell out of the rest of us who will never in our lives be that poised, look that great in clothes, or have triceps that don't flap no matter how much work with weights we do -- and yet we adore her, and so does the rest of the world.

I know the talking heads of the media want to believe that she's the second coming of Angela Davis. I know they want to paint her as angry and radical (when they aren't calling her "trash"). I know that they hate her for bring gorgeous, poised, looking great all the time, smart, independent, and yes, more than a bit of a smartass. It helps them promote fear, and in the world of the media, fear means money. But the rest of the world, including much of this country, is utterly and completely gobsmacked by our First Lady.

So yesterday, while the talking heads of television and the print media here and in the U.K. were trying to turn Michelle Obama's hand on the back of the Queen of England into some kind of international incident; a a sign that Michelle Obama is just another black kid from the wrong side of the tracks, something else was happening: a resounding chorus of "Who Cares?" from both the people in the street and from Buckingham Palace left them scratching their heads, as poor David Shuster, banished to drive-time TV just when he's hitting his stride, reported while subbing on Countdown last night:



And of course, leave it to The Daily Show to hit the nail on the head once again:



It's enough to make you wish E.D. Hill hadn't gotten fired from Faux Noise. It would have been fun to see what kind of Threat to the Republic she would have conjured from Michelle Obama managing to charm even the stuffy Queen of England.

Labels: Michelle Obama

I thought it was insane when they went after Hillary Clinton and it's insane now:

House Republicans are pressing for a change in federal law that could force Michelle Obama and future first ladies to do more of their policy work in public. But Democrats warn President Obama may take the attempt personally “as an attack on his wife.”

The GOP effort is being led by the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose initial salvo was rebuffed recently at a contentious committee markup session. Under Issa’s amendment, any government policy group that Mrs. Obama or another first spouse regularly participates in would be subject to a law requiring meetings to be announced in advance and, in most instances, public.

At the March 10 markup, Issa’s proposal triggered more than 35 minutes of impassioned debate. I’ve linked video of the exchange below, but Democrats clearly seemed to be recoiling at what some viewed as an effort to target Mrs. Obama.

Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.) suggested President Obama might see the legislation as a personal provocation that could trigger a fight. “Let me… caution my friend from California that, as you’re probably aware, this president is very guarded about his family,” Clay said. “I think that, no matter what you’re intending with this amendment, that the president may view this as an attack on his wife. And I’m just saying, you know, let’s be careful--if we want to open up that can of worms. Let’s not go in that direction.”

“We are trying actually to protect the historic role of the first lady,” Issa insisted, repeatedly invoking the “transparency” mantra of the Obama administration. “I believe this is open government at its finest.”

As soon as Republicans start talking about what they're doing being "for the protection of" a woman, watch out. Because you can bet your life that there's some kind of Republican takeover of your right to do what you want, go what you want, and say what you want comin' down the path.

Michelle Obama is an intelligent, classy, educated, ferociously smart, funny, witty, clever, awesome woman. Her husband knows it and clearly adores her. This marriage between equals obviously scares the hell out of Republicans, who prefer their First Ladies to be more like Laura Bush -- quiet, unassertive, quite possibly whacked out on Thorazine. I say the hell with it, and the hell with them.

Labels: Michelle Obama, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

Of all the crap that I've read about Michelle Obama over the last two years, I don't think there's anything crappier, or more ridiculous, than this call for her to cover up her arms. What year is this, anyway? 1909?

I realize that among a certain breed of Christian cultists this:



...is regarded as appropriate attire for women. But when did we get so prudish that a First Lady who wears sleeveless dresses is somehow a Threat to the Established Order of Things®? Doesn't anyone remember this First Lady?


If Jackie Kennedy in a sleeveless dress wasn't a scandal in 1961, why should Michelle Obama in a sleeveless dress be one nearly fifty years later?

Maureen Dowd, who for once is smitten enough with another female to not do her standard Mean Grrl schtick (perhaps because she knows Michelle Obama could kick her ass from here to Mars and back again without breaking a sweat), finds the foofarah ridiculous:

In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.”

I’d seen the plaint echoed elsewhere. “Someone should tell Michelle to mix up her wardrobe and cover up from time to time,” Sandra McElwaine wrote last week on The Daily Beast.

Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you’re not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements.

David was not smitten by the V-neck, sleeveless eggplant dress Michelle wore at her husband’s address to Congress — the one that caused one Republican congressman to whisper to another, “Babe.”

He said the policy crowd here would consider the dress ostentatious. “Washington is sensually avoidant. The wonks here like brains. She should not be known for her physical presence, for one body part.” David brought up the Obamas’ obsession with their workouts. “Sometimes I think half the reason Obama ran for president is so Michelle would have a platform to show off her biceps.”

During the campaign, there was talk in the Obama ranks that Michelle should stop wearing sleeveless dresses, because her muscles, combined with her potent personality, made her daunting.

Is this yet another manifestation of the right-wing male's terror of strong women? Especially when said strong woman is black, evoking memories of Pam Grier in Foxy Brown? It's odd that it's primarily, but not exclusively, men who are kicking up a fuss, given that there are millions of women in this country who would sell their souls to have the kind of triceps that look good in sleeveless dresses into our forties. So I wonder why there's this big fuss about it being somehow "unseemly" for a First Lady to have sleeveless dresses as a signature look, especially when you consider things like Rich Lowry's delusional "starbursts" after deciding that the image of Sarah Palin on TELEVISION was winking specifically at HIM. In other words, what kind of synapses in the conservative brain make it OK for a MILF with cotton between her ears to have access to the nuclear launch codes, but a gorgeous and smart First Lady who's in great shape is somehow a scandal?

I think it has something to do with the idea conservatives have that the President is supposed to be some kind of national Daddy. This is why they love Ronald Reagan so much -- he was the ultimate Daddy. And if Mommy (which is what Saint Ronnie actually did call his wife) was a bit of a flake, well, she always gazed adoringly at Daddy, and so we knew when we were tucked in at night that all was well. George H.W. Bush was a national Daddy, and God knows no one ever thought of Barbara Bush as a MILF -- probably not even George H.W. himself.

Then came Bill Clinton. I'm convinced that a good part of the reason for the outrage over Clinton's out-there infidelity is because Americans don't want to think about Daddy fucking the baby sitter in his home office. It's useful to note that Hillary-hate only started to wane after the Lewinsky affair. America had never related to her as Mommy until she became the aggrieved wife. And still, conservative America was delighted to have the often abrasive Hillary replaced by Laura Bush the thorazine zombie. With her glazed eyes, Joker-smile, and "knowledge of her place" in the background, she may have been the Mommy who never got out of bed because she was too depressed, but at least she was a Mommy figure -- and a chaste-appearing one at that.

And now we have the Obamas, who are clearly still nuts about each other after twelve years of marriage and two kids. But Michelle Obama is more than just traffic-stoppingly gorgeous -- she works out like a demon and looks more like she belongs in a leather catsuit, roundhouse-kicking bad guys than hosting teas for the Daughters of the Keepers of the Memory of the Glorious War Dead. And I suspect that more than one conservative man gets a few starbursts looking at the strong black woman with the brilliant mind who resides in the White House for the next four years.

And it scares the living daylights out of them.

Labels: Michelle Obama

There. I said it.

When you grew up when I did, it's sometimes hard to understand why people get all blubbery at Memorial Day parades, or when "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is played, or when the flag is raised. When the images of your youth are of black people being sprayed with hoses while dogs bark, or young people screaming in the streets and being maced and beaten by cops, or of a young woman weeping over the corpse of a college student shot down by National Guard troops at a student protest, or of the napalmed bodies of people living in a village in Vietnam who did nothing to us, the word "patriotism" can be an empty one. When the people who refuse to admit that what we're doing in Vietnam is wrong slap bumper stickers on their cars that say "America: Love it or leave it" and refer to everyone who disagrees with them as "Communists", it's sometimes hard to think about love of country. And yet I think somewhere deep down inside, I always wished I could.

I knew what this country had done for my grandparents, all of whom came over from Russia and Poland with nothing. My paternal grandparents never quite made it out of poverty, but their sons both went to college, went into the Army, and were helped by the GI bill. My maternal grandfather was a district manager for a department store chaiin, and my grandmother had her own store for a while. The life I live today is because of the work they did in a country that gave them a chance. That's an American story, as Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said so marvelously last night, and it's one I forget sometimes.

It's easy to forget these American stories when we see our leaders trampling on everything that my grandparents believed this country to be as their ships landed in New York. It's easy to forget the beacon of hope this country used to be for my grandparents and so many others who came here before and after them -- before fearmongering politicians and would-be dictators decided that their power and their aggrandizement was more important than the country for which the flag they give such lip service to protecting stands.

I've seen many of these conventions in my lifetime, and there's a kind of reassuring continuity in their very hokeyness -- the three-sided state signs, the relentless bad pop music, the buttons and stickers and silly hats and people decked out in all manner of swag. Democratic conventions in particular are snapshots of the melting pot in action, with far more than just a few black people scattered around the arena in a demonstration that E Pluribus Unum isn't just something to put on money. But this year is different, because this year the people of color aren't just out in the audience or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton grudgingly given face time amidst hopes they don't do anything to alienate what the media so gingerly refer to as "the low information voter."

I'm usually able to resist when someone is really setting out to jerk my chain. I'm especially able to do so when the person in question is named "Steven Spielberg." But every four years, I watch the prime time hours of the Democratic National Convention, and for a few short days I understand why people fly flags in front of their houses. And last night brought the emotionality, the intense symbolism of this quadrennial exercise in self-congratulation to new heights.

For those of us born in the 1950's, The name "Kennedy" has carried a certain magic -- less so for people like me, whose Democratic parents practically worshipped the ground Adlai Stevenson walked on and regarded John F. Kennedy as the same kind of usurper that it seems many Hillary Clinton supporters feel. But even if you weren't swept up on the Camelot mystique, the Kennedys were always present in public life.

For Americans in general, the Kennedy Thing has largely receded in recent years. The political careers of the many Kennedy children have been either aborted (Joe III) largely quiet (Patrick), or short (Kathleen Kennedy Townsend). The death of John Kennedy, Jr. virtually assured that the last of the Kennedys to make a significant mark on the political scene was going to be the old lion himself, "Uncle Ted."

For sheer political stagecraft, it's hard to top last night. The last surviving child of the martyred president/myth/icon, every inch of her an undisputable Kennedy, emerging from a largely private life to help her terminally uncle pass the family torch one last time to a new, young, charismatic leader with a picture-perfect young family.

You could practically hear the gasbags of talk radio already screaming "Chappaquiddick!Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick!" -- because they have nothing else to say -- but you can't deny the power of the last of the Brothers Kennedy, puffy from steroids, only months after brain surgery, standing on his own one last time at a Democratic National Convention and roar from the stage about health care. At this point, a right-wing pundit corps that approves torture, that continues to support a war based on lies that has claimed the lives of over 4000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, that defends an executive branch that is criminally rotten to the core, and that's clearly inciting people like this to try to kill the nominee, no longer has anything to say about Kennedy's behavior that night long ago.

But the real question of the night was not How Would Kennedy Do, because you knew that he'd do fine -- but How Would Michelle Do. I don't know if the "low information voters" (you know....morons), who clasp the notion that she's the second coming of Angela Davis to their chests as if it were a treasured talisman, were swayed, but I don't think Michelle Obama could have done any better.

As some others have noted, it's a shame that Michelle Obama has to hide her level of accomplishment and the finely honed horsepuckey detector that makes her so appealing to people like me. It's a shame that the "Nick and Nora Charles" wisecracking part of her relationship with her husband has to be put on hold, lest those people be intimidated who have stupidly been voting against their own best interest for almost thirty years because Republicans are better at cheap symbolism. Funny how the PUMAs, with their Ellen Jamesian obsession with Hillary Clinton, don't seem to care one whit about how Michelle Obama has to frame herself as ONLY a mom in order to pass muster with the same "hard-working Americans...white Americans" to whom their icon so pointedly referred during the primaries.

On the other hand, if you have two little girls like these, the older one already showing the her mother's poise and elegance, it would be hard to want to frame yourself as anything else:



But even if we wish it were possible for Americans to wrap their minds around the notion that a woman can have a high-powered career AND be a great mom, or she can just as easily choose to do one OR the other, and still be a woman who is valued in our society, I'm glad that this country, too much of which only knows Michelle Obama from right-wing pundists and smear e-mails and a magazine cover that perpetuates the very lies it tries to spoof, got to see the Michelle Obama that our nominee fell in love with almost twenty years ago.

I have no doubt that the speech was carefully written for just that purpose, and that Michelle Obama worked hard to keep that soft tone in her speech that's so different from when we've heard her snarking about her husband's smelly feet. If you want to be really churlish, you might say that trotting those kids out on stage is the height of political cynicism. But in a campaign that's loudly and clearly showing all the signs that too many Americans simply can't deal with anything that differs in any way from their own lives and their own backgrounds, who are willing to believe that a guy with a funny name can't possibly be a "real American" and who will believe the fliers about which Tweety talked about last night (but only after giving the Republican plants who are duping disgruntled Hillarions air time), that claim he's a "registered Muslim" (you have to register to be a Muslim??), Michelle Obama's job was to convince these mor...I mean, "low information voters", that though her skin color may be different, and that she has this exotic last name of her husband's, the experience of being a mom is color-blind. Of course I think she succeeded smashingly. We'll see what the rest of America thinks.

I will say this much, though. Watching this woman on the podium last night, introducing her husband as the nominee, and invoking both Martin Luther King AND Hillary Clinton, and watching the faces of black women in the audience, listening, rapt, with tears rolling down their cheeks, I can honestly say that perhaps for the first (and I hope not the last) time, I am really, really proud of my country.

(UPDATE: I thought this was a pretty good post about Michelle Obama's speech until I read what Sara wrote. Damn.)

Labels: Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama, Ted Kennedy

If there's one thing the media hates more than a strong liberal woman in politics, it's a strong liberal woman who's gorgeous, successful, in what's clearly a loving marriage to a presidential candidate -- and black:



They should have lost all credibility with "terrorist fist jab."

Labels: Michelle Obama

For those who don't already know, we here at B@B have a huge girlcrush on Michelle Obama. We think she is Teh Awesome, the cat's meow, and the bees knees. You want yer warrior-princess, ladies, here she is. It isn't just that she's tall and gorgeous with arms that most of us could never hope for no matter how much weight work we do and legs like a graphic novel superheroine. It isn't just that she's mothering two adorable little girls who appear to be as poised as their mother. It isn't just the clear mutual respect she has with her husband (otherwise known as the 44th President of the United States [/hope]). No, it's the very outspokenness that gives the pundit corps, racists, and sexists fits; that unfailing shit detector that brought us this immortal exchange with "Stephen Colbert":



But with Michelle Obama being not just the new Hillary in her status as Candidate's Wife As Lightning Rod for Fear and Loathing of Women, but also the focal point for much of the racism that is is no longer acceptable to direct at her husband, the press is now in full "tame the beast" sic> mode, and the right has teamed up with deranged Hillarions like Larry Johnson to spread the lie that there's some kind of tape out there that shows Michelle Obama referring to "whitey."

I was saying to Mr. Brilliant when I first heard of this that there's no way such a thing even exists, because "whitey" is a word that sounds like something a white person would come up with when trying to sound like a black person. In an article in today's New York Times, ominously written by this year's Adam Nagourney and Jodi Wilgoren, Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor, Mrs. Obama lets us know that great minds think alike:

“You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,” she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: “I mean, ‘whitey’? That’s something that George Jefferson would say....”

Alas, the article doesn't give her much chance to speak for herself. Instead, in an article that largely covers Mrs. Obama's background, the authors don't miss the opportunity to not just rehash the "whitey" lie, but also revive the old chestnut about her master's thesis and throw in some red meat for those who think that John and Cindy McCain, with Cindy's $100 million, John's $58,000/year tax-free military disablity pension for a disability that doesn't seem to stand in the way of him thinking he's capable of being presidency, and their eight homes, are somehow salt of the earth, by noting Mrs. Obama's salary at her hospital administration job, from which she is now on leave.

Perhaps the most ominous part of the article, however, is Claire McCaskill's admonition to Mrs. Obama as she heads out on the next phase of the campaign, one in which her very hummanness is likely to be unfavorably compared with the blonde, white, aging Barbie doll, frozen-in-the-headlights, Thorazine-stare and complete and utter silence of Cindy McCain:

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, a close ally of the Obama campaign, says Mrs. Obama must stop sounding like a lawyer trying to win an argument. The trick, she said, is “not pushing so hard to persuade people that Barack is the right one.”

“All she has to do is be likable,” Mrs. McCaskill said.

Here at B@B, we think Michelle Obama is likeable enough (heh) just the way she is.

Labels: Michelle Obama

I wonder, if Barack and Michelle Obama had exchanged a tongue-kiss the other night the way Al and Tipper Gore did at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, if the press would have turned it into a Major Story™.

Watching the press response to "the fist-pound heard 'round the world" has been amusing, to say the least. Their take seems to be that this couple has given us a glimpse into a culture as unknown to those hard-working Americans....WHITE Americans... to whom Hillary Clinton referred -- the Strange World of Black People.

We first saw this press spin on the Strange World of Black People when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave us a peek inside the black church. Until then, the closest most white Americans had gotten to a black church was this:



Or this:



And now we have the Zen of the Fist Pound. What does it mean? Is it some kind of Secret Black People Handshake? Maybe some kind of Black Muslim Christian Terrorist Manchurian Candidate Code?

Anyone who's gone to Jamaica and had any interaction with the local residents is well-familiar with the fist pound as a gesture of respect. But the Larger Meaning of the Fist Pound is filling up a great deal of press time and ink during this lull that's essentially batting practice for the fall presidential campaign:

• New York Daily News: "Barack and Michelle Obama's 'fist bump of hope' shows them silly in love"
  
• The Globe and Mail: "A small gesture that spoke volumes"
  
• The Seattle Times: "Obamas seal the deal with "dap"; knocking of knuckles epitomizes historic moment"
  
• Washington Post: "The Fist Couple: Giving a Big Bump to Authenticity"
  
• Slate.com: "Pounds"
  

Is anyone else getting a bit of an "observing a species in its native habitat" vibe out of this?

Here's America's newest cultural anthropologist and expert on the Strange World of Black People, Jeanne Moss, on CNN yesterday:



Here we see what's coming this fall. Of course race is going to be the elephant in the room until Election Day, but I'm sure this is what we can expect -- to be tourists on the media tour bus, listening to media morons explaining what we're seeing in the Strange World of Black People.

Labels: Barack Obama, hack journalism, Michelle Obama, racism

Perhaps it's just how political coverage in this country has evolved, but it seems to me that despite the fact that all of the Democratic candidates for president are intelligent, qualified people (yes, even Hillary -- it's not her intelligence that bothers me), their spouses are the ones who are the most interesting?

We'll see during the general election campaign if the notion that the first spouse still has to be of the Nancy Reagan mode -- gazing adoringly at her supposedly more-accomplished spouse in public no matter who's actually running things behind the curtain. Theresa Heinz Kerry probably wasn't the best example of the Accomplished Spouse and certainly had no gift for dealing with the media. But even leaving aside the former president who's the most gifted sheer politician of his or perhaps any generation, the Democratic spouses are at least as interesting, and sometimes more so, than the actual candidates.

Elizabeth Edwards is the Stealth Soccer Mom -- a ferociously intelligent and energetic woman whom everyone forgets was a damn good attorney herself before deciding to devote her energies to her family. Having had the privilege of hosting a fundraiser for her husband in which she was in attendance, I can tell you that you could drop her off at the Kohl's store in Ramsey, NJ and no one would even recognize her, so completely would she blend in with the rest of the store's clientele. But if you saw her eviscerate Ann Coulter on national television, you too know that this is not someone you want to push around.

Today Rebecca Traister in Salon focuses on Michelle Obama, and after reading this article, I found myself wishing that she, instead of her careful, cautious, Let's Play Nice with the Republicans husband, was the candidate:

In her first address, she flatly notes that one of her husband's proudest achievements was passing ethics reform. A beat. "In Illinois." Ba-dum-bum. The line gets a good laugh, because Iowans know Chicago's history of corruption, and that Ilinois' most recent ex-governor is in federal prison. But apparently, Obama is not satisfied. In later versions, she more thoroughly explains herself, noting that "Illinois doesn't do ethics really well."

Obama's staff tells me about a couple of lines that have been dropped from the speech -- one about how when she met her husband, she thought, "No one lives in Hawaii!" and one about how she first realized that she could go to Princeton after her brother got in, because "I'm smarter than him!" But as with many gifted comedians, most of the mirth is in the take-my-husband-please Borscht Belt delivery. Obama has laid off a lot of the domestic complaints since her run-in with Dowd, but comes closest to the kind of "emasculating" riffs that made MoDo sniff when she tells one crowd, "I didn't marry [Barack] for all his degrees. Certainly he's made less money over the years, as my mother has pointed out."

Then there is the steady drumbeat of discontent about the process she's living through. "I'm not doing this because I'm married to him," she tells listeners again and again. "Because truly, this process is painful. If you have a choice, America, don't do this! Teach! Do something else. I tried to [tell] Barack -- there are so many ways to change the world. Let's do them!" In another version, she says, "I [didn't] want to run for president! Life was comfortable! It was safe! Nobody was takin' pictures of us!" This sing-it-sister refrain goes over well, in part because it's something with which everyone in her audience can relate. Who the hell would want to live this way? To give up their privacy, security, routine, all in a bid to watch their mate get attacked for a living and take on the most high-pressure, all-consuming job on the planet? It doesn't matter if Obama is black, if she is a Harvard Law grad, if she is wearing Jimmy Choos. She is communicating to her audience a reluctance that makes good common sense to them.

These moments of relatability give ballast to her big sell, that when push came to shove, she shelved her trepidation. "I took off the Michelle Obama hat," she says, "the selfish hat, the one that says 'no,' and put on my citizen hat, my hopeful hat, and realized that I want Barack Obama to lead me ... Even if it's inconvenient. We have to be bold."

Fifteen years after Bill Clinton rattled the country by announcing that thanks to his marriage to a policy wonk, it would be getting "two for the price of one," Michelle hits a similar note on her own behalf. If the nation elects Barack, she says, "I can guarantee you that you won't be disappointed. Not only will you get to hang out with me -- cause I'll be there; I'll go to the White House with him -- but we have a chance to fundamentally change this country."

At the senior center in Davenport, they're thrilled to hear about hanging out with her. She receives a chorus of affirmative "Uh-huhs" after nearly every statement, and when she's finished, the crowd of geriatric fans swarm her, putting her on the phone with their loved ones, having her pose with toddlers, the arm of a stuffed monkey draped around her neck. Sixty-two-year-old Mary Anderson, retired from Ford Motor Credit, tells me, "She reminds me of Jackie Onassis. She's a dignified, high-class lady."

[snip]

Ron Hughes, a small business owner in Dubuque, tells me that he's a Biden man through and through, and his wife, next to him, is totally apathetic about the political process. "She just comes for the socializing," Hughes assures me. But as Obama begins the most rollicking rendition of the stump speech that I will see on this visit, Hughes leans in to me and acknowledges, "I do like her sense of humor."

By the time Obama gets into the part about how fear is used to bully and divide us, Hughes' purportedly apathetic wife is nodding in assent, and leans in to her husband to say, "She's right on."

Tonight, Obama lingers on the cowardice of her husband's opponents in their votes for the Iraq war, arguing that Barack, though he was not yet in the Senate to cast a vote of his own, acted courageously by coming out against the invasion during his tight Illinois primary race. "That race looked a lot like this race," she says. "He wasn't supposed to win. He had a funny name, he was too young. We've heard it! Been there! Done that! But even in the middle of all that, he said no, the war was a bad idea."

She remains insistent -- despite the flak she's received for minimizing her husband's deity-like status -- on being realistic. "It's not that we're going to elect a president who will deliver us from evil," she tells the Jochum fundraiser. "We are our own evil. We have to be engaged and passionate." Without courage, she says, we will never get anywhere.

"I think I found my candidate," says Hughes' wife, 59-year-old Suzette, a retired physical therapist, as Obama receives a standing ovation. "I hadn't felt the need to make a decision until tonight. I hadn't been moved until tonight."

The next morning, Michelle is about an hour north of Dubuque, in a restaurant that overlooks a broad, sinuous Mississippi River. She's taking a fresh dig at George Bush as she discusses her husband's respect and passion for the Constitution, "something that would be nice in a president these days." The crowd is nodding enthusiastically at her.

While Michelle is hugging after the speech, I overhear a group of four women gossiping about the Clintons, speculating rather ungenerously about why Hillary might be running for president. One of the women, who is wearing a precinct captain button, boils down the differences between the former first family and the Obamas: "Michelle and Barack are like us," she says.

"Like us." In IOWA, of all places. What's so mindblowing about this article is partly that at least in Iowa, Obama's race appears to not even play into people's considerations. That we have lived long enough for Iowans to say that a black couple is "just like us" is gratifying, if long overdue. But it's also that in Michelle Obama, we have a woman who goes in front of crowds and does what SHE wants -- not what handlers want, or not what she thinks the Fox News crowd won't object to. She's a "This is me, take it or leave it" kind of gal.

I only wish her husband was more like her.

Labels: Michelle Obama

It looks like there's a bug in the software that's still keeping the new Michelle Obama-bot from being as docile as she's supposed to be; as evidenced by the last paragraph below. Interesting that it's the software bug that people like:

When someone in the audience asked Michelle Obama why voters should vote for her husband, she walked confidently onto the stage, took the microphone and smoothly answered.

He's a man who has put his values before his profit," she said. "He's not running for president because he wants to president. That's sort of the irony in it. He's running for president because he believes we can do better as a country."

The line brought a standing ovation.

"I think maybe we should stop there," Barack Obama said.

But he took another question: How would Michelle Obama serve as first lady?

Returning to the stage and the microphone, she was a little less reverent.

"You may sit down," she told her husband.

Roars of laughter from the crowd.

"I come to this with a lot of interesting talents, but I think it would be unfair of me to say today what I would do in a couple of years," she continued. "I need to be prepared to do what the country needs me to do at the time.

"Whether that's baking cookies or serving as a wonderful hostess, that's my job. I have to be prepared to do what's necessary. And we won't know what that's going to be until we get there. I will be staunchly invested. It is a joint project."

Notice how using her mind and professional talents aren't even allowed to be mentioned.

Sad.

Labels: Michelle Obama, sexism