Why Michelle Obama Hates America

won't exactly"Why Barack Obama's angry, Black separatist wife make a great first lady . . . ."

By: Tracy Karol (posted at http://talkstraight.org, where Tracy is the editor. She's an Hispanic activist and a political Indepedent living in Texas.

Talk Straight is dedicated to throwing sand in the gears of the Obama Lie Machine This is the best essay I've seen on who Michelle Obama really is.

"For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback," [1] Michelle Obama said so famously in mid-February 2008. Immediately, the mainstream media and the internet were buzzing with the news that presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s wife, who by anyone’s standards has not exactly led a difficult life, was a bitter woman.

She wasn’t proud of the fact that she went to Princeton, a school out of reach for most Americans? Or when she later went to Harvard Law School, where she met her husband? She wasn’t proud of the dream house her family owned? (Possibly not, since it’s been a source of embarrassment to the campaign as it was purchased in a “boneheaded” deal with convicted felon and slumlord Tony Rezko). [2]

Michelle Obama: The Image Michelle Obama can come across as an angry African-American woman, bitter even. Her senior thesis at Princeton, which reporters had a difficult time gaining access to, was rather difficult to follow, but the central theme was race: "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote in her introduction. "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." [3]

Her statements and history might not be so problematic if Barack Obama were not attempting to present himself as a unifier, someone who was above race. Instead, people in his campaign, including his wife and even himself have consistently “played the race card.” Remember: Michelle Obama sat in the same pew that Barack Obama did for 20 years, listening to the hate-filled sermons of Jeremiah Wright, the rants against whites, the consistent radical Black Liberation Theology.

One writer put it like this: "There is a disconnect there. The allusions of racial transcendence fall on deaf ears when Michelle Obama insists that soon “black America will wake up and get it,” help elect her husband, so she can feel proud of her country 'for the first time in [her] adult life.' Somewhere along the way, for these two Ivy Leaguers, to be American meant to “feel justified in your own ignorance… that’s America.”

Somewhere between growing up middle class, going to Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton, being the benefactors of sweetheart housing deals, grants, and loans, and filing over $1 million in tax returns, [to the Obamas] the United States became “downright mean.” [4]

The Obama campaign, however, was not quick to put a lid on Michelle; rather, it hired a public relations firm to shore up her image and sent her out on interviews. She did The Colbert Report, where she dressed like Jackie Kennedy and said she would like to emulate her. She appeared on The View, where she was treated like an old friend by the hosts.

(Sadly, Barbara Walters would later say in an interview with Jon Stewart that she asked Barack Obama to come on her show, and he responded that he had; she said she was sorry she wasn’t there that day; he said she was – she said she was certain she would never be invited to the White House if he was ever elected, and they joked that his famous charisma was maybe not present so much in person).

The Early Days Early on, Michelle Obama showed herself to be a strong woman who will not fade into the background, much like Hillary Clinton herself. So one would think Michelle would befriend Hillary Clinton, but that hasn’t seemed to be the case. Antipathy between the two campaigns remains, especially with the selection of Joseph Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate.

But what about the early days, before Michelle put her foot in her mouth and got a makeover? What does the American public know about this woman, who has been such a strong influence on Barack Obama that he said he would turn to her first for advice in a crisis if he were president?

We know that she was deeply involved in the sweetheart, “boneheaded” deal with Tony Rezko that enabled the Obamas to buy their mansion. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We know that when Barack Obama was a state senator, working with his mentor Emil Jones, he steered a $4.5 million earmark for the Muntu Dance Theater so it could build a cultural center. At the time, Michelle sat on the group’s board. [5]

We know that in 2007, serving in the US Senate, Obama earmarked $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Michelle Obama worked and had received a pay raise of nearly $200,000 soon after Obama was elected to the Senate. She had no trouble accepting the money. [6]

She later, along with David Axelrod’s company and others, formed the Urban Health Initiative, which has been widely accused of dumping poor, mostly black patients from Chicago’s South Side on other health-care institutions. [7]

We know that on February 17, 2004, she e-mailed supporters asking for donations on her husband’s behalf, using the “pro-choice” catch, even though it was largely fictional in this case. Why? She was “fear-mongering” women that Roe v Wade would be overturned because of the ban Congress passed on partial-birth abortions in 2003 – the same procedure pro-choice Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called “as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon…”

Fear-mongering is a tactic the Obama campaign has constantly accused the McCain camp of doing. [8]

Who is the Real Michelle Obama? What do these things tell Americans about Michelle Obama? Is she the strong, working mother who stands beside her man, hip, fist-bumping him when he wins elections, a new kind of first lady? She was certainly quick to criticize Hillary Clinton, saying that, “If you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. You can’t do it.” [9]

That statement probably hasn’t gone over too well with Elizabeth Edwards, whose husband so enthusiastically endorsed hers before his affair became public knowledge. She also doesn’t portray the type of classiness she seems to crave, ala Jackie Kennedy.

But then, her husband is no JFK, RFK, or MLK, either. He’s more of a Malcolm X follower, so her rage is understandable, as it fits well with black liberation theology, with the teachings of her church, with the hatred spewed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. No wonder she has never been proud of her country.

Most Americans, if they knew the REAL Michelle Obama – the privileged Michelle Obama who may have grown up on the South Side of Chicago but certainly got away from it in a hurry with opportunities few regular Americans ever get – would not be proud of her words or her actions.

And no wonder Michelle and Barack Obama make such a good team: neither she nor her husband has ever met an earmark they don’t love or couldn't work to their advantage. So the “introduction” Michelle Obama gives at the DNC convention and the story of their marriage is just that – a story, carefully fabricated by David Axelrod, who himself has played an intricate part in much of their lives.

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/id/123024
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/16/AR2006121600729.html
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/26/politics/uwire/main3881166.shtml
[4] http://www.globalpolitician.com/25010-obama-elections-black-nationalism
[5] “State pork to Obama’s district included allies, donors,” Chicago Tribune, May 3, 2007
[6] Mike Dorning, “Employer: Michelle Obama’s raise well-earned,” Chicago Tribune, September 27, 2006
[7] http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1122691,CST-NWS-hosp23.article
[8] E-mail from Obama for Illinois, “A Message from Michelle Obama,” February 17, 2004
[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN1qZMBE9Gc

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