One of the awful things about Obama’s Presidency has been watching the absolute hatred and vitriol directed at First Lady Michelle Obama. It’s puzzling, because Michelle Obama is a completely straightforward person. She is the last person I would suspect of having a hidden agenda. I think what you see with Michelle Obama is what you get.
Michelle Obama’s life so far is remarkable or odd or unusual only in that’s she’s been successful at everything she’s done, and she’s done a lot. Most people fail at something or other in their personal or professional lives, and she hasn’t. She’s remarkably…admirable. Other than that, she’s blunt and plain-spoken and not at all mysterious or exotic.
Paid conservative pundits and media personalities, including professional grifter Sarah Palin, have created a wholly fictional Michelle Obama, a malicious monster that no sane and rational person recognizes.
Which is why I was amused to read that the wives of two Republican midwestern governors have adopted versions of Michelle Obama’s supposedly wildly controversial and Stalinesque health and fitness initiative:
Tonette Walker’s role as Wisconsin’s first lady has been slow to evolve, overshadowed by the controversy swirling around her husband’s tumultuous months since being sworn in as governor in January. But she emerged from Scott Walker’s shadow this month when she ventured onto the trails of a state park to launch her initiative promoting a healthy lifestyle and the Badger State’s natural beauty. She was motivated to initiate her “Walk with Walker” program because she is a diabetic and therefore knows the importance of exercise.
Isn’t “Tonette Walker” the perfect name to have when you’re promoting walking for fitness? She gets points for that alone.
Karen Kasich, wife of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, dribbled a basketball awkwardly by her own admission in a gym full of about 70 children as part of the University of Toledo’s National Youth Sports Program. Mrs. Kasich, who is physically active herself — she ran a marathon last year — talked to the campers about staying healthy and preparing for their futures before hopping onto the court “I’m sure [the children] enjoyed it,” Mrs. Kasich said. “It was probably rather humorous. Basketball is not my sport; I learned a new move.”
Mrs. Kasich called childhood obesity an epidemic and stressed the importance of exploring new sports that will keep children moving. She also told the children to choose healthful options when eating, and to “just say no” to drugs.
Let’s be brutally honest, Mrs. Kasich, this is “Let’s Move” without attribution. Would have been generous to give Michelle a little credit, but I suppose that’s politically untenable.
Why do conservatives object to Michelle Obama promoting health and fitness, yet not object to the wives of two far-Right midwestern governors promoting health and fitness?
I’ll leave you with paid conservative propogandist and media professional Megyn Kelly, who asked some hard-hitting questions on this issue:
KELLY: You know, here’s my question for you, this is why I raised it — I understand politics are politics, right? People don’t like who they don’t like. But why so much criticism on the First Lady? Why so much focus on this First Lady?
KELLY: Is it something about Michelle Obama? Has she been more vocal on policy? Is it those comments that she made during the campaign that were controversial about being proud of her country for the first time that people are holding against her? What do you think it is? Because we didn’t hear this about Laura Bush.
Good question, Megyn! No, we didn’t hear this about Laura Bush. But you’re directing the question at the wrong person, Megyn. It isn’t Michelle Obama’s job to explain why the entire Right wing media enterprise find her so objectionable. We, and she, don’t know what the hell your problem is with the First Lady. We can’t figure it out.
Instead, Megyn, conservatives might want to try a thought experiment, and look inward. This poison you’re all spewing is coming from you, not from anything Michelle Obama has done. That’s now completely clear, thanks to the wives of two far-Right governors in the midwest who are both doing exactly what Michelle Obama does. Weirdly, they’re not considered at all controversial.
Cacti
It’s because she’s blackity black and ate ribs once.
TK412
Has that been more awful than watching our country engage in illegal wars in Libya and Yemen?
cleek
because the “conservatives” who object are professional partisans; making Dems look bad and keeping The Base riled-up is their job. and sometimes, when reality isn’t sufficient, they have to manufacture things for The Base to be mad about. what makes it work is that The Base is made up of people who love to be mad – especially about Dems! – and will eagerly gobble up whatever gobbets of red meat their handlers feed them.
yes, Dems do it too. no, the GOP isn’t worse. it’s just how partisan politics work.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
Pretty bizarre that a common molecule seems to be the prime factor in how everything this administration says or does is perceived.
We’re a weird bunch, we humans.
Cacti
@TK412:
Good morning false dilemma. How are you today?
Kay
@TK412:
Is that what I said? Read it again.
Putting words in people’s mouths to make a point is dishonest. Just say it. Use your own words. You really don’t need a “hook” to go off-topic.
MattF
Yeah, blackety black, hates America. And two lovely daughters… how evil can one person get?
Tonybrown74
Of course we can figure it out. It’s because she’s Blackety black black blackety Blackety BLACK!
Menzies
Remember, the GOP operates entirely on the “only Nixon can go to China” concept of politics.
Except they mean “only Republicans can do anything.”
Silver Owl
Today’s conservatives are just nasty bitter greedy arrogant assholes.
Bulworth
Sigh. When wives of two GOP governors sponsor get-healthy initiatives they’re trying to encourage personal responsibility so that’s OK. When the wife of a Democrat president, Michelle Obama does it, it’s plain old fashioned communism. Is that really so hard to understand?
WereBear
Hate. It’s what they do, and what they have to offer.
Hill Dweller
These pathetic people don’t peddle this nonsense once they’re out of the bubble and/or talking to someone that will call them on their bullshit.
If you get the chance, check out Laura Ingraham’s last visit to The Colbert Report. Colbert read part of Ingram’s fictional Michelle Obama diary(which claimed she ate ribs 3 times a day) out loud, and she was visibly ashamed.
Ash Can
I think the avalanche of ill will against Michelle Obama exists because the haters all want to see how many ways of saying “nigger” they can come up with without actually saying the word itself.
Guster
Honestly, I find nothing more hateful than this: “she’s been successful at everything she’s done, and she’s done a lot.”
That casts my crapsack life into high relief.
Menzies
@Ash Can:
This. It’s pretty clear that the biggest problem the haters have these days is that they’re no longer allowed to actually use the words they want to.
I remember reading about how Newtie had to apologize to Hillary Clinton after his dear ol’ mum admitted he’d called Hillary a “bitch.” No doubt he’d much prefer to be able to do that in public.
Gromitt Gunn (formerly JMC_in_the_ATL)
This all goes back to the following thought experiment: imagine what the conservative media would have done if the Palins two daughters were cute, smart, and good in school, and if the Obamas children included a juvenile delinquent who went into the military to avoid punishment, a knocked-up teenager, and two youngsters who spent more time on the campaign trail than in school.
Southern Beale
Kelly asks:
How is that any different from the caricature of Hillary Clinton the right wingers created? Remember how “vocal on policy” Hillary was as FLOTUS? How she didn’t know her place, stepped out of her role as doting wife and mother? This is just typical Republican demonizing of Democrats.
Michelle Obama gets extra punches because she’s black, of course. But it’s the same old warmed over shit stew we always get from the right.
Xenocrates
IOKIYAR. That is all….
kay
@Southern Beale:
I disagree. Clinton ran the health care reform effort. She actually was a (somewhat) unconventional First Lady on policy, in that Nixon-Carter-Bush era, anyway, (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
They could hang that on something, although they of course went completely berserk and made up all kinds of other things from there.
This is just crazy, unhinged loathing, and it has been from the start. There’s no facts behind it at all.
J.D. Rhoades
I used to see this sort of shit all the time about Hillary Clinton. Some wingnut asshole would rail on her for five minutes straight and then end by saying “she’s too polarizing.”
Someone’s not polarizing just because you hate them.
(I was never a Hillary fan, BTW, but I’ve often found myself objecting to some of the stupider charges against her.)
burnspbesq
It’s not only that she’s paleness-challenged. Don’t overlook the fact that she took places at Princeton and Harvard Law away from some pale person. And she didn’t even help the basketball team win the Ivy League, like brother Craig did.
Mnemosyne
I know I keep harping on this, but I really do think that the basis of a lot of people’s hatred of Obama is that he consciously chose to be black. He deliberately decided to become an African-American and work his way up through that political establishment, not the white political establishment the way that, say, Harold Ford did.
Michelle Obama (and their kids) is the living embodiment of the proof that Obama didn’t need to kowtow to white culture to get where he is today and some people just can’t deal with it. I get a whiff of it from some of our supposed left-wing trolls, too, so it’s not just a conservative thing.
burnspbesq
As long as we’re going OT, can I get a rousing chorus of boos and catcalls for the Democratic senators who voted against ending tax breaks for producing ethanol from corn?
Legalize
Blackity, black.
Villago Delenda Est
There’s your problem, right there. The GOP base is not sane or rational.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@cleek:
You really think so?
Just Some Fuckhead
The fangrrl shit is pretty awful too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gromitt Gunn (formerly JMC_in_the_ATL):
DING DING DING DING DING!
Precisely. If one of Obama’s daughters was knocked up and showed up at the convention with the guy she claimed was the father, we’d never, ever have heard the end of it.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Mnemosyne:
So am I correct to infer that you believe Obama worked his way up through the “non-white political establishment?”
Damn, what weird responses this post is generating.
kay
@Legalize:
Mrs. Kasich went into a school and told those kids what to eat. Big yawn, was the response, here.
Indoctrination! Usurping parental power! Nanny state! Unconstitutional (probably).
I think Mrs. Walker wants to ration insulin, with her “walking for diabetes control” DIRECTIVE.
I can feel it :) She’s up to something,
Villago Delenda Est
@Menzies:
It is painfully obvious that Rush Limbaugh struggles, on a daily basis, with this very issue.
Xenos
@Hill Dweller:
That has to be the nicest thing I have ever heard about Laura Ingraham. I had thought her incapable of shame.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Because, you know, the First Lady should be the focus of massive vitriol because she’s done all of that horrible, like, stuff. And stuff. And, uh, things that are horrible.
Good luck finding a country to live in that has no celebrities that people like to hear about. Even Afghanistan has pop idols now.
El Cid
You’ll get my 3rd helping of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and mac & cheese when you pry them from my cold, greasy fingers, which probably won’t be too long from now.
Admiral_Komack
@TK412: Well, the dickhead demographic has been heard from.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne: Right? Because look at the guns on that fine lady!
kay
@Xenos:
Ugh. I think it’s worse. She’s purely spewing hate for the dollars. Maybe she’s a rabid liberal when she’s not on the clock.
inthewoods
Aside from it being about her skin color, I would say that when Republicans push these kind of initiatives, it’s all about the individual making the right choices and not burdening the rest of society – e.g. “Why the f*ck should I pay for that person’s healthcare just because they chose to eat like a pig?” Whereas when a Dem proposes such things, it’s suddenly about indoctrination into some non-exist club of people where by getting healthy you automatically become a Democrat.
Admiral_Komack
@Ash Can:
I suspect someone is going to slip and say it.
Martin
They went after Hillary the same way, and Nancy, and quite a few others. The GOP will tolerate their female politicians, but they’re really worried about any of the Dem ones that have strong political instincts because they know that a female Dem could really seal the deal in a general election. Better to destroy them before they get a chance.
Mnemosyne
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Are you at all familiar with politics in the city of Chicago? Obama didn’t move to the Gold Coast or Lincoln Park and start running from there. He went to the South Side.
When your first (unsuccessful) run for political office is against a former Black Panther, I think it’s pretty fair to say that you didn’t work your way up through the white political establishment.
bryanD
The volunteer defenders of Michelle Obama keep lifting her up out of the blue as some kind of feminine and matriarchal and cultural ideal and then wonder why people roll their eyes at the presentation. “Successful at everything’s she’s done”? Has she been tested? Certainly her husband’s family has been on the fast track through business-government sponsorships. Business Council, USAID, CIA. And Goldman-Sachs didn’t just discover Obama in 2008. That nexus hearkens back to the Bank of Hawaii and Granny’s officership overseeing money-laundering to Suharto. The “Obamas” are Insiders. So, Michelle is like the car dealership owner’s daughter: as long as she doesn’t get caught embezzling money she is bound to be considered a success. It’s not like an office rival can sabotage her. The Obamas have “gonnections”.
As for the quotidian stuff: “Michelle’s arms!”, “eat yer veggies!”. Well, there is a price to pay for Michelle’s incessant synergizing of herself across the media spectrum. Michelle DOES employ a publicity staff, after all. Tough toenails.
Villago Delenda Est
@inthewoods:
It’s all about the framing. Republican pushes it, it’s about individual health and fulfillment. Democrat pushes the same thing, it’s Stalin dictating how big your bites can be.
cleek
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
yes.
slag
Good for these conservative women actually doing something useful for the community with their lives. Michelle Obama is a good role model for them, and it speaks highly of them that they can recognize that.
Fear. Michelle Obama is a huge strength for this Administration. Which is only one of the reasons that they are petrified of her. That, and the general rule that conservatives don’t value straightforward women who refuse to put the boot on their own necks. Or on the necks of their daughters.
Steeplejack
I realize that I really hate Megyn Kelly. I don’t know why. I don’t watch Fox News; I usually see her only when she pops up in one of these on-line snippets or on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. And most of the other right-wing media nuts I can usually shrug off. But she has some sort of mean-girl, don’t-you-dare-contradict-me vibe that really rubs me the wrong way.
Is it something about Megyn Kelly?
. . . Jeez, I just turned on Fox News to check something–I had to use the channel guide to figure out which channel it is–and in a report on the riots in Greece Steve Moore, senior economic writer at The Wall Street Journal, said that no one wants to lend Greece money and OMG! America is just like Greece and this is a clear sign that we have to fix our “deficit crisis” immediately or we are going to end up exactly like Greece OMG!
I hate Fox News. Is it something about Fox News?
DaBomb
@Mnemosyne: THIS, THIS, THIS!!
Omnes Omnibus
@bryanD: You’re just a little bit of a crazy, aren’t you?
patrick II
I am not joining the Michelle is black explanation for right wing dislike of the first lady. My recollection is that they hated Hillary even worse during the Clinton administration. My own theory is that right wingers are being taught to hate Obama, Clinton, and their wives by right wing radio and television. In addition to the 24 hour a day lies about policy, there is just a constant disdain shown for the person shown day after day. The aggregation of personal disdain is a conscience choice and technique by Ailes and his crew and it just adds up for people who watch that crap day after day.
I had a friend who was the director of a large agency. During the last presidential election he outlined what he thought our country needed, and since he was a good manager he knew, and it pretty well outlined what Obama had proposed. But he hadn’t decided whether to vote for Obama or not because a personal dislike. He also disliked Clinton, Carter, and especially Hillary (who up until Obama was the front runner in the primaries had been treated with particular disdain).
His irrational personal dislike for these people is what struck me. After all, my friend was a pretty smart guy and these democrats are all are decent (ok Bill philanders) hard working, engaged, successful people. But my friend had FOX on all day, and the constant trash wears at a subliminal level. It is no accident.
Yutsano
@bryanD: Word salad. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
@Omnes Omnibus: I need to jump in the shower, and I have a whole rant that I’ll refrain from, but I’ll just say: A LITTLE BIT?? Is that your Wisconsin nice peeking out? :)
Culture of Truth
Mostly it’s spin for your team, tinged with a bit of racism. But if that isn’t available sexism will do, and if that isn’t appropriate, just say the dude wears earth tones or didn’t bleed enough in war or likes mustard or drinks orange juice or sips coffee or checks tire pressure or breathes in an out, in and out just like a commie.
So to sum up – spin, racism, hate and in her case – quite a bit of envy.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
“Tonette.” When I was in elementary school way back in the dark ages of the ’60s–you know, when schools still had music class–we were issued little plastic recorder-type instruments called tonettes, on which we made
sweet, sweet musichorrible noise. But we did learn about music.Ah, the Google remembers everything.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you really have to ask?
Jay in Oregon
@Villago Delenda Est:
What if Michelle Obama was a member of a state political party with extremist, secessionist views? I’m sure that would get glossed over by the MSM as well.
Steve
Michelle Obama definitely gets extra grief because she’s black, but I think the attacks on her obesity initiative have very, very little to do with race. This is just standard-issue criticism of Democrats for being Democrats. No one on the right would care if First Lady Gloria Cain had a childhood obesity program.
Ash Can
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you bryanD — yet another example of the election of a black president making certain people completely lose their shit.
cat48
Even the “Liberal” msnbc engages in attacks. An anchor asked this week, “Is 2 or 3 days a week enough for a First Lady to work?” Since they’re not paid, I thought it was a strange question for them to come up with.
But bottom line, blackity black!
rikyrah
you all have it wrong.
it’s not because she’s Black, Black, Blackedity Blackilicious Black.
it’s because she’s a self-respecting Black woman, and it reeks from every pore.
Mnemosyne
@bryanD:
Creating pictures of the First Lady as a monkey or a Black Panther is just rolling one’s eyes and not racist in any way?
You learn something new every day.
Lydgate
I don’t agree with the right wing vitriol, but neither do I find much admirable about her.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@bryanD: 1/10. No mention of the Illuminati, the Jews, the Trilateral Commission, black helicopters, or Vince Foster.
My God, doesn’t anyone know the first thing about how to form a crazy rant anymore? I miss the good old days.
cleek
@Steve:
this.
it’s a little disappointing to see all the liberals here jump eagerly and immediately to accusations of racism when simple partisan politics explains it just as well.
Lydgate
@Mnemosyne: Please explain to me how this is painting the first lady as a monkey or Black Panther. Please.
Mnemosyne
@Steve:
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing: if Mrs. Obama were a white Democrat, she would still be attacked for her soshulist “good nutrition” campaign, but the attacks on a white First Lady wouldn’t be that she eats ribs or that she (supposedly) looks like a monkey.
The fact that a white First Lady would be attacked in a different way for the same program doesn’t excuse the racist attacks.
slag
@Lydgate: Yeah. What’s admirable about a lady who works her way up, raises two intelligent daughters, and promotes the well-being of all those around her? What a loser!
nancydarling
@Steeplejack: I played one in 3rd grade in 1952, Sabetha, KS. before switching to the flute. I can still play “The Caissons Go Rolling Along” on a tonette.
And I just think Michelle is awesome in so many ways. I had some serious doubts about her in the beginning of the primaries and they all proved to be ridiculous.
Tonybrown74
@rikyrah:
I think it’s both, honestly.
The about-to-be-released-any-day-now “Whitey” tape screams, “blackety blackety Black” while tall, elegant, fashionable, likeable, educated, strong Black Woman as First Lady is “she think she all that! We need to knock her down a peg.”
Southern Beale
Bald eagles have taken to dive-bombing post office customers in one Alaska town, even drawing blood in some instances.
Oh, the irony.
Guess someone should ask Pat Robertson what it means.
Southern Beale
I loved Tonette in that “I see dead people” movie.
Villago Delenda Est
@cleek:
In this case, it’s a combination of the two.
The race angle just intensifies it on a visceral level.
Mnemosyne
@Lydgate:
Michelle Obama Gets Back to Her Black Panther Roots
Nope, nothin’ racist there. Clearly it’s all in my imagination.
kay
@bryanD:
I think she was successful prior to marriage, though, in conventional terms. Great schools, high-achieving, hard-working, etc. I’m not saying spectacularly successful, although it seems important to a lot of people to pretend that’s what I said. I think she was ordinarily and conventionally successful prior to marriage, in a sense that conservatives ordinarily accept, except with her. That’s all I said. I don’t think “her husband’s family” applies here, unless she was relying on Obama prior to meeting him.
Southern Beale
@kay:
I see your point, Hillary was more involved … though I kinda half remember Rosalynn Carter being more involved, too? I was just a pup back then, but wasn’t she supposed to “set the new tone” for a FLOTUS? Didn’t she sit in on cabinet meetings or some such, which raised a huge outcry?
So yeah Hillary was more involved than I said, though she wasn’t the first …
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Am I wrong to cheer for the eagles? Nothing against the postal workers, but go raptors!
@Mnemosyne: Our trolls need some serious upgrades. This C-list shit is just boring as hell.
Chris
@patrick II:
And it touches a ton of people who aren’t dedicated conservatives, too.
Let’s put it simply: they hate Democrats for being Democrats. There are a million different reasons for that – racism being a huge one, fundamentalism, nationalism, RWA thinking, good old-fashioned hippie-punching, etc – but the bottom line is that they hate the people on the other side of the aisle, because we’re the people on the other side of the aisle. Believing conservative wake up every day to a fresh dose of manufactured outrage: that sort of shit takes its toll. No wonder we can’t do anything right.
DanF
And in Indiana, Mitch Daniels and his wife continue to champion InShape Indiana: http://www.inshapeindiana.org/
As Always, IOKIYR
OzoneR
@TK412:
Yes
Martin
@cleek: In the venn diagram of ‘shit the teatards hate’, Michelle is in all circles except for the gay one. The racism is there. So is the hatred of ‘strong women that don’t look like my sister if my sister was hotter’. I can’t explain why Republicans are soooo fascinated with fucking their sister, but I think the facts can lead to no other conclusion.
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, this. It gives them another angle to attack and stereotype. Hillary Clinton wasn’t accused of having a “whitey tape” but she was accused of being a lesbian.
It’s just another tool in their hateful little tool box! Whatever they can use, they will. Whether it’s being gay, or being a reverse-racist, or in the case of Theresa Heinz Kerry if it’s being an “elitist” — whatever sticks, they’ll use it. And no, there is no bottom, there is no “too low.” They’ll stoop however low they have to go in order to attack. It’s who they are.
Mary Jane
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It’s called admiration, fuckhead.
Southern Beale
Apropos of nothing, but my left eye has been twitching for over 24 hours now and it’s really driving me nuts.
Culture of Truth
Brown egg or white, the GOP will break it just the same.
kay
@Southern Beale:
Eleanor Roosevelt was the first, which is what Clinton said, honestly and accurately, I thought.
But anything “Roosevelt” makes their head explode, so it was off to the crazy-races once that comparison was made.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Hillary was, I think, the “most involved” First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. Jackie Kennedy’s job was to look really good and smile. Lady Bird Johnson was into road beautification (which nowadays would be labeled as communist activism). Pat Nixon’s job was to be supportive and waaaaay in the background. Betty Ford probably would come in right behind Hillary as an active, public First Lady (remember “elect Betty’s husband” buttons?) Nancy Reagan made TV appearances with the “just say no to drugs!” theme. Barbara Bush sold oatmeal.
Steve
@Mnemosyne: Well, right, Michelle Obama gets grief for her ghetto booty, and Hillary Clinton got grief for her ankles or whatever. There’s a difference there, and yet there’s not!
No one can dispute that some of the attacks are racial. The whole “proud of my country” fiasco is a good example – it was a poorly-worded gaffe, and Hillary or anyone else would have gotten grief for the same gaffe, but clearly some of the criticism is grounded in “otherness,” “she’s not a real American like us,” and so on.
Race is always in it. Gender is always in it too, as is partisanship. Maybe it’s a waste of time trying to assign motivations. But for some reason it just strikes me as lazy (heh) when some liberals’ instantaneous reaction is always “it’s because they can’t stand a black President, full stop.” It’s more complex than that, nor is the point persuasive to anyone outside the bubble.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@Southern Beale: This happens to me every now and then. It’s either a result of me not getting enough sleep or a sign that my periodic uncontrollable urge to kill is resurfacing.
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Agreed. That brought back horrible fake-recovered-memories for modern conservatives. The dreaded Roosevelt Years.
ruemara
@cleek:
I’ve been black for a long time. Sometimes, it’s plain old simple racism. Sorry if that’s what you’d prefer not to believe.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
at least your name is apropos.
jl
Maybe we should look into who is paying who to say what means things about who. It would be interesting to see if different styles of attack on Michelle Obama could be traced to different arms of the wingnut payola machine.
Wed Jun 15, 2011 at 07:40 AM PDT.
Conservative payola: Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh paid to play favorites on right
Jed Lewison
Daily Kos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/15/985323/-Conservative-payola:-Beck,-Hannity,-Limbaugh-paid-to-play-favorites-on-right?via=blog_1
OzoneR
@kay: Edith Wilson basically ran the country for a year or so.
Eleanor Roosevelt was the first one really publicly involved.
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hell no. I was 15 years old. I was more interested in getting my learner’s permit and that cute Jon Saffel who sat across the aisle from me in homeroom.
Martin
@Mary Jane: Be nice. He’s clearly unfamiliar with the concept.
Steve
@kay: Frankly, it’s a shame Michelle isn’t more involved in governing, although I’m sure she talks plenty of business with her husband. She’s obviously a super-smart and competent person who could do just about anything she wanted (and few of us would be surprised to see her in politics down the road). It seems like there was a conscious choice from the early days of the campaign to avoid the Hillary trap by refusing to portray her as a partner in governance, which leaves her fulfilling a more “traditional” First Lady role. It’s just a shame her talent gets wasted (at least to some extent) because of the perceived need to avoid anti-feminist criticism.
Southern Beale
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory:
Hmm, guess it’s the second option for me then, cuz I slept like a rock last night.
Watch out, Nashville!
Martin
@Culture of Truth: Very nice. I may have to steal that…
rikyrah
Not only should you keep on repeating it, ICAM.
And, have come to the same conclusion myself.
I came to the conclusion when I realized that Barack Obama’s mother and grandparents weren’t getting nearly the credit that they deserve in how they raised him – after all, even if he had never become President, they had raised the First Black President of the Harvard Law Review; someone who graduated magna cum laude from HLS, and became a United States Senator.
So, I asked myself, why didn’t get their ‘ due’?
the conclusion I came to was —-
IFFF they had raised him ‘ right’..
then, what’s he doing married to Michelle?
slag
@Mary Jane: How amazing would it be if the majority of this country geeked out over people like Michelle Obama rather than over those of the Hilto-Kardash-Spearsian oeuvre?
ruemara
@Steve:
“ghetto booty”
Really?
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Surely you remember WIN buttons, SoBe?
Or, as the wags at my high school did, turn them upside down for NIM.
WereBear
I have always admired her. Not just the academic and career part, which are impressive.
But on a personal level, she’s got two happy girls and a husband who adores her. That says a lot about what kind of person she is.
The abundant obvious of the opposite; that’s Republican family values. I rarely see respect and admiration in the families on the “other side of the aisle” in all honesty. If they had them, they would trot them out.
ChrisNYC
The most interesting thing to me about the GOP first ladies copying Michelle Obama is that it seems clearly motivated by, “Works for her.”
The First Lady is very very popular — 70% approval according to Fox. Walker and Kasich both have upside down approval ratings and are looking to rehab their images. And look who they’re using as a model? I’m all for pointing out the hypocrisy of the RW attacks on her but ultimately their copying her seems like a big and satisfying concession.
Southern Beale
By the way, if Jon Saffel trolls liberal blogs, I had a huge crush on you in high school. But you probably knew that already.
{ sobs }
Okay back to work. Laterz.
kay
@OzoneR:
Did she? I read a huge Truman biography once (it was good) so I have extensive and useless knowledge of Bess, but that’s about it.
I like her name, too. Tonette and Bess. Don’t ask me to suggest names for your girl children, obviously.
gnomedad
@Mnemosyne:
I suspect Michelle is better acquainted with the culture of Dead White Males than most Republicans.
buckyblue
Tonedeaf Walker had never walked on those trails. I have an idea, tonette, why don’t you have an initiative how dumpy wives can have some style. You’ll need the consultant for that.
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
No! Oh, hell no. No one in my family was ever political in that way. We didn’t wear buttons or make political contributions or put up yard signs or volunteer on campaigns, not when I was a kid. My dad would yell at the TV about what an idiot Nixon/Ford/Reagan etc. was, my mother would warn me that Social Security would not exist when I got old enough to actually get any money because the Republicans would make sure to kill it, and that was that.
I think I was the first person in my family to get involved in politics.
cleek
@ruemara:
yes, sometimes it is. but sometimes is not always.
kay
@WereBear:
I like her because I think she’s just a very straight-forward person. That’s why I don’t get this whole conniving, controlling, secret aspect they’ve invented. I don’t see that there at all. I think she probably has a lot of trouble not blurting (true) things out :)
OzoneR
@kay: Woodrow was incapacitated by a stroke in Oct 1919 and after that, everything went through her.
WereBear
Prolly because she’s so obviously straight-forward.
I know that’s my own problem :)
Lydgate
@Mnemosyne: Or some of the hatred might be because he kowtows to Wall Street and it turns out he likes bombs a lot too!
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
Steve
@ruemara: Only as a description of the right-wing attacks. Frankly, while attacks on appearance ought to be off-limits regardless, I have no idea where they even find a basis to criticize her appearance.
kay
@WereBear:
I think political pundits are wrong about a lot of the “gaffe” stuff. I think people want other people to speak truthfully and off the cuff occasionally. Robotic and prepared is ultimately boring and insincere. I don’t know anyone who dislikes Biden for shooting his mouth off, other than, say, Halperin or one of the soul-dead ghouls on Morning Joe. It brings him down a level, where he should be. I don’t need a big mythical hero in government. I assume they’re human. I hope so, actually.
Lydgate
@Mnemosyne: OK, I thought you were talking about bryan d’s post. Sorry.
rikyrah
Black folks don’t even have a secessionist group in their midst. the closest thing that I can even think of is the NOI.
WHAT IF, boys and girls….
Michelle Obama had been a member of the Nation of Islam for SEVEN YEARS..
and Barack Obama was on tape giving a ‘ greeting’ to the Nation?
yeah yeah…we know what would have happened.
a little part of that….’white privilege’ thing…
Caribou Barbie’s hubby belongs to a SECESSIONIST GROUP FOR SEVEN DAMN YEARS…
but it’s Barack and Michelle Obama’s ‘patriotism’ that is questioned.
uh huh
Villago Delenda Est
@Lydgate:
Not from the GOP base. Bombing brown people should be earning him points with them. But it’s not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve:
High melanin levels. All they need.
Tonybrown74
@rikyrah:
THIS!
Chris
@rikyrah:
These are the same guys who think it’s patriotic to put up Confederate flags. Sooo…
Linda Featheringill
@Martin:
Interesting observation.
Michelle could probably win any election in the land if she chose to compete. [And she could probably perform any office very well, too.]
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
OT: Regarding Georgia’s labor shortage due to their implementation of a draconian anti-immigrant law.
I called it. The former Hispanic workers will be replaced by prisoners.
slag
@kay:
I agree with this completely. You’d really have to put a lot of work into seeing anything else, quite frankly. But when you’re a sneaky, conniving, controlling, gossipy person, it’s hard to not assume everyone else is the same way. When everyone’s out to get you, an honest aspect becomes nothing more than a cover for nefarious intent. To me, that cynicism is the most off-putting thing about conservative culture. And quite frankly, it’s why I’m put off by many far lefties as well. Too much drama.
Southern Beale
This seems appropriate for this thread.
Right-wing attack ad against Janice Hahn is so offensive, even YouTube has flagged it as for mature audiences. Full of the usual racist, misogynist BS the GOP has become adept at.
So this is how the 2012 elections are going to be. Lovely.
Steeplejack
@nancydarling:
LOL. That’s just wrong. Not the proper martial spirit at all.
Chris
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory:
After Atlas shrugged, the government bailed out the private sector. All in the name of American values and capitalism, of course.
amk
@TK412: You’re a one-trick pony, aren’t ya ?
kay
@slag:
I wasn’t the only person in America who was wishing she’d go a little off the reservation during that campaign, then. I think she probably has a lot to say, of interest :)
I think people can handle that, and they do. It’s pundits who faint and reach for smelling salts.
I once read that Laura Bush said to Barbara Bush, “I read and I smoke” when she was asked what she “does”, early on in her time with the Bush Dynasty. What a great line. I can’t find it now, and maybe it’s a myth, but wouldn’t campaigns be more fun if they talked like that?
Comrade Dread
Yeah, I know, I mean, thinking black on all of the First Ladies in my lifetime, they all seem pretty similar and all spent a small fraction (or minority) of their time pitching in to try and make the country a better place.
Can’t imagine at all why she’s being treated differently.
WereBear
Exactly. Which is why they are so very suspicious of do-gooding in any form. Compassion, empathy, kindness? Must be the AntiChrist!
Chris
@TK412:
A question: shouldn’t that be “TK-421”? Inquiring nerds want to know.
Brachiator
@Steve:
Sorry. Race is at the root of it. Or, more accurately, what I call racial anxiety.
On some conservative boards, the expressed racism is explicit. But there are people, I don’t know if they can be called professional haters, who always post negative comments about Michelle Obama on any site that covers the news and which allows blog comments.
And the comments always have the same flavor, no matter what Michelle Obama does. She is always an “embarrasment.” She does not know how to talk to whomever she talks to (white people). She does not know how to dress. She does not know how to behave. She does not know how to stand. She does not adequately represent America.
Note that there are not criticisms of anything that she says. It is always directed at who she is.
And, particularly on English speaking foreign news sites, where there are posters who have no particular political axe to grind with respect to Democrats or Republicans, these anti-Obama posters end up revealing themselves with more racist language when challenged by non-American commenters who express any admiration for Mrs Obama.
And yeah, there is complexity here, because it is not only race hatred. It is that some people cannot see themselves in the current First Family. So, when some anti-Obama posters bring up Sarah Palin, it is not just that she is Real American(tm) but that she is “just like” the poster or are people that they can identify with.
There is a big psychological thing here at work. The First Lady is like a Queen Consort or national mother. And some people rankle at the thought of having a black woman set any kind of standard or offer advice. Or they want the First Lady to be some kind of fantasy object, and again they are not getting their wishes fulfilled with Michelle Obama.
People can try to dance around the racial implications all they want, but it sadly does not change what is there.
WereBear
@kay: What Laura Bush said was:
Link to clip
GregB
@Southern Beale:
I think that the Republican conservative response to such things is:
You are a racist for thinking or pointing out what you perceive to be racism.
Besides conservatives like Thomas Sowell so they can’t be racist.
Steve
@Brachiator: Yes, I agree, comments like the ones you describe are most certainly grounded in race. I do think that’s different, though, from the fact that partisan Republicans attack her childhood obesity initiative as some kind of totalitarian plot.
ppcli
@Lydgate:
Seems unlikely. Bush kowtowed to Wall Street and loved bombs even more than Obama. But even people on the extreme left, with only sporadic exceptions, treated Laura Bush with respect.
Let’s say that Michele’s project was literacy and Laura’s was childhood obesity and fitness. If you don’t think that the left would have treated Laura’s project with a kind of bland approval and the right would have raged about the “elitism” and “disdain” of Michele’s then you aren’t paying attention.
Mnemosyne
@Steve:
I might agree with you if it weren’t for the 40-year-long Southern Strategy from the Republicans. A huge number of attacks against all Democrats are race-based. The only difference is that when they were against white Democrats, Republicans had to use Atwater’s code words (like “forced busing” or “welfare”) to get the idea across. The main attack against every Democrat since LBJ has been that they’re n-lovers.
Now that there’s a black Democrat in charge, conservatives can just go ahead and let their freak flag fly without having to dogwhistle everything. And that’s what they’ve been doing. People who didn’t pick up on the racist dogwhistles have a hard time believing that so many of the attacks on the Obamas could be race-based, but people who realized how many of the Republican attacks were actually race-based while pretending not to be are not quite as surprised.
Don’t forget, these are the same people who blamed the financial meltdown on the government (aka Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) giving loans to Those People. That’s their argument about everything. The Obamas aren’t exempt from that.
kay
@WereBear:
Oh, god, that’s even better. I love the languid, decadent sound of that. Why not in a stump speech? Mix it up a little :)
Amir_Khalid
@Chris:
Maybe because he is at his post.
bryanD
“I need to jump in the shower…”—Yutsano
I am visualizing a bowling ball in a wheel barrow…
“I give you bryanD—yet another example of the election of a black president making certain people completely lose their shit.”—Ash Can
For the record, I voted for Obama in ’08. Protest vote, of course. I knew he would be a puppet and inevitably a bloody liar and that this reality might hasten the weakening of our fugazy two-party system. Under identical circumstances I would do it again.
“Creating pictures of the First Lady as a monkey…”—Mnemosyne
You are the first person I’ve ever read that has put the word “monkey” in the same sentence as “the First Lady”.
Martin
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: Whoa, slow down. The statement is that probation officers should contact their unemployed cases and encourage them to take these jobs. That’s a GOOD thing. They’re not prisoners. They’ve been returned to society and they deserve a shot at a job. We should be encouraging this.
Now, if he goes the next step and decides to put prisoners out there for $.30 an hour, then I’m there with you, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that step happen, but let’s support the good ideas, okay?
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: I must agree with Mnemosyne. It was clearly shown in the book Nixonland, for instance.
Without the Civil Rights Revolution, the GOP would not have these grievances to seize upon, and racists would be more evenly distributed between the two parties.
slag
@kay: I couldn’t agree more. But I have to say Michelle Obama does manage to say a lot. Just her very presence says a lot–she’s subversive in that way. And in her overseas trips, she has managed to talk to the girls there in a way that I’ve never before heard a first lady talk to them. That’s something. But I agree that it would be cool to hear more. I’ll be one of the first to grab her memoirs when they come out.
Martin
@Martin: I should add, I googled it and while I think it’s a good thing, apparently it’s also soçialism, so it shouldn’t be done.
Why does the Gov of Georgia hate the free market?
stuckinred
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: “unemployed probationers”
David Fud
@bryanD: Michelle brings out the whackadoodles in a way that even Obama himself can’t manage. Maybe ABL is on to something.
Brachiator
@OzoneR:
Yeah, but the subterfuge behind Mrs Wilson’s actions (even if just to protect her husband) ultimately led to the later changes specifying that the VP take over when the president is incapacitated.
No matter how much people like to see spouses involved in the president’s decisions, it is dangerous to have an unelected, unaccountable individual as a power in the White House. You also run the risk of the kind of nonsense that takes place in second and third rank countries where the spouse of a leader is assumed to be the automatic heir to the throne when the leader dies, reducing democracies to hereditary monarchies.
And this rankled a lot of people. But FDR was shrewd in giving Eleanor some freedom in working in areas that might cause FDR political headaches (and of course, Mrs Roosevelt was persistent).
And while there is much written about the influence of First Ladies on their husband’s administrations, this only scratches the surface. On of Teddy Roosevelt’s most important unofficial advisors was his sister, Anna Roosevelt Cowles (Bamie).
Though forgotten by almost anyone who is not a historian, Bamie was a tremendously influential figure whose counsel and advice guided not only her brother, but other Roosevelts and political figures.
stuckinred
@Martin: because the farmers are fucked
Lydgate
@Evolved Deep Southerner: I know. There is some serious reality denying going on here.
Nutella
I know this is silly, but am I the only one who thinks the name “Tonette” sounds like it belongs to a singer in a Motown girl group?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
I want to know why the slacker isn’t at his post!
Mnemosyne
@Lydgate:
So did Bill Clinton but, oddly, I don’t remember the same level of vitriol directed at Clinton that’s directed at Obama. Heck, Clinton signed into law much of the financial deregulation that got us into the disaster we’re in today, and yet it’s All Obama’s Fault that he hasn’t cleaned up the mess that Clinton created.
ppcli
@Comrade Dread:
I couldn’t agree more. Even though my recall may be coloured by political opinions, it seems that every first lady (except Hilary) had a kind of “little project” to do good in an inoffensive apple-pie way. People could disagree with the politics of the husband, but we wouldn’t denigrate the first lady.
Quite the opposite, we took it for granted that the FLOTUS wouldn’t be niggardly with her charitable works, nor would she renege on promises to help. I’m sure there is an obvious reason right in front of me for the treatment of Michelle, but I can’t see it – it’s as if I were looking through a glass darkly.
slag
@WereBear: So true. Doing something for the betterment of your community? What’s in it for you?
I can’t stand that whole way of thinking. Even when I was totally surrounded by it, I could never absorb it. Personally, I don’t know where people get the energy. It just seems like a lot of effort for very little gain.
Jewish Steel
@bryanD: Why go to the bother of posting this? Just take off your tinfoil hat and we’ll steal your thoughts.
Chyron HR
@bryanD:
Oh, of course. YOU voted for Obama (and intend to do so again) because you’re a steely-eyed pragmatist, but the other 69,456,896 of us are Obotomized Obots who got anal poisoning from the Obamessiah. Funny how that works.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Not to dismiss Clinton’s role in this (he did sign the bill brought forward by the Ferengi shitstain Gramm), but you’ve just did what the GOP wishes everyone would do….put 2001-2009 down the memory hole.
Comrade Dread
@ppcli:
I know. Every First Lady has taken affirmative action to make this country a better place.
How they’re treating her just isn’t white, I mean, right.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Really? I was too young to remember the nineties, but the vitriol against Clinton lasted his entire presidency and culminated in an impeachment attempt rooted in crotch-sniffing. Seems to me they pulled out all the stops for him, too.
Mnemosyne
@bryanD:
I guess if you’ve kept yourself off the internet for the past three years and had no idea that Republicans have been sending around racist pictures since the president was elected, I suppose I can understand why you would be shocked and astounded to find out that they would go so far.
Downpuppy
I can not imagine Michelle Obama dribbling a basketball awkwardly. It would be like Tammy Wynette airballing a free throw.
Bender
NO FREAKING WAY! In all of Juicer-dom, you can’t find one hardcore leftist who can figure out why someone might have legitimate negative feelings towards Michele Obama?
What are the odds?
That would be like combing the pages of Free Republic and not finding anyone who didn’t adore Laura Bush or Cindy McCain or Todd Palin!
ppcli
@Martin: I agree – I’m cynical enough to be worried about the potential for coercion (these are unemployed ex-prisoners on probation; will there be suggestions that probation might be revoked if they don’t take the jobs?) But unless more information like that comes out, this is basically a good thing. Now that Georgia has purged itself of an artificially cheap labour pool, and consequently is facing a crisis, why not take simple steps that might help a bit, like making information about open jobs more widely distributed. And if there is already an information – circulation network there for parolees, why not use it?
(Of course, one might also use the straightforward free market mechanism of offering more money to employees, but of course that’s crazy talk.)
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Vitriol from liberals, not Republicans. That’s what bryanD and Lydgate are claiming to be, anyway. I don’t remember too many House Democrats voting for Clinton’s impeachment.
As I said, Republicans have been demonizing Democrats since LBJ dared to get civil rights legislation passed, so it’s the level of hatred from the left that’s surprising to me, not the right.
Brachiator
@Steve:
It doesn’t matter what Michelle Obama talked about, the GOP would hate it. But this is in addition to the racism.
More accurately, I would say that the GOP demagogues like Rush and others use the totalitarian crap as a convenient cover which gives the racists a semi-respectable reason to oppose Mrs Obama.
But no one in the conservative universe believed that Laura Bush was interfering with Americans’ right to raise their children by her work in combating illiteracy. And no one balked in the 1960s when JFK and the First Lady promoted exercise for children in the schools, based in part not just on health science, but on the Kennedy family practice of indulging in family football games and similar activities.
Every First Lady traditionally takes up some cause. Only Michelle Obama has been opposed and ridiculed for everything that she does, no matter how innocuous.
Bender
@Mnemosyne:
This is just so far removed from any plausible reality that it’s stupid to even try to bring you back from your fever-dream. If it helps you sleep at night to believe that every Republican is racist and that every GOP voter (even the black ones!) does so because he hates black people, then fine. You should just know that you’re insane.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Ahhhh!!! yes. Serves me right for not paying attention…
Well, let’s be fair: it goes back even further than that. As I recall, the derogatory term for FDR’s reforms was the “Jew Deal” among Real Amurikkkan opponents.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, I’m not trying to excuse Bush. His administration is far, far more to blame for the current mess than Clinton’s.
I’m just trying to keep it an apples-to-apples comparison since people seem to think that left-wing hatred of Obama today is no different than left-wing hatred of Clinton 15 years ago. I was around for those years and I can tell you, it ain’t the same.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bender:
You’re projecting, asshole.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
laura bush sold me ditch weed.
MagicPanda
@Mnemosyne: I could be wrong about the timing, but I remember lots of hand-wringing from the left about Bill Clinton / DNC / Republican-lite which mirrors the Obama vitriol.
Also, I just think that the rhetoric on both sides has been amped up because of shorter news cycles / the fringe becoming more mainstream via blogs / bad economy making everyone go crazy / etc.
Lydgate
@Mnemosyne: Oh hell, I was too young and stupid to know about the deregulation of derivatives but, yes, I felt Clinton was in the tank for big business too.
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
Well, it’s a relief for me to find out that Lee Atwater never existed outside of my imagination and that the Republicans haven’t been relying on the Southern strategy that Pat Buchanan came up with.
It’s so weird how other people seem to think that Atwater was a real person, though. He has a Wikipedia entry and a PBS documentary about him and everything. That’s a pretty elaborate hoax.
kay
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
See? That’s the sort of thing I find endearing and humanizing. She was young, etc. Who among us…
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Here’s that fake Lee Atwater documentary on PBS. So, Bender, are you saying that PBS is in on the conspiracy to pretend that Atwater was a real person who used racism to advance the Republican Party? Or was PBS just fooled by the incredible simulacrum of a real person created by the Democrats?
kay
@Bender:
I never gave a second thought to Laura Bush.
It really is just you. Right wingers are nutty about First Ladies. It’s like mixing up the constitution and the declaration of independence. It’s unique to right wingers.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Heck, you can go further back than that — in the 1920s and earlier “Communist” was pretty much a synonym for “Jewish,” which is one of the reasons you had people getting deported. But the party lines were much more muddled compared to today — a large number of Democrats were Southerners who benefited from Jim Crow, so they weren’t exactly pushing for tolerance and civil rights.
@MagicPanda:
I have to say, I really don’t remember the same level of Clinton-hatred as I’ve seen Obama-hatred, especially in the first couple of years. It wasn’t until Clinton implemented welfare “reform” and other right-leaning policies later in his presidency that the hatred really got started.
With Obama, it really seems like some people hated him from Day 1. If Obama were caught getting a hummer from an intern, I really can’t see liberals and Democrats rallying around him the way they did with Clinton.
Mike in NC
@ppcli:
I believe that once upon a time in this country, publicly denigrating the spouse and/or children of a prominent politician was considered too crass to be acceptable. Then along came Rush Limbaugh with his comments about Chelsea Clinton.
kay
@Mike in NC:
It was way before that. Some right wing lunatic-leader claimed Kitty Dukakis burned a flag. They all went ape-shit. There are probably earlier examples of what is a consistent, bizarre conservative laser-like focus on First Ladies, but that’s just what comes to mind.
I think they believe it’s an actual office. Maybe First Lady follows the declaration of independence, which is the same as the constitution, as you know.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, I see your point.
It’s not that I ever “hated” Clinton…it’s that I found his economic policies, in particular, to be the right of Nixon. Which is why I refer to him often as “our best Republican President since Eisenhower.”
On the other hand, those who did (and do) intensely hate Clinton are so beneath contempt, so utterly without any redeeming quality whatsoever, that Clinton had an ally in me. His enemies were (and are) utterly dispicable.
Obama’s got the same thing going. I think he’s far too friendly to corporations, and banksters, but the alternative that’s offered is infinitely worse.
Monala
@Xenos: Nah, she was ashamed not by what she wrote, but because Colbert called her on it (in that mocking way only he can) and embarrassed her. He said he was amazed that Michelle Obama’s diary reveals that she fits every racist stereotype the right has of her, and shocked that an Ivy League grad (ostensibly Michelle O, but really Ingraham, a Dartmouth grad) could be such a TERRIBLE writer.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@kay:
i agree with you, but when you ask “who among us”, i think that is the rarer impulse. more often you get the zeal of the newly converted. or you get people trying to hide their inability to conform completely by declaring the vices of others to be the greater threats, or just plain hypocrites.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Just to push this line of thought further –
There were two wings of the Democratic Party, Northern and Southern, long before the fights over civil rights. The Southern wing was the party of WASPs, the ruling ethnic order, Jim Crow and all that stuff.
But the Northern wing got a ton of its support from urban immigrants (and the machines that cultivated them), most of them Catholic or Jewish and many of them first-generation Americans. That wing of the party has been getting hammered with ethnic hatred, “Jew Deal” style, since well into the nineteenth century.
(If memory serves, they were largely in line with the Dixiecrats when it came to black people, at least until the 1940s or thenabouts. Didn’t stop them from taking crap from the WASP supremacists in the Republican Party, though).
kay
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
I would never, ever pass the ridiculous First Lady political background check. Not in a million years.
High school alone…. and I was not by myself during these exploits, so everyone else is lying :)
slag
@kay:
I don’t know. I still attribute it to profound tribalism. It’s not enough to dislike someone’s policies or even their person. You have to hate them, their friends, their family, and pretty much every person they ever met or possibly will meet. That’s why, against all evidence, Bill Ayers obviously wrote Obama’s memoirs. And why Obama has to denounce and reject Louis Farakkhan. Everyone becomes “those people” and must be vilified. Palling around with terrorists is serious business, after all.
Steve
@Brachiator:
What are you talking about? Is it “dangerous” that we have a White House Chief of Staff? Is it “dangerous” that the President has any number of unelected economic and policy advisors? Are we in danger of being ruled by a Valerie Jarrett shadow government?
MagicPanda
@Mnemosyne: You’re probably right about the levels of vitriol being different, but I attribute that to the times we live in. The news cycle is fast, and the economy is down.
Part of the disconnect for me is that I don’t really see much Obama-hatred from the left, but then again I don’t go to GOS much and never to FDL.
Based on poll numbers, it seems that the average democrat is still relatively happy with Obama. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/06/jobapproval-obama-dems_n_726312.html
(not sure how this compares to past presidents)
Cliff in NH
@Monala:
Here is the vid:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/343110/august-03-2010/laura-ingraham
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think Magic Panda’s right that quite a bit of it has to do with the fact that ordinary people are much worse off now than they were during the Clinton years. When you’re doing fairly well, the drumbeat that the Democrats are going to take your stuff and give it to Those People isn’t quite as effective as when you feel like you’re under siege. People understandably want things fixed Right Fucking Now.
I do think that that 40-year-long drumbeat from the right that Those People are taking your stuff is influencing some people on the left more than they think, though. Pam at Pam’s House Blend called it “color arousal,” which is basically taking the latent racism in our culture and getting people to react to it even if they’re not quite sure why. It’s unconscious racism, not conscious, which is why people get defensive when you point it out to them.
PurpleGirl
@Mike in NC: Geraldine Ferraro’s husband caught a lot of flack from all sides because of his real estate and other business dealings. It was broadly asserted that he was a mob figure.
Bill Murray
@Mnemosyne: You don’t think Clinton got lots of vitriol from the left? I mean it’s true there weren’t many votes to impeach from the democrats (although some pontificated about the Clenis on the Sunday morning shows)but Clinton received much vitriol from the left for his right wing policies. It is hard to say how much in comparison as the internet wasn’t prominent in aggregating to the masses back then, but every leftist person I knew had many bad words to say about Clinton.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
At this same point in his presidency? No, I really don’t think Clinton was getting the same vitriol two years into his first term. The level we’re getting now against Obama didn’t quite get there until Clinton’s second term when he starting doing crap like signing DOMA.
Brachiator
@Steve:
Why not read all my posts in this thread? I noted that one of Teddy Roosevelt’s most trusted advisors was his sister. But he did not appoint her to any official position. The Chief of Staff is an employee, who serves at the pleasure of the president. Obama could dump Valerie Jarret in a heartbeat.
But as much as I admire Hillary Clinton, it was a weird Romance Novel to put her formally in charge of any kind of policy. It’s hard for the president to fire his wife, and harder for any elected or appointed official to oppose her without angering the president.
And there are still unresolved issues over how much authority the First Dude had in Alaska.
Spouses and any other family member should butt out, especially on the national level. Hell, I am against First Ladies having any role in government. Hire a freaking Social Director. This issue will perhaps be resolved when we get a woman president. Now they will have to hire someone to hang with the wives (and husbands) while the leaders do their thing.
And I hope that we have a gay president in my lifetime. A married gay president. I’m looking forward to there being a First Companion.
Note that I recognize some of the collateral issues here. It would be hard for Michelle Obama to have continued her legal career. I’m sure that there would be all kinds of blather about conflicts of interest and influence peddling.
SiubhanDuinne
@nancydarling:
I played one in 3rd grade in 1950, Oak Park, IL before switching to voice. I can still play the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann” on a tonette.
Nellcote
@Monala:
It was totally infuriating that the NYT listed the book under nonfiction!
shano
@Southern Beale: any exposure to Corexit? that is one of the symptoms. get it checked out, asap.
redoubt
@Linda Featheringill: This is why I refer to Mark Kirk in Illinois as “Senator One-Termer.” Because Michelle Obama is going to stomp him stupid in 2016.
kideni
@Nutella: She was named after a home-perm product. Seriously. Her father owned a bunch of hair salons.
DFH no.6
No doubt I’m way too late to the game (again, dammit!), but I don’t know how many times I have to tell people like cleek and others here that yes, goddamn it, modern movement conservatives just reek with fucking racism.
I work with many entitled white Republican business types here in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s territory, along with many less-entitled white conservatives lower on the socio-economic ladder (construction field guys and the like) and they are – to the last fucking one of them – racist.
The shit they say is what Limbaugh so desperately wishes he could say on the air. They hate Mexicans, they hate Obama – who they would still hate, yes, if he was white since he’s a Democrat, but they hate him more because he’s black.
And they hate Michelle Obama, for the same reasons they hate her husband.
And cleek is so completely full of shit when he states:
In regards to
In Bizzaro World, maybe. But not in the real world. In the real world there is no analog on the Democratic side for “manufacturing things for the Base to be mad about” that the Republicans engage in. Not even fucking close.
The “both sides do it” false equivalency bullshit is just that – bullshit.
Jules
They hate her for being black while being the First Lady.
Svensker
@Nutella:
You are not alone.
Svensker
@Bender:
I would like to learn. Seriouisly. Why would someone have legimitate negative feelings toward Michele Obama?
Please explain.
dave
Count me in as rejecting the “racism is the sole cause” chorus. Hillary was a “lying, lesbo, communist, drug dealing murderer” according to these same people. I think Michelle Obama has received substantially less unhinged vitriol than Clinton. Can you imagine the cries of racism if they accused Michelle of being a drug runner?
As for the left, I think it is true that the far left has turned against Obama faster than they turned against Clinton. However, I think in both cases the reasons were policy-based. Obama happened quicker because liberals were expecting immediate pushback and reversal of various Bush era atrocities and instead those atrocities were either ignored or ratified by Obama. Clinton’s failures came a little later.
Speaking for myself, I am extremely disappointed in Obama in a way I wasn’t with Clinton simply because Obama’s failures have been on issues which I believe to be essential to the very existence of the Country (e.g. torture, assassination, indefinite detention, wikileaks, war, etc) while Clinton’s failures, while equally centrist in orientation (welfare reform, DOMA, healthcare)were simply not existential in the way that Obama’s are.
Brachiator
@dave:
I don’t think that anyone has said that racism is the sole cause.
And if you think that Mrs Obama has received substantially less unhinged vitriol than Clinton, you clearly have not read the vile stuff that continually pops up.
debbie
I couldn’t believe after hearing them rail against Michelle’s arms, I saw photos of both Ann Coulter and Laura Ingrahm going sleeveless. Even Madame Kasich bares her arms. Funny how it’s different when they do it.
For me, it is very clearly racism. Proof is that state GOP official from somewhere in the Midwest who felt comfortable enough to call her a gorilla.
No one of Importance
@dave:
Oh hey Dave, did ya get tired of trolling JoeMyGod with your Obama hate? No wonder your right-wing astroturfing arse is so ready to discount racism in blatantly racist behaviour – it goes against your narrative to admit that your own irrational attitudes are based on emotion not facts.
3…2…1 until one of the BJ manly men comes along to call me the real racist for pointing out that Dave is a troll and a dick and a racist apologist.
Mnemosyne
@dave:
You do realize that extraordinary rendition of our “enemies” started under Clinton, right? In the Clinton years, we were especially fond of sending people to Egypt to be tortured.
If you think that Obama is hugely worse on civil liberties than Clinton was, you weren’t paying attention during the Clinton years.
Darkrose
@Steve:
So is it lazy when black people’s instantaneous reaction is “it’s because they can’t stand a black president”? Because I can promise you that if I asked anyone in my family why the the right hates Obama, the answer–after they stopped laughing at me for asking a stupid question–would be along the lines of, “He’s black, and I just hope they don’t kill him.”
I honestly don’t understand the reluctance to admit that yes, in fact, a significant portion of the U.S. population is fucking racist. Or I do, I guess, because it you don’t see it every day, you don’t have to admit that it’s a problem; welcome to post-racial America.
Darkrose
@cleek: Sometimes isn’t always. But it isn’t never, or not any more either.
If it’s not racism, how do you explain the watermelon-on-the-White House-lawn photo, the various monkey references, the witch doctor photos, and the rise in hate-group activity since 2008?
Jado
Why doconservatives object to Michelle Obama promoting health and fitness, yet not object to the wives of two far-Right midwestern governors promoting health and fitness?Fixd