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• Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:50 AM

  I went to bed last night after commenting on this article with very mixed feelings.

  But I woke up enlightened. Why on earth is there an article at Salon about the future first lady's BUTT?

  The election played out with comparisons to Barack Obama as another Jack Kennedy. I was uncomfortable with this. There were comparisons of Ms. Obama's fashion choices to those of Jackie Kennedy. I was uncomfortable with this. Why? Wasn't black good enough? Why did the "curse" of blackness have to be removed from the Obamas by comparing them to white people? Moreover, having read Shelby Steele's book in which he said Obama could not win because he was neither white nor black enough and having read Obama's own first memoir, I was quite aware of the role that race was playing in the election.

  We debated race over and over here at Salon. Now, thanks to Erin Aubry Kaplan, this whole issue has been reduced to Michelle Obama's BUTT. Congratulations, Salon. You have cheapened the race debate.

  Then I thought about all the discussions on Broadsheet about the objectification of women's bodies. Often, I have felt that Broadsheet writers approved of the objectification of women's bodies since it give them something to write about that will get plenty of page hits. I thought of Kamiya's disgusting reduction of Sarah Palin as a dominatrix, complete with a "photo" of he in bustier with whip. Just charming. But she is a Republican -- so we gave it a pass, didn't we Salon? Over and over, men in threads had made fun of Hillary Clinton's ass, ankles, and tears -- but that wasn't sexist if you supported Obama. Now we get Michelle's BUTT. Congratulations, Salon, you have reduced her to a body part.

  I never know whether Salon's articles are written by black or white people unless they have an video to accompany them. I don't really care. However, many black letter writers seemed to be aware of this. They called for more black writers. Congratulations, Salon, you have given them Erin Aubry Kaplan and her confessional writing about Michelle's BUTT.

  In my entire life, I have never had a conversation with anyone about black women's butts. Not once. However, this morning I went to the grocery store and standing in line in front of me was a slender black woman. I found myself looking at her BUTT and noticed that she really didn't have one. Unbidden to my mind came the thought, "Poor thing. She just has no BUTT at all.

  Congratulations, Salon. You now have me critically assessing and and treating as a body part another women whom I don't know at all based upon the fact that she is a black women without a round butt.

  Shall we replace one tyrannical standard with another?

  I think I would have to visit a porn site to find one that objectifies women's bodies more than is done at Salon. Amazingly, in this particular article, Salon has managed to do this while lowering both standards of taste and good writing.

  Congratulations, Salon.

  —AKA Smith Read AKA Smith's other letters
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