If you do that, you'll understand that Michelle Obama's butt is a metaphor.

YOU, SIR, ARE AN IGNORAMUS AMONG IGNORAMUSES.

BAD MONKEY! BAD MONKEY! BAD MONKEY!

Great apes are far superior to mere monkeys.

You have a tail, great apes don't want your kind around.

SHOO! SHOO! SHOO!

Fensterbilt, are you serious? YOUR butt is a metaphor. Mine is a simile. My nostrils are synecdoche and my liver is an analogy.

What the heck are you talking about? Leave Mrs. Obama alone. She is a brilliant, strong, talented woman and a person in her own right. Her body parts aren't "metaphors".

Talk about her accomplishments or perhaps how her being the first African-American first lady is a symbolic or meaningful event. Stay off the personhood of the first family.

Read the article in full, then comment

If you do that, you'll understand that Michelle Obama's butt is a metaphor.

Do you mean this part?

But now the game is over. The jig is up. Time for us all to let the hair down and let the booty hang out, to put our hands in the air like we just don't care.

Or this?

Michelle started the official coming out with that blazing black-and-red Narciso Rodriguez dress she wore on Election Night, complete with dangly silver hoops that gladdened the hearts of sisters everywhere. She was hiding nothing, and this time she wasn't gritting her teeth about it. She was smiling.

And it was bootiful.

As Salon sinks further and further into tabloid inanity, what's even funnier is that a certain amount of letter writers always jump to try to defend its honor.

The fact that many of the letter writers here complaining are African American women should give Salon a clue. Wait, Salon, clue.... nah.

Dear Everyone.

Joan wrote "I have loved Erin Aubry Kaplan's writing since before I joined Salon, and I'm proud of this piece. If having a black president and first lady is going to narrow what we talk about, wow, that would be sad. But I promise it won't -- at least not on Salon."

Some points:

1. Yes....I noticed how Joan is immediately presenting herself as some sort of Defender-of-Free-Speech...... as though anyone-who-had-a-problem-with-this-piece is a racist (i.e., "black people are in the room, so we can't TALK about that?"...). that wasn't in THE LEAST what anyone had written...

2. It's interesting....would you giddily publish an article

by a white woman on Hilary Clinton's ass? I think not.

3. More to the point....the article is just poorly written, utterly unimaginative, disingenuously "in-your-face!" (shades of "Broadsheet" grrrrl-power!), shoddily edited, and laden with just about every easily-available cliche ("shout from the rooftops", etc...start counting from the first paragraph)....

and (4)?......isn't Salon supposed to be a publication for adults?

Kaplan's article reads like a weekly-journal entry from a sophomore in college....and don't tell me there aren't PLENTY of very smart, equally funny, and good, black, female writers out there.

Sitting here in durham NC, I can without hesitation come up with the names of at least four.....surely, with your resources, you could come up with something better than Angry Dickerson and Inept Kaplan?

all of this is fairly dispiriting, particulary given your regularly-voiced declaration that you have ALWAYS been a fierce combatant regarding "civil rights", etc....blah-blah

My point would be that, when it comes to choosing black-female-"voices" for your publication, you increasingly seem to have a "concept" which is just about as hidebound as that of a 1930's MGM casting-director.

"All-Riled-up!" and/or "Sassy!" seem to be the operative modes Salon publishes, when it comes to prominently featuring articles by black female authors.

Oh well....

David terry

Honestly though, which American woman in the news, doesn't get reviewed this way? We need to change the way society (and I mean women too, not just men) thinks about women. Salon would reflect that back to us. What this article is showing us is how the world is. Joan certainly get's enough feedback on her looks, and most recently there was Palin and before her Clinton- that's probably why the editors thought this was appropriate. It's been appropriate to comment this way about all other women, so why not Michelle Obama?

Freddy Mercury once sang: "Fat bottom girls make the rockin' world go round".

I am not one to argue with the late, great Freddy Mercury, OK?

I am mortified and ashamed for that. Please accept my humble and sincere apologies.

Articles like this are offensive. I am a black woman from a family of black woman and not one woman in my family has an ass to speak of. Why should we embrace any sterotype though? This is another way of dividing ourselves. Why can't we just be happy that there is a new difeerent looking family in the office without pretending that black people are unified by body type.

and i am a black woman! First of all, my girlfriend mary, who is irish-american, has a very similar body to michelle's. what i find more profound about michelle's first lady looks is her brown-ness, given that so often successful black men in the public eye choose lighter-skinned or white women as mates. here's a thoughtful take i found on another blog.

http://tallulahbankhead.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/isnt-she-lovely/

Salon is funnier and more outrageous than The Onion has been in a long time.

I do not think that it is intentional.

Except for that clown Keillor, he has always been known as a put on and clown.

I'm considering your point, but wondering if Salon ever devoted so much copy to one of Hillary's or Sarah's no-touch zones. Ms. Kaplan wrote an essay that's been given top billing about a sexual sector of Ms. Obama's body. Is there an equivalent at Salon for Hillary or Sarah?

Ms. Kaplan has issues with her rump. Many women do. However, many women don't attempt to rectify their rump issues through Salon and its readership.

This essay reminds me of Ms. Clark-Flory's writing, when she sought Salon's readership to absolve her of burning jet fuel to see her boyfriend and to applaud her for her many, varied boyfriends.

What were we expected to say to Ms. Kaplan?

How about this: "Yay, Ms. Kaplan! Ms. Obama's booty is like your booty! Ain't it cool?"

I want Ms. Kaplan to go and sin no more, but I expect we'll be seeing an essay from Ms. Kaplan about Beyonce's booty far too soon.