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• Wednesday, August 20, 2008 06:58 AM

  Taliesan, I referred to Mike Madden's article which, I think, should have been much more succinct

  If Michelle's thesis is available, I'll read it, with the understanding that what a person writes at 2l may not be what they'd have written at 4l. There's an article in today's London Times on the rise of young politicians in the UK:"Our fortyish pretenders to power look nearer to 30 because they belong to a fortunate generation. No wars, better food and medicine, more exercise, financially unstressed lives, a bit of country living - these are the folk who will live to be l00". Although you might argue about "no wars", it's only the career soldiers that are caught up in the killing fields now- ten French were killed in Afghanistan yesterday. Michelle Obama has accumulated a lot of life-experience since she wrote her thesis as Michelle Robinson about a quarter-of-a-century ago so any reasonable person would judge her by her opinions today, assuming she's not calcified in time.

  What George Walden has written in "The Times" about the new generation of aspiring leaders in the UK is equally true of the younger generation of American politicians who have not been tested by hardship or the draft. Michelle Robinson-Obama seems to have typically "bourgeois" values and whatever radicalism some have detected in her thesis is long gone. Life in America has been cushy for her so why should she hate the US?

  I still don't understand why Princeton tried to keep her thesis "sub rosa" and I don't know if any explanation has ever been forthcoming. This was a very gauche move on the part of a university and was bound to make journalists question the motives behind it. There was a dust-up about it before the thesis was released. That's the sequence of events, I believe.

  —maureenodonnell Read maureenodonnell's other letters
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