- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I'm not sure what has been said w/regard to Michelle Obama lately, they have been on vacation and before that, since really before the New Yorker cover, the campaign has had her keep a much, much lower profile, and the focus of media and Republican comments has shifted directly to Barak Obama. It may not be a good thing over all for future Democratic political spouses if they feel they are forced to lower her profile but I don't think that's what is being referred to here.
If the poster is still concerned about why more people didn't 'speak up' earlier, I can only repeat something I posted on this topic in June:
"The problem is that we are discussing it in the context of people in positions of power, not necessarily the everyday stuff that you and I worry about. That also involves power, but, generally, not national political power. So, we have a limited set of people to actually choose from to discuss and the one who has been through it most recently is Senator Clinton, but, she's not supposed to be discussed because it opens up a can of worms with people who, well, want her to go away and never come back as a topic of conversation, at least.
We can, as other people have noted, expand this to a discussion of Presidential spouses or nominees spouses. The problem I find with this is that when you start discussing it several things happen. First, you get the comparisons, quite genuine, to prior spouses of nominees and Presidents. The problem is that one is Senator Clinton. There is then screaming that it's still all about Hillary. However, this is a very fair comparison to make, many of us who sat through this in 1992 and 1996 recall it all. We also recall 2004 and Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Also, you may not recall this but some us tried to sound a warning during the primaries that it would get ugly - in terms of sexism - for Michelle Obama in the general and used not only Senator Clinton's experience but that of Teresa Heinz Kerry as examples. We were either told (and I love this) that there were no words that were really sexist anymore (mostly from the younger posters, who use many terms that would be regarded as sexist to refer to men) or that Senator Clinton and THK deserved it (they were referring to Senator Clinton back in 1992 and 1996, not now, but that shouldn't matter) so it didn't count. I am truly sad that my prediction came true regarding Michelle Obama and what was waiting but I got tired of the insanity. I think many, but not all on both sides are fairly guilty of not giving a sh*t until it happened to someone they identified with."
