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That's Michelle Obama's dilemma (and Barack's too). Her speech last night was very well-written and exceedingly well-delivered. It was heartfelt and warm and genuine and hit all the right emotional notes with vigor but without jumping the shark into mawkishness. She wasn't speaking as a candidate and her role wan't to trot out a bunch of policy specifics--it was rather a "getting to know you" session with the American people, especially independents and undecided voters, a biographical sketch of the Obamas as a family, an outline of what motivates them to WANT to move into the White House, an effort to make them more familiar and friendly and less intimidating and suspicious and different, and an effort to defuse past criticisms and smears (i.e. she's unpatriotic, reverse racist, etc.) I think she did a masterful job on all counts. It was truly a memorable and moving speech.
Of course it was political theater--ALL politics is theater of one sort or another. And so what if it was very polished and rehearsed. It was a SPEECH, not extemporaneous remarks. Good speeches are supposed to be rehearsed, unless my speech teacher in high school was just lying to all of us. If one cares to see what a careless, sloppy, poorly-written and even more poorly-delivered speech by a frazzled speaker might look like, one only had to watch Nancy Pelosi's cringe-inducing and soporific address earlier the same evening. Ms Pelosi may have attained the high office of Speaker of the House through her many political talents and skills, but an exceptional rhetorical ability is definitely not among them (nor, if the past two years are any indication, is a strong backbone.)
All that aside, and ignoring the expected Republican sniping at her speech last night, I'm still struck by how many Democrats and progressives have made snide, dismissive remarks about it. Traister and AKA Smith think she dumbed herself down to become a 1950s housewife. One person told me she came across as too self-possessed and rehearsed. One said she was too sentimental and syrupy and wondered where were all the lacerating attacks on McCain and the Republicans. Another said she was too vague and general. Another said we already knew too much about their family and didn't need to know more. Another said she was arrogant and narcissistic. Someone else said she was untrustworthy (without being able to cite any specifics as to why she felt that way.)
I'm surprised that no one called her "uppity" and invited her to the back of the bus.
Needless to say, had she been less warm and touchy-feely, spent less time introducing her family history, been less inspirational and hopeful and more critical, and gone after the Republicans with both barrels blazing, she'd have been raked over the coals for all that too.
This country makes many unrealistic expectations of its politicians, but for all politicians who aren't white male heterosexual Christians and Jews, the demands are outrageous. We want perfection from them, as WE define it, and the definition keeps morphing so that we can guarantee that they'll always fall short. A certain segment of white America just does not want to accept blacks or other minorities in roles like this, no matter how smart, talented, accomplished, friendly, or inspiring they might be.
Gays have a saying of disgust and resignation that's used when it feels like straight America, even many people who are nominally supportive of gay rights and equality, turn on them (for instance, over the issue of same-sex marriage and parenting): "There are two types of straight people in the world: The straight people who hate you to your face, and the straight people who hate you behind your back." Gays know full well that many straights who purport to be their allies would throw them under the bus with little hesitation if they felt they had to in order to preserve their own social superiority and prerogatives. Blacks could use the exact same saying but merely swap "white" for "straight" and it would be equally valid.
This also reminds me of the scene in Mississippi Burning when Gene Hackman's character is telling Willem Dafoe about when he was a boy, and the black farmer neighbor had a better mule than his own daddy had, and his daddy resented it, and one day the black farmer's mule turned up dead. He suspected his father of killing it and asked him about it, and his daddy's reply was, "Son, if you ain't any better than a n*gger, who are you better than?"
Such attitudes, while seldom expressed so crudely anymore, are still rife in America, and have been painfully evident in the coverage of and attitudes about the Obama campaign from its very beginning. Racism is as American as apple pie, and is frequently lurking beneath the surface even when not openly displayed. I don't see it in all criticisms of the Obamas, by any means, but I see it in enough to make me nauseated.
If the Obamas were white and Michelle had given the same speech last night, the letters here and the commentary elsewhere would be almost unanimous in their lavish praise. Don't even bother to pretend otherwise.
