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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you PUMA harpies.
Although she has poise and two beautiful daughters, I found the whole exercise pointless and rather demeaning. Why is the wife making a speech? It was quite obvious that this was market-tested to reach church ladies from Iowa. I found it all so cloying. Is there anyone else out there who cringe when a couple (any couple) tries to too hard to convince the outside world that they are madly in love.
this speech made me throw up in my mouth. it was so self congratulatory and vapid. Obama's leaving a big law firm, Sidley Austin, to make 100,000K a year at a "public interest" job while Michelle was still raking in the big bucks is not much of a sacrifice, yet they keep milking that like we are frigging morons (i guess their supporters are- they eat this stuff up). She later left her big firm job to make 300,000K a year hugging children at a private hospital where they would turn away anyone without insurance. Whatever. The Obamas are total hypocrites. They were in a tax bracket back then that Obama now wants to tax the crap out of. Sitting there subjecting myself to Michelle's know it all preacher cadenced inanities made me want to gouge out my ears. And who let her brother speak? He was worse than awful.
Sadly all the slots for the private school and the Ivies were taken.
Hello:
I live in Wichita, Kansas. Last night after the convention broadcast, my 85-year-old (white) grandmother, who grew up in small-town Oklahoma during the Depression, called me to gush over Mrs. Obama's speech. She was impressed with everything from the content of the text to the speaker's easy eloquence -- not to mention the adorable Obama children.
My grandmother is not a racist, necessarily, but is a product of her times in that she still distrusts immigrants (thanks most recently to her TV boyfriend Lou Dobbs), and even though she has always been wonderful to my friends of different ethnic backgrounds and skin tones, she continues to cling to the notion that people of different colors shouldn't marry (because it's hard on the kids), as well as antiquated notions about how black people sure are athletic & good dancers, etc.
A couple months ago she told me she had misgivings about the Democratic Party (of which she is a lifelong member) running a black man and a woman as its leading presidential candidates. The people in her circle, mostly senior citizens, spent a lot of time discussing which would be most (or least) electable, and they feared the Dems were ready to hand over another election to the hated GOP.
But now, with the convention in swing, it's interesting to hear the optimism in my grandmother's voice over the phone. If Barack Obama can top his wife in his speech tomorrow night, I think a lot of old-timers will feel a lot more secure about the man himself and the party's chances for victory in November.
Here in the US, political campaigns are silly and staged soap operas, with wives, kids, puppies, mothers and grandchildren being paraded in an orgy of kitsch and cliches. A visitor from Mars would think that US voters have to vote for a vavorite spouse, child, grandma and puppie in addition to voting for the candidate him/herself. Within that idiotic kitchy context, Michelle Obama's speech was the classiest I've ever heard from a candidate's spouse. I wish spouses would never be paraded and exploited that way, after all we vote for a candidate, not his spouse or children, but as long as insist on this nonsense, I'll take Michelle Obama over that plastic barbie doll Cindy McCain any time..
I think its funny that someone who bemoans the attacks on Clinton, the sexist attacks, would resort to attacking Michelle on her appearance which is (ding, ding, ding) a sexist attack. And then you go on to say she is oppressing 3rd world woman, without any facts whether the alleged extensions are synthetic or real. (Synthetic hair has come a long way baby. I should know, I had braids for years. But you wouldn't know anything about those either, I'm guessing.)
I wasn't saying you were racist, I was just saying you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Sometimes you do, I will concede, but only a deluded fool beleives she is an authority on EVERYTHING.
I also don't think its seemly to comment on Biden's hair plugs. Which I never noticed, to be honest. I'm sick of people in this country being so focused on outward appearance...but wait, your Irish so aren't you supposed to be intrinsically better than us?
No wonder there's so much flooding this summer. I've been looking out the window and I think the ocean has begun to rise from the infusion of tears as a result of a political speech. I thought Barack Obama had promised his supporters that the waters of the oceans would subside if he's elected.
South Side women were well represented last night! I've never been prouder to be from the South Side of Chicago. Maybe Obama will alleviate the fear Northsiders have of it?
I'm glad Michelle Obama gave an effective speech last night. It's important. Whatever it takes to get the GOP out of the White House.
But... does anyone here find it increasingly outrageous that our political discourse has devolved to the point that it has to appeal to a handful of independents and undecideds in a few swing states? People so ignorant, and/or deluded, and/or heedless that only the simplest, most manipulative message can get through to them?
By sharply polarizing us, the GOP has set back the cause of a more sophisticated political dialog by at least a century. And they did it completely by design. There is no Hell low enough, and hot enough, for them.
But now we have to live in the country they have made, and I find it profoundly dispiriting that our political discourse has been reduced utterly to safe platitudes, manipulative bullshit, and completely mendacious character assassination
(except when it refers to the GOP...that's their greatest achievement, btw: calling them sleazy scumbags is only accurate, when they lie about their opponents they're able to project their own sleaze outward onto others. Goebbles couldn't have done it better..)
I think about Ben Franklin's famous comment daily "a republic, if you can keep it." Note that the question that provoked that reply was "which is it, Dr. Franklin, a *monarchy* or a republic?" It's clear enough what alternative Franklin had in mind when he made his reply. We're well down the road to perdition, politically, I wonder if Obama can, or will, stop the slide.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
