Thursday, March 06, 2008

Michelle Profile

Breaking out the America is Downright Mean profile of Michelle in the New Yorker:
In Wisconsin, I asked her if she was offended by Bill Clinton’s use of the phrase “fairy tale” to describe her husband’s characterization of his position on the Iraq War. At first, Obama responded with a curt “No.” But, after a few seconds, she affected a funny voice. “I want to rip his eyes out!” she said, clawing at the air with her fingernails. One of her advisers gave her a nervous look. “Kidding!” Obama said. “See, this is what gets me into trouble.”

Pundits have portrayed Obama as an oversharer and a taskmaster, demeaning her husband by acknowledging his morning breath and his body odor. But the domestic carping that commentators have taken as some sort of uncontrollable T.M.I. tic serves Obama’s husband well, and this may account for her frequent recitation of the mundane details of their housekeeping arrangements.
Mmm, I demur, oversharer. The reprise:

Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”

From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints.
How admirable:
Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to “finagle” to get into.
(Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.)
Yeah, never mind, the MSM gives her a pass. (Well, the reporter says her speech is an "unrelenting downer". This from a privileged woman.) And the Dem teachers' union is enforcing mediocrity and blocking school choice--it's all the fault of the charter schools. Talk about real critical thinking--not. She thinks she should get a handout. Like Barack, kind of self-absorbed:
When she talks about wanting “my girls to travel the world with pride” and the decline of America “over my lifetime,” you wonder why her default pronoun is singular if the message is meant to be concern for others and inclusiveness.
And I think Swift Kids for Truth need to do the pantsuit thing for Michelle--even tho she wears skirts. Barack had best mind his manners. No Lincoln bedroom stuff for this guy. Buy one, get one free, no matter which Dem gets the nomination nod.

Some background on the house/Rezko:
More troubling to the Obamas’ image of civic rectitude is their entanglement with a campaign contributor named Antoin (Tony) Rezko in a 2005 real-estate deal. (Rezko is now awaiting trial on corruption charges.) That year, as the Tribune reported, the Obamas moved to a $1.65-million Georgian Revival mansion in Hyde Park, which features a thousand-bottle wine cellar and bookcases made of Honduran mahogany. On the day they bought the house, Rita Rezko, Tony’s wife, purchased the adjacent lot, which was wooded and empty, for $625,000. After the deal went through, Michelle contacted the city’s landmarks commission, which she had served on, and received an e-mail from a deputy commissioner with suggestions for obtaining permits to erect a fence between the parcels. The Obamas paid for legal, architectural, and landscaping work, while Rezko got the bill for the fence’s construction, for fourteen thousand dollars. (Obama paid the proper fraction of the purchase price for a sliver of land that he bought from the Rezkos as a buffer.)
If you say so.

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