Michelle Obama Gets a Taste of Being Hillary-d

The UK Telegraph recently put forth a rather ridiculous article Was ‘Lady Macbeth’ behind Barack Obama’s snub of Gordon Brown? postulating that “gift gate,” wherein the President disrespected British PM Gordon Brown with his less than thoughtful present of 25 DVDs, was somehow Michelle’s fault. Nonsense.

For the record, let me state I will not forgive Michelle Obama for her comments about Hillary during the primary. When asked if she would support Hillary Clinton were she to be the nominee, Michelle said “she’d have to think about it – it would “depend on her policies, her approach, her tone.” Her tone?! Mrs. Obama’s notorious statement that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country was, at the very least, ill-conceived. Finally, her diss to Hillary, the “if you can’t take care of your own house…” statement was likewise shortsighted.

However, it seems Mrs. Obama’s husband is having a little trouble taking care of his own house at the moment…Perhaps the first lady is learning these kinds of thoughts would be better kept to oneself. But this brings me to my point…

No matter how I may feel about Michelle Obama’s past statements or actions, she is not the President and cannot be used as a shield, a distraction or a whipping post for his faulty actions. By that very logic, if she is that all-powerful, she should have run for President, not he.

And if this woman is that strong, obviously, Hillary Clinton, with her experience and incredible smarts must be even stronger. Why is she not president today? Possibly because women are still subjected to this same idiotic double standard and a ‘blame game’ that defies all reason.

The UK article refers to Mrs. Obama’s 1985 Princeton thesis, “Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” guarded from publication prior to the election, in which she stated:

“I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”

Mr. Delingpole’s theory is that this separate attitude is to blame for her wish for revenge over past British hegemony, and thus, she instructed her husband to deliver a slight to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, although he cites no evidence to that effect. Delingpole states:

At the moment in Britain, we’re still in the “Doesn’t she look fabulous in a designer frock” stage of understanding of Michelle Obama. Gradually, though, we’ll begin to realise that she is every bit the terrifying executive’s wife that Hillary Clinton was. Or, shudder, Cherie Blair.

We may just LURVE Michelle’s fashion sense. But Michelle doesn’t reciprocate our affection, one bit. Her broad-brush view of history associates Brits with the wicked white global hegemony responsible for the slave trade. Never mind that a white, Tory Englishman – William Wilberforce – brought the slave trade to an end. Judging by her record, Michelle does not make room for such subtle nuance.

The article refers to Michelle Obama as Lady Macbeth – the same disrespectful, evil name they coined to describe Hillary Clinton years before. By labeling Michelle Obama with the moniker of the overly-ambitious, evil wife, this article is intimating the Barack Obama is not capable of thinking for himself. So the beat goes on. Blame the wife. Blame the woman. It must be her fault. She is pulling the strings and telling her “weak husband” what to do.

But what does her 1985 thesis have to do with President Obama claiming he is overwhelmed and tired a mere seven weeks after taking office? Or that he cannot be bothered to find a more thoughtful gift than a boxed set of DVDs (in the wrong format) for a man who is going blind? For that matter, what would any of her actions have to do with the fact that Obama made a tax cheat Treasury Secretary, or any of his other missteps?

This is merely a milder version of the same sexist claptrap that Hillary has been subjected to for years. While I am not comparing these two ladies, it is a pattern that must be discussed. Frankly, I am sick and damned tired of this ‘blame the woman’ meme that is so popular here. The British obviously seem to suffer from a good dose of this nonsense as well.

This is not unlike our (awful) Chris Matthews and their (awful) Chris Hitchens, who, when the stink about Rev. Wright was discovered, tried to say that it was due to “Michelle’s influence” that President Obama sat in that church for 20 years.

I will repeat now what I wrote then – If the 47 year old (then) frontrunner for the Dem. nomination, millionaire, successful author, Senator, husband and father of two cannot figure out how to pick up his round behind out of a place he does not belong, regardless of what his wife is doing, then he had no business running to be President.

Whatever Michelle Obama’s thesis said in 1985, she is not the President of the United States. If President Obama cannot figure out the proper protocol or be classy or politically savvy enough to have a team help to figure it out for him, I am not going to blame her for that. He is to blame first and foremost. Surely there is a White House Social Secretary. There are people in charge of protocol instructing the President and First Lady as to the proper treatment of foreign dignitaries. They know better than to get last minute trinkets at the White House gift shop. Yes, Michelle should have known better, too – this was callous and thoughtless in my view. But the bigger responsibility must rest with the President. The buck stops with him – the man with his feet up behind the desk.

Barack Obama does not get a pass on any of his errors in judgment on account of his wife. And if this was a deliberate political slight to the PM, it is coming from Obama and his administration – he must take responsibility for it and bear the consequences, should there be any. And if it was mere carelessness or thoughtlessness, he may pay the price for that, too, down the line.

Again, I am not making a case for the first lady. I am simply pointing out that it is a very familiar pattern to say “oh, he seems nice, but that wife of his!!”

Speaking as a woman with a strong personality, I know all too well what it is like for a husband with an easygoing manner to be the guy doing all the glad handing, while refusing to be the disciplinarian, so guess what – that role falls to the wife by default. She winds up looking like the harridan by comparison. This is all, conscious or unconscious, image management on the part of the man and the woman gets stuck with the dirty work.

Clichéd as it is, how many times have you been at some function over the years and heard a husband describe his wife as “the old ball and chain” or some modern version of the same. It is another nail in the coffin of marital respect. Many men, even those who love their wives dearly, love to play this game. Oh “she’s got me whipped,” I just say “yes, dear.” More poppycock. Little boys trying to make their wives “mommy.” It is a bad habit and just as bad for the wife to engage in it by making their husbands the Peter Pans in the equation. And many do.

We all laugh it off but I wonder, if, at its heart, there is something more dangerous going on here – a need for the man to make less of his need for the woman by somehow dissing her.

Almost a year ago, when the writing was on the wall that the DNC was going to award the nomination to Obama no matter what, I predicted that if they did make it to the White House, the day would come when the press honeymoon would end, and Michelle, outspoken personality that she is, would finally see what it is like to be on the receiving end of some of the treatment Hillary knows all too well. Even if she receives one tenth of that foul treatment, Michelle Obama may yet rue the day she made her earlier statements. Mrs. Obama may yet understand what it means to take care of her own house – ‘cause right now it’s not looking so good.

Some I know who did not vote for Obama, Democrats all, by the way, find her even more hateful than him and miss no opportunity to tell me so. I find his egregious flip-flops, behavior and statements far worse, however. As much as I was avoiding the drooling media covering their every step, I made it my business to watch the Inauguration, their Sixty Minutes interview post-election, and also Mrs. Obama appearing before women in the military to coincide with Women’s History Month. On those occasions, I observed someone self-conscious, uncomfortable in her own person, awkward in the new role she has been given, working very hard to belong. This might be true of anyone in her position. In that Sixty Minutes interview, she was constantly casting sidewise glances at her husband, always checking him, seemingly worried he was going to make a mistake. I can see why. We will see what kind of First Lady she turns out to be – and no, I don’t much care whether or not she goes sleeveless.

But I do care that the President of the United States professed to be not only “ready on day one” but “right on day one” – apparently he is neither ready nor right.

While I may have reason to protest her behavior on certain fronts, I will always be aware to credit or blame her with what is hers, and not pretend that she wields all the power here.

If Michelle Obama winds up on the receiving end of sexist abuse, I wonder if she’ll speak our against the self-same behavior used against both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, being that she was so complicit in it, by virtue of her silence. How many other women out there were complicit in allowing Hillary, the stronger candidate, to be excoriated, yet said nothing in the face of this endless misogyinist assault?

Mr. Delingpole would not be the first person to try to project all the negative traits of the male onto the female. Perhaps the reason he and other sexists like him choose to blame Michelle Obama, and, to a greater degree, Hillary Clinton before her, is more out of fear of a powerful woman than anything else.

This irrational fear or envy, in part, explains why we do not have a woman president as we speak.