Michelle Obama’s Hostility [Update: New Michelle Obama Video]

Once again Obama’s supporters and surrogates are colluding with neoconservative men, namely Bob Novak, the man who exposed Valerie Plame’s identity. I quote:

Close-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama.

The Democratic front-runner’s wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party’s nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility.

Michelle Obama has not already revealed her hostility? Where do we begin with this statement: with the video of Michelle Obama “returning to her south side roots” as she denigrates Hillary Clinton for her husband’s improprieties before an African-American audience;

with her unwillingness to uphold Party unity on February 4, 2008, in the wake of the coordinated and unfounded race baiting in which she and her husband engaged when they willfully distorted President Bill Clinton’s statements at the Trumpet Awards on January 13, 2008 and on the campaign trail in South Carolina on January 23, 2008;

with her avowal of a desire to “rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” while campaigning in South Carolina; with the complete and utter disdain she expressed twice in one day for the country that has offered her and her husband so much;

with her hostility toward those who are wealthy, who she believes should “give [her] something here;” with her unrestrained animus for Americans, who she refers to as “cynics, sloths and complacents;” or with her failed attempt to mock Hillary Clinton before college students at the elite Haverford College after her husband insulted blue collar workers who tote guns and practice religion in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Montana, South Dakota, Oregon and West Virginia? Where does one begin with Michelle Obama? Where does one begin to analyze this woman’s hostility?

I ask these questions, for one can only assume Michelle Obama is profoundly disturbed. Some would say she loathes herself. Indeed, her inability to contain her rage has been a liability to the Obama campaign, or at least this is what some political commentators postulate. Perhaps this explains the new feminine role in which Axelrod has attempted to cast Michelle. I quote an article on a speech Michelle Obama delivered at a fundraiser for Rep. Jan Schakowsky at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, on May 10, 2008:

Obama suggested that if she were to become first lady, she would take on women’s and family issues, prompted by the stories she has been hearing from females on the campaign trail.

“And if I have the honor of becoming the next first lady, I want to continue these conversations like the ones I’ve had with these incredible women across the country. I want to ensure that their voices don’t get drowned out ever again in Washington.”

Michelle, according to the script penned by Alexrod, will now be the caring, nurturing, feminine First Lady who will champion the issues of women and children. No longer will she be the race baiter she has been in North Carolina and in other states with large African-American populations, and no longer will she issue derisive comments about women whose husbands may be unfaithful; Michelle, now tamed by her male handlers, will be a woman relegated to the margins, to the realm of domesticity. Women, I guess, will not be liberated in the twenty-first century.

But how will Michelle become a paragon of domesticity? How is a woman who exhorted working class women in Zanesville, Ohio, to relinquish opportunities to earn large incomes in the name of working in the “helping industry” possibly prepared to address the rights of women and children? How is a woman who believes working class women of Zanesville, Ohio, can afford to spend $10,000 on piano lessons, ballet lessons and summer camp aware of their plight? How is a woman whose home was financed by a questionable deal involving indicted political fixer named Antoin “Tony” Rezko receptive to the concerns of single and married women who cannot afford to pay their subprime mortgages?

How is a woman whose Rezko mansion is maintained by a housekeeper and a landscaper sensitive to the time constraints of working women? How is a woman whose only legal experience is corporate law aware of the impediments women and children must surmount in order to attain equal and fair representation before the law? How will David Axelrod manage to transform a mound of excrement into a bag of gold?

None of this will matter, for Axelrod has a history of turning political figures into that which they are not. And in the case of Michelle Obama, he necessarily has to cast her as a champion of women, for white women have abandoned the Obamas in droves. I imagine the racially charged speech Michelle Obama delivered at the Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 5, 2008, did not endear her or her husband to white women. I quote:

But Mrs. Obama, the star attraction, is taking no chances. Walking onstage to chants of “Yes, we can!” and “Fired up — ready to go!” she quickly gets to the heart of her message: There are forces out there who are trying to take away everything Barack has worked for. They — she doesn’t mention anyone in particular but does refer to one “brand name politician” — are trying to win this election for themselves and thereby deny Obama the opportunity to move America to the mountaintop of hope. And they must be stopped.

“We’ve learned that we’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right?” she tells the crowd.

“That’s right.”

“They tell you all you need to do is do these things and you’ll get to the bar — ”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you go about the business of doing those things — ”

“Yes — ”

Her husband has been doing just that, Obama explains — raising money, building an organization, winning caucuses, winning primaries, and amassing a large number of delegates. And yet he still hasn’t won, because nothing is ever enough for those unnamed adversaries.

“You start working hard and sacrificing, and you think you’re getting closer to the bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, you get right to that bar, you’re reaching out for the bar, and then what happens?”

“They raise the bar!”

“They raise the bar. Raise the bar. Shift it to the side. Keep it just out of reach.”

“Yes!”

“And that’s just what’s been happening in this race.”…

Even Michelle Obama herself. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she tells the crowd. “I am a statistical oddity. As a black girl raised on the south side of Chicago, I’m not supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to go to Princeton. They said my test scores were too high” — surely a verbal slip, because in the past she has said she was told her test scores were too low — “I wasn’t supposed to go to Harvard Law School, because they said it might be a little too hard for me. And I certainly am not supposed to be standing here with a chance to become the next first lady of the United States of America.”

But here she is, in just that position — only to find that they, as always, are trying to raise the bar a little higher, just out of her and her husband’s reach. Still, she asks the crowd “to close your eyes and do some dreaming…to dream of the day that a man like Barack Obama is standing in front of the Capitol with his hand on the Bible.” With that, the audience erupts into shouting and applause. They’re fired up and ready to go, and all those who love the Lord and will vote for Obama say “Amen.”

According to Michelle Obama, a Caucasian woman named Hillary Clinton, a woman for whom she has an immense amount of hostility, is the “brand name politician” who is responsible for “raising the bar” on her and her ostensible African-American husband. A Caucasian woman, in other words, has made it impossible for her and her putative African-American husband to seize the reins of power. Caucasian women are the enemies of African-Americans, and they must be stopped. Women who believe in self-determination, even or especially those who are African-American, are somehow responsible for the oppression of African-American males. No wonder why a staggering number of African-Americans in North Carolina voted against their economic interests and cast their ballets for Barack Obama: Michelle’s hostility toward women is contagious.

And no wonder why Axelrod attempted to recast Michelle Obama five days later into an exemplar of domesticity during a fundraiser for a female politician who happens to be Caucasian. Now that Michelle believes she has thoroughly destroyed the only chance a woman may have to become President of the United States during many of our lifetimes, she must now try to rise from the ashes left in the wake of her incendiary race baiting and misogynistic rhetoric as the phoenix of women’s rights. No wonder why she is hostile toward Hillary Clinton: in order to become Hillary, she must destroy Hillary. But Hillary, our true feminist mother, will never be destroyed. And Michelle, a woman who exploits misogyny for electoral gain, will never approximate Hillary.

Happy Mothers’ Day, Hillary. And Happy Mothers’ Day to all those who respect their mothers.

I dedicate this essay to all the mothers whose sons and daughters, both literal and metaphorical, never learned to respect them. Let us hope they finally will on Mothers’ Day 2008.

[UPDATE]: Watch this video on Michelle Obama compiled by Fox News. Michelle is a liability for Democrats in the general election. Do Democrats seriously believe ordinary Americans will respect this woman?