Obama: Michelle's political makeover
Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:45 AM by Mark Murray
The New York Times gets the first look at the Michelle Obama political makeover. From an interview, Michelle Obama addresses the rumor of the videotape that probably was discovered on the virtual grassy knoll. ‘You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,’ she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: ‘I mean, “whitey”? That’s something that George Jefferson would say. Anyone who says that doesn’t know me. They don’t know the life I’ve lived. They don’t know anything about me.’”
VIDEO: Courtney Hazlett reports on the unusual step of celebrity weekly Us magazine going political with a Barack and Michelle Obama cover.
So how did it get to this? "Barack Obama often blurs identity lines; much of his candidacy has seemed almost post-racial. Mrs. Obama’s identity is less mutable. She is a descendant of slaves and a product of Chicago’s historically black South Side. She burns hot where he banks cool, and that too can make her an inviting proxy for attack." More: "The caricatures of Mrs. Obama as the Angry Black Woman confound her, friends say. Her own family crosses racial boundaries — her mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are white — and she has spent much of her adult life trying to address racial resentment.”
“In her freshman year at Princeton, a white roommate’s mother agitated for her daughter to swap rooms. Mrs. Obama was among a handful of blacks at a prestigious Chicago law firm. As a hospital executive, she navigated the often tense line between a predominantly white-run institution and a suspicious black community. But the 44-year-old woman known even to friends as The Taskmaster sometimes speaks with a passion unusual for a potential first lady. She tells voters that ‘Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed.”
And then there is the college senior thesis, which has made the rounds on the blogs. "In her senior thesis, she asked: Does immersion in an elite white institution draw blacks away from their community? She surveyed black Princeton alumni, finding their ties weakened after graduation. ‘The path I have chosen to follow by attending Princeton,’ Mrs. Obama wrote in the introduction, ‘will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society, never becoming a full participant.’ Mitchell Duneier, a sociology professor at Princeton who reviews undergraduate theses, noted that Mrs. Obama rejected some of her own theories. ‘Her senior thesis is being misread as if it is a polemical essay about her alienation,’ Professor Duneier said."
Some interesting advice... “Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, a close ally of the Obama campaign, says Mrs. Obama must stop sounding like a lawyer trying to win an argument. The trick, she said, is “not pushing so hard to persuade people that Barack is the right one.’ ‘All she has to do is be likable,’ Mrs. McCaskill said.”
"All she has to do is be likable." That about sums it up for Michelle Obama.
CBN's David Brody has a sitdown with Obama in which he expresses disappointment that McCain hasn't spoken out enough on the attacks against Michelle.
The Boston Globe says Obama “has scheduled the inaugural meeting Wednesday of what he's calling his Senior Working Group on National Security. "It includes former members of Congress and high-ranking Clinton administration officials. Among them are three who advised Hillary Rodham Clinton and had served in her husband's Cabinet -- former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher and former Defense Secretary William Perry. Obama also was meeting Wednesday with nearly 40 retired admirals and generals to discuss the state of the military and the challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."
"Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton plan to meet with some of her top contributors next week in an effort to calm donors who remain frustrated with Obama's presidential campaign," the AP writes. "The meeting is set for June 26 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, several top Clinton fundraisers said Tuesday. The former first lady will introduce Obama to her financial backers."
