Paying Attention

Michelle Obama has taken a lot more abuse and disrespect than she or any woman deserves.  It started during the presidential campaign and intensified when as First Lady, she announced her campaign against childhood obesity.  Right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh mocked her for this, saying she herself is fat (with a large “posterior”).  Really?  Rush?  You’re calling someone fat?  OMG!! ROTFL. 

Make no mistake.  Michelle Robinson Obama is gorgeous.  She is a tall, strong, beautiful Black Woman.  She’s got it together in every possible way, and she is so much more… important… than her Lilliputian critics.

And how cool is it that we have a First Lady whose ancestors lived in the slave hut shown above, on the Friendfield Plantation in SC?  To me, this is wondrous and inspiring — an affirmation that the America I love can actually be the America it’s supposed to be despite itself.  For millions of others (most of whom watch FOX), it rankles.  Michelle’s family journey shatters the racial/historical myths that underlie their empty patriotism and religious faith.

All of this is why Michelle has taken such abuse. Strong African Americans of either gender must be careful not to appear “angry” or “uppity” to the white majority which gets to decide if a black person is acceptable.  (Another white privilege.) Some of President Obama’s black and/or liberal critics pay insufficient attention to the delicate line a very powerful black male must walk in this society, which is still embedded in its 400-year racist DNA.

But even women who are not black can sigh sadly at what Michelle is going through.  As The Nation magazine pointed out recently, men are respected when they marry smart and strong women, but when that smart and strong woman becomes First Lady, she’s expected to shut up and serve the cookies.  (Hillary learned this the hard way, remember?) 

Michelle knows all this.  With obesity, she chose a “woman’s issue,” and an issue only ideological lunatics like Sarah Palin could complain about on its merits.  But maybe Palin et al aren’t lunatics but tools of corporate interests — after all, the war on obesity is also a war on very powerful Junk Food Corporations, their multi-billion dollar profits and their campaign contributions. 

I’m not saying President Obama hasn’t been disappointing at times — he has.  But overall, Barack and Michelle Obama have been showing progressives how to make change in a profoundly conservative country and a structurally reactionary political system… but you need to have eyes to see and ears to hear to get it.