"Michelle Obama's candor cuts 2 ways"
"by Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | February 21, 2008
PROVIDENCE - In a gilded ballroom of the Biltmore hotel, Michelle Obama leaned on the podium over a microphone a bit too short for her, telling how voters this primary season have turned out in record numbers, often waiting in the frigid cold to vote, to support her husband's unlikely candidacy in states as divergent as Idaho and South Carolina.
She told the audience, which will vote in the Rhode Island primary on March 4:
"So let me tell you something - I am proud. I'm proud of this country, and I'm proud of the fact that people are ready to roll up their sleeves and do something phenomenal. . . . I know I wouldn't be here standing here - Barack and I, our stories wouldn't be possible - if it weren't for our fundamental belief and pride in this country and what it stands for."
I'm not.
I can't be proud of mass-murder and torture based upon unholy lies!
Few in the room missed her point. Barack Obama's famously blunt-spoken wife was trying to explain what she meant the other day when she said that for the "first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." The comment provoked furious criticism among conservative radio hosts and bloggers, who deemed it flagrantly unpatriotic; lengthy clarifications from the Obama campaign; even a retort from Cindy McCain, the wife of the likely Republican nominee.
Oh, poor, poor Cindy!!
Did you know John was fucking around on you?
He likes the blondies, huh?
As for defending the myth of AmeriKa, I'm never going to do that.
We should be ASHAMED, not proud!
And in a race in which the Harvard-educated lawyer and mother of two has received mostly positive press as a charismatic figure on the campaign trail, the controversy also highlighted the flip side to her dynamic personality: Michelle Obama says what she thinks, sometimes without editing herself first.
Unlike AmeriKa's MSM newspapers, which always SELF-CENSOR THEMSELVES before they go to print!
It is a trait that her fans find admirable and refreshing and that they say helps ground her husband's high-flying rhetoric. But in a national campaign with an endless news cycle, it can also do serious damage, particularly, if Obama is the nominee, during a general election, when the conservative media will have a more powerful influence on her husband's fate.
As opposed to the weak and non-influential liberal shit sheets like the Boston Globe, right?
At least they admit they are impotent, I guess.
Host Rush Limbaugh raged this week on his radio show:
"Did she not feel proud about the Berlin Wall coming down? Has she not felt proud about the way we came together after 9/11? This goes to the root, I think, of some of the things we discuss here frequently, and that is people taking this country for granted."
How come the hot fart mist gas bag Rush gets a mention?
As for the 9/11 thing, fuck that INSIDE JOB GARBAGE of "coming together (Sig Heil)!!!"
The controversy the flap caused worried Vicki Veh, one of the roughly 125 women in yesterday's audience:
"[Obama's other traits]- "her strength of character, her deep experience at overcoming adversity, her solid educational background, her professional experience, her experience as a mother, as a minority" - [far outweigh her occasional slips]. I mean, I want her as my first lady!"
Obama, a close adviser to her husband, has campaigned relentlessly on her own and by his side. Eloquent, funny, and sometimes caustic, she also speaks a bit more directly about the role of race in the campaign. Yesterday several African-American women in the audience said they understood what Obama meant about being proud of her country.
Cheryl Burrell, program administrator for the Rhode Island Office of Human Resources, Outreach, and Diversity:
"As people of color, our experience is quite different than the majority, and we've always been treated as the stepchild of this nation, and until we become embraced - and I think that was really what she was speaking to - until we become embraced for who we are . . . we will continue to be left out of the mainstream and all the advantages that come with that."
On the stump yesterday, Obama sounded as if she might be speaking obliquely about race when she said that the bar was constantly being moved higher for her husband's campaign.
When he raised a lot of money, she said, fund-raising suddenly did not matter as much; organization did. Iowa was all-important, so they campaigned there relentlessly.
As a Ron Paul voter, I know the feeling!
She said, to laughter: "I know Iowa like I know my kitchen, but after he won that state, it was no longer as important as New Hampshire. South Carolina mattered until her husband won it by a landslide. But that didn't count because he was supposed to win South Carolina."
Then she quickly moved to connect her husband's political experience to the wider plight of the middle class:
"The irony of it is, that's what's been happening to Americans for a long time. [Too many people are] chasing a moving bar [in a society where healthcare is unaffordable, good schools are not a priority, college entails getting into massive debt, and saving for retirement can be impossible]."
And how does the WAR factor into all this?
Notice how the WAR has DISAPPEARED as a campaign issue, readers?
She seemed to be addressing one of the most important challenges now confronting her husband as he seeks to close in on the nomination - to connect with working-class voters who, until recently, have been more drawn to Hillary Clinton.
She tried to connect to the audience by describing how her father raised his children on a working-class salary - a dream now out of reach for most families, who need two incomes to get by, she said - and how she and her husband paid off their educations only three years ago, thanks to her husband's two best-selling books:
"It wasn't a fine financial plan; we were lucky."
Overworked and fearful of the future, she said, many in the country have lost hope, and that, she said, is something her husband wants to change.
She said her husband would not only "be ready on day one" to be president, but would be able to win the election without deserting his convictions.
For a moment, she seemed to be speaking as much about herself as about him:
"The American people can handle the truth. They just need to know what it looks like."Oh, WE KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, ma'am!!!
It looks like the FALSE-FLAG INSIDE JOB of 9/11, the LIES of IRAQ and the SECRET TORTURE of SECRET PRISONS!!!
YOU BET we can HANDLE the TRUTH, lady!!!!!!
