The New Nobility

Like the old legal privileges, tax immunities, and public honors accorded to aristocrats, from an early age, black Americans of any ability are taught in today’s America that they are special, immune from public criticism, and entitled to accomplish less at work and in school to succeed.  We’re told publicly (and quite unbelievably) “they need to work ‘twice as hard,’” but this is clearly false, as evidenced not least by the lower test scores and lower grades needed for blacks to get into elite institutions, and later in life by the intense mentoring, lower expectations, and tolerance for bad behavior in the work place.

Michelle Obama is a product of this system, getting into Princeton and Harvard Law School throug a combination of her successful brother’s athletic prowess and her race.  But she was no longer the class success (salutitorian) as she was at her much less challenging South Side high school; she was uncomfortable at Princeton, studied a “gut” major (sociology), and almost certainly could not pass the bar exam the first time around (as evidenced by her late admission to the Illinois Bar a year after graduating).  She later left “Big Law” after refusing assignments she thought she was too good for. She ultimately got a cushy job (six figures) matchmaking “community activists” with the University of Chicago Hospitals, making more than $300K annually when her husband was elected Senator. She’s still very ungrateful.

University of Chicago has always been a brainy place, where students actually care about learning, are intellectually curious, and do not suffer fools.  There’s nothing in her personality or life or words or anything else about her to suggest she’d have done well there.  During my time there, there were always a good number of “high average” local students–black and white–who did not really fit in and either dropped out or muddled through, not quite sure why so many of their peers were at the library at 11 pm on a Friday. The school has  also has been in many ways a compassionate place, where every year hundreds of students volunteer in soup kitchens, tutoring local students, and generally reach out to the largely impoverished and black local community.  But the school did not send an invitation to Michelle wrapped with a pink bow, so she’s pissed off to this day. At a commencement speech delivered this week at UC Merced, she remarked:

The context: Many of the UC Merced graduates were the first in their families to earn college degrees, and Mrs. Obama said, “By using what you have learned here, you can shorten the path perhaps for kids who may not see a path at all.

“I was once one of those kids. Most of you were once one of those kids,” and then told the students how she grew up just a few miles from the University of Chicago.

“Yet that university never played a meaningful role in my academic development. The institution made no effort to reach out to me — a bright and promising student in their midst — and I had no reason to believe there was a place for me there.

“Therefore, when it came time for me to apply to college, I never … considered the university in my own backyard as a viable option.”

She really knows how to hold a grudge!  It’s sad that her “inspirational” vignettes always come down to “don’t let the man hold you down.”  The minor indignities of life always appear in her speeches:  her weak test scores, her feelings of alienation at Princeton, and now her beef with her very generous employer of many years.  This is, nonetheless, understandable.  She has an inflated and demanding sense of entitlement, coupled with the vague sense of inferiority–these, the contradictory traits that always accompany unearned privileges.  Why else the $400 sneakers and heavy debt load in the 90s and now the somewhat hard-to-accept makover of herself as the First Mom?  She’s a combination of the Real Housewives of NY and Omarosa, a pretty disagreeable (but all too familiar) character that would be causing her husband a lot more problems but for a very compliant and well trained media.

One of the Obamas’ achilles heels might be the habits formed from years of navigating the relatively calm water of liberal, guilt-ridden whites in academic settings.  The Obamas are used to being accomodated and coddled, but as soon as they are challenged the barely suppressed anger comes out, particularly in the case of the more choleric and resentment-driven Michelle.

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Obama as Metaphor

Obama promises to heal our racial divisions in his latest speech.  But, as evidenced by his long association with Jeremiah Wright, he is willing to tolerate gross expressions of race hatred from black associates.  This strange tolerance for race hatred from blacks suggests that his promise of healing may be a chimera.  But in his own mind, I think he can reconcile these contradictions: Americans must become more like Obama himself.  Obama is mixed race, a mulatto.  His description of the racial issues America faces are prefigured in his own identity and behavior.  In the way of a solution, Obama has thoroughly subordinated his white identity in favor of the black.  

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Poor Little Rich Girl

Hillary pulled off a surprise win the other night, but I still think the Obamas have a lot of game.  Plus, they’re much more interesting than the Clintons.  A couple of good profiles: one (of Michelle) in the New Yorker, the other by Victor David Hansen. 

I notice with Michelle Obama a trait that I often see in apolitical people:  a vague, not particularly analytical, sense that something is wrong with our way of life and our busy world.  I’ve seen it most in people from blue collar backgrounds that somehow make their way into money:  they are surprised to learn that it doesn’t solve all of their problems.  The whole “super mom” career thing undoubtedly has not lived up to Michelle’s expectations.  She’s running here, there, everywhere, keeping up with the Jonses, not knowing her neighbors, still feeling insecure, and constantly having to work.

She often talks of a profound malaise in American life, but one can’t ignore the dissonance between means and ends: her complaints are all spiritual in nature, but the solutions she and her husband reach for are prosaic and practical, such as government health care, free trade protectionism, and a soak-the-rich tax policy. 

When she’s not mouthing Marxist platitudes about race, Michelle Obama’s instincts are actually fairly conservative–this undobutedly the product of her stable, blue collar upbringing.  But the solutions she is promoting to solve our crisis of meaning are not the right tools for the job, and her husband’s soaring rhetoric conceals a very ordinary agenda.

The real roots of her pain are deeper, stemming from the unbalanced and typically American obsession with money, status, getting ahead, “career,” and the like.  Nothing in capitalism makes people get on that track.  People choose to. Her lack of sensitivity to the serious financial problems of her blue-collar audiences (and her blindness to the well hidden struggles of her parents) demonstrate what I believe is another important factor in her and other Americans’ unhappiness:  a lack of gratitude and perspective.

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The Angry Obama

The Obamas are rich.  They went to great schools.   And he’s about to be President.  Sure he talks about himself like he’s the Second Coming, but he is a politician, and they’re all kind of loony in that narcissistic way.  There is a problem, though:  Barack’s bride, Michelle Obama, can’t hide the fact that she is not too fond of America and has a gazillion grievances against white people. 

Rush Limbaugh really covers all the basis in his discussion below:

RUSH: Here is Michelle Obama.  This is yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin, at a Barack Obama campaign event, a portion of her remarks.

MRS. OBAMA:  What we’ve learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback.  It is making a comeback, and let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.  And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.  I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic, common issues, and it’s made me proud.

RUSH:  Now, this, folks,  is unhinged.  .. . She and her husband are in the upper 1% of wage earners in this country.  Where did she go to school?  She went to, I think, Harvard, Yale or whatever. They went to private schools. They are millionaires.They live in the suburbs.  I don’t think he marched at Selma. I don’t think he got beat upside the head. I don’t think Bull Connor turned the fire hose on him. I don’t think dogs were unleashed on Barack Obama.  She, Mrs. Obama did not experience any of the 1950 segregation.  To say something like that and to get a complete pass; people acting as though this is something unique and revelatory, that this is some special couple.  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?  It is unbelievable to me that — and 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, not having any understanding what it took to get this country where it is.  

Here are two relatively young people, who grew up after a road had been paved for them.  They have nothing in the world to be miserable about. He is running for the presidency of the United States.  He ran for the Senate and made it.  They have nothing in the world to be miserable or unhappy about or embarrassed about when it comes to this country.  It is just outrageous for this kind of thing to be stated.  The sad thing is it’s going to resonate with a lot of people because over the years many Americans have been told from grade school on up how unfair, how unjust, how racist, how sexist, how bigoted this country is. 

Look at Oprah Winfrey.  Does Oprah not make her proud?  Oprah’s success, the movies, the TV show, how can that not make her proud?  Oprah is a black woman as is Michelle Obama.  By the way, there’s something else I had in the stack yesterday, didn’t have a chance to get to it so I saved it for today, and it has to do with the fact that she said, “Only Barack Obama can fix America’s soul.  Only Barack Obama can fix America’s broken soul.”  

Now, Michelle Malkin had a great reaction to this.  Can you imagine if Huckabee or if Mitt Romney or if McCain, or any Republican presidential candidate came out and said, “America’s soul is broken, and only Huckabee can fix it, or only McCain can”?  There would be an outcry from the separation of church and state crowd.  And of course the soul, whether you people want to admit this or not, is a religious concept in many ways and in most ways.  So now we’re getting religion mixed into all of this from Barack Obama, and his wife says this is the first time in her life she has been proud of this country.  Doesn’t it just grate on you that liberals in general are not proud of their country, period?  Doesn’t it grate on you that they’re embarrassed; that they hate the country; that they dislike it, and now she comes out with this kind of comment and all these people sitting around and hoping for whatever, are swooning and fainting? 

Michelle Obama is very angry and alienated. She is much more angry than her husband.  Until recently, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the evidence is becoming irrefutable.  I think it’s a major problem and will become one for his campaign.  She’s a liability not least because, when she’s not insulting white people, she’s insulting her husband. 

Michelle Obama is angry because of a familiar psychological phenomenon:  no one likes to be needy, and most people project their frustration and resent others–in this case, white America–who give them help.  Michelle Obama’s hostility stems directly from the contradictions at the heart of affirmative action. The Michelle Obamas of the world want the leg up, and they want their “brothers” to have it too, but they want the rest of us to pretend that they are where they are solely on merit. The gap of ability is impossible to ignore.  It’s especially apparent in educational settings.  Michelle’s Princeton classmates knew she wasn’t quite as sharp as they, and she knew it too.  

Instead of fostering social peace and gratitude, affirmative action fosters rage among the most capable and well organized black Americans, folks who could succeed reasonably well without all the help. When coupled with his nutty, black nationalist church, his wife’s future role as “most trusted advisor and friend” will turn off more than a few voters, particularly when he has to get some portion of the productive half of the country in the Republican ranks to vote for him.

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