Michelle Obama, Part II

Several weeks ago, I wrote a piece covering the increased attention which has been afforded to Michelle Obama in the wake of her husband's rising star. At the time, I was generally neutral toward Mrs. Obama. I simply noted several controversial statements made by the would-be First Lady and the discomfort they provoked from sources inside and without the Obama campaign.

The New Yorker is publishing a long article on Michelle Obama next week. While the majority of the article mundanely forwards the observation that Mrs. Obama is a rather likable, no-nonsense sort of dame, there are disturbing revelations when the article recites the substance of Mrs. Obama's stump speech.

Mrs. Obama regards America as "just downright mean," and Americans as "guided by fear," America is a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents, "and it's gotten worse over my lifetime.... The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl."

These statements come on the heels of her earlier admission: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

When Michelle Obama was born, racial intermarriage was against the law in at least two dozen states. Governors were standing in front of university and classroom doors, attempting to bar black children and teenagers from entering white-only institutions. The per capita income of African Americans has risen sixteen-fold over the past 40 years. Black homeownership has risen tenfold. The black poverty rate has declined from 75 percent to 25 percent.

Over the past 13 years, a breathtaking drop in the crime rate has made poor black neighborhoods safe and habitable in cities across the country for the first time in Michelle Obama's lifetime - since the crime spiral that made them intolerable places to live began in the year of her birth, 1964. There are about 350 different categories in which life for black people in particular is so far superior to what it had been in her infancy

Michelle Obama's inverted views on American progress and bitterness over the "struggles" of her life as a Princeton undergrad, Harvard law, multi-millionaire Senator's wife on the campaign trail to the White House all seem a bit ... much. For all of the New Yorker's gushing about Mrs. Obama's "in-touch" personality, the disgruntled elitist seems, as Podhoretz captures, to have "a chip on her shoulder."

There seems to be an inescapable sense that Michelle Obama doesn't much like America. Her pastor, whom she defends as a grandfatherly figure to whom she must remain loyal, espouses a vile, anti-American, racist vulgarity surpassed only by his mentor - Louis Farrakhan. Despite lobbying from the campaign to soften her vitriolic tone, Michelle Obama has persisted in her unrelenting disparagement of America and American culture (indeed, American citizens).

Such talk smacks of the spoiled, privileged, yet unsatisfied and ever-resentful temperament which white America is loathe to stomach from a prominent politician aiming to draw on moderate support. While Mrs. Obama is undeniably charming and pleasant, her views are not-so-subtly anti-American. While she does not subscribe to the outward appearance and stylistic disquisition of "black power" radicals and racist separationist, I see no substantive difference in the perspective and message emanating from these groups and Mrs. Obama.

Of all those standing on the stage in hopes of gaining the keys to the White House, the most radical might prove to be the one who seemed the least controversial. America might take care to notice the wolf in sheep's clothing.