Smearing Michelle

There really are some vile, hateful people out there. My heart goes out to Mrs. Obama.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=smearing_michelle_

Smearing Michelle

Frustrated by their inability to successfully call Barack Obama's character into question, his opponents have seized on the next best option -- attacking his wife.


Paul Waldman | June 24, 2008 | web only



From the moment Barack Obama began contemplating a presidential run, conservatives saw one thing about him they didn't like a bit: his wife. She had a career of her own. The way she kidded her husband about his morning breath suggested that theirs might actually be a marriage of equals. And most of all, she was black. Way, way too black.

snip//

So Michelle is poised to become Hillary-plus, with all of her predecessor's imagined ability to literally destroy the manhood of those she encounters, and the fury of a prior generation's black nationalist movement hidden behind her smile. Before long, we'll no doubt see a Michelle Obama version of the Hillary Nutcracker, and images of her as a Black Panther, ready to incite riots and rampage through the "good" neighborhoods with murder on her mind. As one McCain supporter told Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, "if Michelle Obama really doesn't like it here in America, I'd be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa."

Some will protest that it's only one of these villains they fear, but not the other. MSNBC's Tucker Carlson not long ago proclaimed his disapproval of Michelle Obama, because "she's got a chip on her shoulder." But lest you think Carlson is feeling threatened, he went on: "I don't think it's a question of a strong personality. I know that I like strong personalities, particularly in women. I'm married to one. I like that. I just don't like the sense that she has a sense of aggrievement." His protestation that he likes strong personalities in women might be more believable were it not delivered by someone who has on more than one occasion said about Hillary Clinton, "when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs."

Carlson is hardly the only one whose masculinity is so tenuous that the mere sight of a powerful woman on television demands that he double over in fear, lest she fire her laser beams of emasculation and reduce his testicles to dust. Indeed, there are millions who feel the same way. These are the men who form the foundation of the gender gap. For them, expanding gender equality is a source of continuous displeasure and unease, feelings the GOP has always sought to inflame, after which they offer themselves as the soothing balm..The Republicans work overtime to assure voters that their standard-bearers will uphold traditional gender roles, with the womenfolk knowing just what their place is. George W. Bush play-acted as a cowboy, drawing on that key American archetype in which men protect women with their bravery and quick-draw skills. Thankfully for her, Laura was never forced to do the laundry at the "ranch" with a bucket and washboard, but she might as well have.

For his part, John McCain never stops reminding us that he is a military man, and one from an era when the idea of women in uniform was laughable. His wife Cindy seems to have undergone the same Stepford reengineering that produced Laura Bush, complete with loving gazes and immovable smile. You'd never know that she actually runs a company worth an estimated $250 million.

Which might suggest that if you're a woman married to a man who wants to be president, the best thing to do is pretend you neither have, nor ever harbored hopes of having, a career. But there's not much you can do about your skin color -- nobody is going to be calling Cindy her husband's "baby mama". What you want to be, above all, is gentle and timid. Not your own person, with your own ideas and ambitions. Not a threat to anyone.

:rofl:

:D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_Ratched