Michelle Obama Unplugged

Bill Smith, ARRA Editor: Although we posted yesterday Michelle Obama and America by Gary Bauer, we just couldn't let the story pass without offering readers the insightful views by Bob Parks on the would be potential first lady of the United States. Bob Parks is one of our favorite writers because of his conservative, balanced and tounge-in-cheek articles. Bob is our co-laborer for Reagan style conservative ideals and for today's unique perspective, a black American. He addresses Michelle Obama statements in a manner that we should all be able to freely address without reverse labeling and criticism by the very liberals who's favors Michelle Obama solicites but at the same time appears to resent.

by Bob Parks, Outside the Wire: I must admit, up until yesterday most of us were hoping the Republican nominee for president would go up against Hillary Clinton. She has the obvious negatives and would be a statue of a sparring partner for her GOP opponent to beat up on. The Barack Obama tidal wave was, and still is, a disciplined, Pied Piper-like phenomenon that enjoys the love and admiration of his supporters and media alike. As I said, that is, until yesterday.

Remember the damage an unleashed Teresa Heinz Kerry did to her husband’s campaign. Yesterday, Michelle Obama may have started down that same road, and did so sober. In front of 600 or so adoring supporters at the Capitol Theater in Madison, Michelle Obama said:

“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.”

Because of the delicate elements involved, the press has been asking what she meant more than why she meant it. It’s obvious she’s caught up in the historical nature of her husband’s candidacy, as many Blacks and/or liberals felt they’d never see this day in “racist America”. Judging from the history of the Democrat Party, I don’t blame them, but I’ll not get off topic at this time.

This has got to be one of those “one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind” moments. Speaking of Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11, Michelle Obama would have been around five years old when we landed on the moon. “We” meaning America. She may not have been old enough to be proud of America back then, but she had to have thought that was kind of cool.

Michelle Obama was gushed over by the media, that is, until yesterday. Now she’s struck a nerve with many Americans, and the collective judgment, like it or not, may be a little more unforgiving. As she’s too proud to clarify her statement, some of us will try to explain it. While most in the mainstream media are pussyfooting around the subject, Michelle’s lack of pride in America comes down to race. In the introduction to her 1985 senior thesis “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community”, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson [Obama] wrote:

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.”

Did she get into Princeton based on her previous academic achievement or did she fulfill a quota? Affirmative Action does breed resentment and alienation. She concluded:

“I wondered whether or not my education at Princeton would affect my identification with the Black community. I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with Whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that Black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.”

Funny how it was the white liberals who she said made her feel as if she “didn’t belong.” It must eat her up inside that Barack has to suck up to so many of those same white liberals to win the nomination. By the way, the Princeton Library will not make her thesis public until November 5, 2008: the day after the general election.

Timing is everything. Michelle Obama later earned a paltry $320,000 a year as a "Community Affairs" director for the University of Chicago Hospitals, and currently lives in a $1.6 million home in Chicago. While a hospital director, she was also named to the corporate board of TreeHouse Foods, a Wal-Mart supplier. That $51,200-a-year gig began in 2005; the year Barack entered the United States Senate. Was she qualified for that board seat? Obviously, that doesn’t matter now. She resigned from that board in 2006 when Barack joined in on the trendy liberal trashing of Wal-Mart. Very few of us could just up and leave a supplementary income $50k-a-year job because of political differences with a spouse. Isn’t that a reason to be a proud American?

At the risk of sounding sappy, I say the following from experience. Most people in America know little about being truly “disenfranchised”. Most people in America know little about being truly “downtrodden”. Most Americans have never left our borders and visited the Third World and experienced real poverty, real hopelessness, real despair, and true futility. Of all the nations in the world to be born in, the United States of America is hands down, the best place for ANYONE to be. Michelle Obama need get out more. Maybe then she’d be a little more proud to be an American.

Because of her educational opportunities, being fortunate enough to not only marry one of the statistically few Black men who not only stuck around and is efficiently sprinting up the political ladder, Michelle Obama is living a life few in this country can even imagine. America is why she is where she is today. She doesn’t have to publicly thank anyone, or show that patriotic pride. Michelle Obama, like her husband, doesn’t have to wear an American flag pin or put her hand on her heart during the Pledge. But to not be proud of an America that has allowed her to walk where she’s walking now is just plain selfish. No apologies sought here, Michelle. I doubt it would be sincere. We know whom we’re dealing with, and we’re learning more every day.

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