An Obama Sidebar

Take a breath. I don't like to touch on politics, as it gets people antsy, but I did here, just a little. Relax. I will go back to other stuff, like the stupidity of ethanol or hydrogen fuel. This is just a sidebar. I have long ago given up on our parties, so don't try to find some secret bias, other than I am thinned-skinned and think everyone should be, if they want to keep a semblance of our country alive.

I recently heard a knock on Michelle Obama, that she was pandering and playing the poor kid who done good, which was my notion. I went to Wiki, the ultimate source, to look into this. It seems she has done well by Princeton, Harvard, and Barack. She did practice law until Barack got his public service going. Then, she shifted to working for public organizations.

I looked this up because I liked her down home poop which I saw months ago. She said they just paid off their school loans, aw shucks. In reality, their income in 2006 was almost 1 million dollars. Her job at hospital paid much more than that of a Senator. (Of note, Barack put in for 3 times the free money, sorry earmarks, for the hospital after she was hired. It didn't pass.) Also, her specialty is PR.

I admit an abnormal reaction to being conned. However, that reaction my just be I catch one sooner. I guess I fell for the act, just like the true believers. I could use a few jobs, if you have any spare ones. I like the ones where you can have a few at the same time.

I know, don't write to tell me this is not unusual, that Republicans have done it. That is hardly a defense. You make my point. The Obamas say they are different. They are, but not how they say. They are very different from the majority of people. If one is a product of privilege, don't pander, just be honest and say you want to give back. Don't hide behind the black experience and use it for a base. I guess I lose trust where people grab power in such a way; I am more comfortable is someone just says - Hey, I got bucks and know what's going on, so vote for me. (Recall an earlier blog on the Grachii brothers.) Here is a little bit of the Wiki...

Following law school, she was an associate at the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin where she first met her husband. At the firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual property.^[2] Subsequently, she held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor and Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.^[5]

In 1996, Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the University's Community Service Center.^[17] In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May, 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs.^[18] She still holds the position, though is working part time in order to devote more time to being a mother.^[19]

With the ascent of her husband as a prominent national politician, she has become a part of pop culture. In May 2006, Essence magazine listed her among "25 of the World's Most Inspiring Women."^[20] In July 2007, Vanity Fair magazine listed her among "10 of the World's Best Dressed People." In September 2007, 02138 magazine listed her 58th of "The Harvard 100," a list of the prior year's most influential Harvard alumni. Her husband was ranked fourth.^[21]

She served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE: THS),^[22] a major Wal-Mart supplier with whom she cut ties immediately after her husband made comments critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.^[23] She serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.^[24]

According to the couple’s 2006 income tax return, Michelle's salary was $273,618 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, while he had a salary of $157,082 from the United States Senate. The total Obama income, however, was $991,296 including $51,200 she earned as a member of the board of directors of TreeHouse Foods, plus investments and royalties from his books.^[25]

If you want to read her Princeton essay, the one blocked by Princeton, about how how she was uncomfortable at Princeton, being black and all, which prose did not ring true, hit here.

A TEASER:

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before,” the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. “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. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”

zzzzzzz. Or, maybe that is projection by the author. ( I can't believe a thesis has phrases like "...it often seems as if....")

I read through the thesis (never saw so much white space before) and was struck how different things are. This papers was a touch-feely one about how Princeton graduates "feel" about blacks. Do they go out of their way to help blacks out of guilt, feel uncomfortable with them.... Also, Stokely Carmichael is a resource saying blacks need to separate from white society, become a community, then they can participate in society in general. I guess no one thought to examine how the Korean, Viet Namese, Chinese, etc were integrating into the USA in one generation. You should see the names of the honor rolls at LA graduations.

To be honest, she was a kid in college and did what she thought was right. Still....

ZZZZZZZzzzz

In my day, we tried to find ways to feed people or go to the moon - our flights of idealism. This stuff is so Rev. Wright as to be curious. Still it is understandable, she majored in sociology, a subject not given to being overly useful for all its gnashing of teeth. (Look up its founder Compte, the Pope of Positivism, the new religion, as he called himself.)

If the gig is to use guilty white votes to get power, the problem is in the general election, that dog don't hunt for most of us. We are all in a big mess trying to figure out how to live. As she said in the thesis, one hypothesis is that rich whites will bend over backwards to assist blacks. Maybe they will, but most of us don't fit that model. We want a beer after the very integrated basketball game. Change should not be a move to the odd manipulations of the 1960s. Change is putting the basket at 11 feet.

Merriam-Webster online: Racism 1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

So who isthe racist: the guy drinking the beer with his buddies of many cultures or people who make careers out of pointing out race differentials, like White's five tones? (Personally, I don't answer that as I do not accept the notion of "race" from a biological and cultural analysis.)

We need a "None of the Above" party.