Michelle Obama Is Not An Angry Woman

Allow me a moment to rip on my intellectual buddies: Michelle Obama isn't an angry woman. Really.

Intense? Without a doubt. Fawning over her husband? Sure. But what good wife isn't?

This post is inspired by the New Yorker magazine cover, which is an entirely different barrel of fish. (Really, media? You think that the average person who reads the New Yorker, who's read pieces by Christopher Buckley, Woody Allen, and Garrison Keillor, wouldn't get the satire? Really Obama campaign? You think your followers, 97% of whom get their news from the Daily Show or Colbert Report, are below some sarcasm? Really? )

But while there are plenty who have complained about the Muslim stuff in the cover, there are fewer complaining about the Michelle "Angela Davis" Obama depiction. And the Right, in response to those complaints, has basically responded, "Michelle Obama is a black radical, an angry woman. How could any person disagree?"

That's crap.

I hold no brief for Mrs. Obama. I do think she is a strikingly attractive woman, and she seems to be very intelligent, but I can't know that for sure, having never met her. But the oft quoted woman, from everything I've read, is being poorly treated when she is described as "angry."

What evidence is there of a simmering anger? A few quotes from speeches where she uses messianic or hyperbolic language? That's anger?

When Mrs. Obama says things like "for the first time in my life, I'm proud of my country", she betrays an inexperience with public life, an inability to temper her praise for her husband and his campaign, and a slightly creepy zeal for the message her husband peddles. Not anger.

These qualities aren't necessarily desirable in a prominent spouse, let alone a First Lady. But the critics of Obama only undermine their argument to unaffiliated voters and weak Obama supporters by describing Mrs. Obama as "angry." The only way a person could see the anger is if they read between the lines of her speeches with the most uncharitable eye.

You know what? The Obamas don't claim to be the most politically refined couple. They claim to be a change from the usual, and those on the right who leap upon every Mrs. Obama speech as proof-positive that she is a black radical dedicated to the dissolution of all great American institutions only improve the Obamas to those who can't stand Hannity and Colmes or Keith Olbermann.

Mrs. Obama might be an angry and shrill woman. She might secretly have a tattoo on her back of Stokely Carmichael. But here's the point: anyone who claims to know such things from observing public appearances is either delusional or deceitful. There's no way in hell that you could see her quivering heart of rage from her speeches. Nothing from her public appearances says anything besides a woman who loves her husband, loves what he stands for, and believes a future with him will be the best option for the country. And I think it would behoove those less-than-enthused by Obama to give Mrs. Obama the benefit of the doubt. It's nearly axiomatic that good manners consist of treating people as gentlemen and ladies until they prove otherwise. Give Mrs. Obama a shot.

Critics of the Obama campaign, and I count myself among them, need to stick to real problems with the candidate. Like his humorless-ness, or the distinct possibility that he isn't a bright-eyed optimist, but an extremely cynical politician with crooked colleagues*, who is playing upon people's frustrations for his own gain. Or even perhaps (gasp!) talk about his foolish policies that ignore facts.

What isn't effective is quixotic charges at imagined monsters in the Obama house.

To those who aren't yet decided about Obama, the hyperbole of the Right isn't any more attractive than the hyperbole of the Obama camp.

*note that the Slate article is from 1997. The Dems have been so tied up in the Tammany Hall politics of Fannie and Freddie for a looong time.