Bits 'n' Pieces
"a fighter"
The New Yorker 10 page article on Michelle Obama is oddly disjointed, as though the writer spent hours and hours interviewing and observing, took copious notes and put them together with staples and hot glue…
Some bits that stuck out for me:
... [Michelle] Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”
...
“You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt, ... See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s’posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!”
...
But she thrives in large venues. Cindy Moelis said, “The first time she got feedback on being such a wonderful speaker, I think when people said, ‘Wow, you’re really good at that,’ she goes, ‘Why’s everybody surprised?’ “
...
Valerie Jarrett hired her as an assistant to the mayor, Richard Daley. “In the planning department, part of her job was to help businesses solve problems,”
...
“There were lots of radicals protesting, calling into question his loyalty to the community,” [Ron Carter, a former associate of the Black Panther Party who is the publisher of the South Street Journal] recalled. “She came out the back door, and there were a bunch of hoodlum thugs ready to do a full-blast demonstration. She put on her street sense and asked all the guys, ‘Y’all got a problem or something?’ They all froze, guys who would slap the mayor, who would slap Jesse Jackson in the face, even.”
...
“Hmmm,” Michael Sneed, the Sun-Times columnist, reported in 2006. “Sneed hears rumbles a mink coat reportedly belonging to Michelle Obama, wife of Sen. Barack Obama, may have gone missing following the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s birthday bash at the South Shore Cultural Center.”
...
“...Now we’re keeping, like, a bowl of fresh fruit in the house. But you have to go to the fruit stand a couple of times a week to keep that fruit fresh enough that a six-year-old—she’s not gonna eat the pruney grape, you know. At that point it’s, like, ‘Eww!’ She’s not gonna eat the brown banana or the shrivelledy-up things. It’s got to be fresh for them to want it. Who’s got time to go to the fruit stand? Who can afford it, first of all?”
...
In 2005, their income was $1.67 million, which was more than they had earned in the previous seven years combined. [≈ $238,571—e-C
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[in 2005] the Obamas moved to a $1.65-million Georgian Revival mansion in Hyde Park, which features a thousand-bottle wine cellar and bookcases made of Honduran mahogany.
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In 2006, the Obamas gave $22,500 to the church. [Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s Trinity United Church of Christ]
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In portraying America as “a Eurocentric wasteland of lily-white lies and outright distortions,” Wright promulgates a theory of congenital separatism that is deeply at odds with Obama’s professed belief in the possibilities of unity and change.
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Barack’s advisers have tried to dismiss the criticisms of his association with Wright as a witch hunt by conservative blogs and talk-show hosts. The candidate disinvited Wright from giving the convocation when he announced his Presidential bid.
...
The competition between the two couples, and specifically between Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, became explicit later when one of Michelle’s advisers pulled me aside and pointed out that Michelle had recently been given Secret Service protection. “So that’s both spouses on both sides,” the aide pointed out.
It appears that her “gritty” South Side upbringing isn’t so granular as it’s been portrayed. According to the Daily Mail [odd the British journalists are the only ones doing the digging, here] “Michelle’s father was a volunteer organiser for the city’s Democratic Party, a by-word for machine politics in America, and his loyalty was rewarded with a well-paid engineering job at Chicago’s water plant. Even before overtime, he earned $42,686...”
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