Maggie's Farm

I don't know that the women in Obama's life are direct reflection of him, any more than Abe Lincoln was a reflection of his wife, Mary Todd. Or that anyone's spouse is a direct reflection of themselves.

I do think Obama's wife is a high-maintenance liability. I'd never have married her, but then again, she'd never have married me, either. A difficult spouse in itself does not "disqualify" someone for president. It might make it harder to BECOME president, of course.

I also think these things look different when you're standing in the other guy's shoes. To me, Michele looks like a horror show. But I remember lots of cutting remarks about Nancy Reagan, too, for many years. Then her husband died after a long battle with Alzheimer's. She took care of him the whole time, and laid him in his grave. Then you realize just what he saw in her, and what she was to him.

So I don't know what Michele is to Barack. She might be Nancy Reagan, she might be Mary Todd Lincoln.

BTW, I don't know that this is a news source I'd care to associate myself with. They don't like Obama, 'cause Obama hates America'. Turns out, though, these guys hate America even more:

"America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair."

This isn't a quote from Obama or someone around him, this is just the paper pontificating. Then it claims that this is the belief that drives some people to become anthropologists(??):

"Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice."

Huh? So anthropologists hate America, is that it? And his mother, an anthropologist, married two other anthropologists, which means she hates America three times as much? Is that the deal? How did we arrive here? Is the bus driver asleep?

"Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics."

Uhhh,,, guys... THAT is what politicians DO...

"Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised."

Did you actually READ this?

"Ann Dunham died in 1995, and her character emerges piecemeal from the historical record, to which I will return below."

Translation: We don't know that much about her, so we're making stuff up. And what do they mean "return" to "the historical record"? They haven't cited any "historical record" yet! We still don't know what they're basing "anthropologists hate America" on!

"Michelle Obama is a living witness. Her February 18 comment that she felt proud of her country for the first time caused a minor scandal, and was hastily qualified."

Thank God, something of substance. Yes, I remember the statement. I didn't care for it, either. But they go on:

"No matter what the good intentions of Princeton, which founded her fortunes as a well-paid corporate lawyer, she 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."

I guess the idea is that she should be more grateful to her alma mater. But you know what? Princeton IS pretty damn elitist. It's a long way from most people's life experience. Anyone who is aware of how cloistered it is (or Harvard or any number of places) is going to feel a bit alien. Michele Obama did not invent the phrase "ivory tower".

"Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007."

Uh, yeah. Wives of great men think they're just as great at home, right? They don't see their men as just human, right?

Well, guess what - it's HEALTHY for a wife of a great man to see him as just human. That's good for him, good for her, and good for everyone he influences.

The article wheezes on and on like that, but it doesn't get any more convincing. In fact it trails off so ludicrously that it's not even worth fisking. But check this out:

"Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

The George W Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America's standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America's standing. It might take the country another generation to recover."

Yeah, he article is full of hate for Michele Obama. But guess what - there's plenty left over for you and me, as well. It also makes little sense. The arguments are fueled with rage and very poorly constructed. And I gotta wonder - how can Obama possibly destroy America? According to this article, it's already in ruins.

Again I ask: Did you actually READ the thing I just wasted my time on? Or did you glance at it and say, ooh - Obama hate. Let's post.

"it's an analysis, not a blush piece"

Fine. It's a really, really, bad ANALYSIS then. Better?

It "tries" to "pose questions"? No it doesn't. It's just a lousy piece of writing. Really – it rambles, it makes no logical connections, it reaches no conclusions, it changes no minds, and it certainly asks no questions. I don't even know what it wants, besides maybe a paycheck by-the-word.

It's just really, really BAD.

All right, I have probably stepped over the line and been a bad guest here. I'l stop now. It's just that, for some reason, I had hoped for more, you see.

"The premise is basic. Barack Obama is running a campaign based on little more than his public personna and linking to a side of the zeitgeist ignored by practically all of the talking head pundits and the blogosphere."

Oh yeah. That's as basic as it gets.

"Spengler surmises what that personna might be, what governs it and influences it, and what the nature of that zeitgeist might be. Since Obama is running an effective campaign to be nominated a candidate for the highest office of the land, he qualifies to be "looked" at, and since he is less than explicit about answering questions about his inspiration and background, some "guessing" might be excuseable......."

He "surmises" and "guesses", and very weakly, and that's Obama's fault. You've heard of "research"?

"You expect some serious ANALYSIS from a weekly three-thousand word essay....... "

I myself have done more with less. Here's what shining a light through the fog actually looks like:

http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2005/08/bad-press-for-president.html

or this:

http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2008/03/plain-talk-on-two-candidates-that-love.html

I expect something that informs, enlightens, or moves me, or don't waste my time.