Bill O’Reilly, master of racial sensitivity has stated that he will not “go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.” Phew! What a relief! O’Reilly is only going to try to lynch the wife of the next President of the United States of America if he finds “hard facts” that she feels a certain way that he doesn’t approve of!
Anyway, I knew this was coming. Now that Obama’s looking like the frontrunner, the media attack dogs are yapping in his direction. They are having to resort to crypto-racism rather than open misogyny.
The disputed Michelle Obama quote, by the way, is this: “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”
That sentence is part of a longer paragraph where she talks about hope and change and coming together and other themes of the Obama campaign.
The media yappy dogs are choosing to interpret her quote as, perhaps, indicating less than perfect unquestioning patriotism!!!, which seems kind of trivial even if they weren’t deliberately misinterpreting her. It’s like arguing with people on the Internet — you can put as many qualifiers around your statement as you like, in this case “adult” and “really,” and anybody who is looking for a pointless argument will still interpret your statement in the most provocative (to them) way possible.
The yap-dog interpretation seems completely oblivious to these obvious facts: 1. She is talking about her pride that the US finally seems to be ready to elect a black man to be POTUS. 2. She was born in 1964, just a couple of years before me, and I can tell you that my adult lifetime has mostly been spent watching the civil rights movement stall, and seem to move backward, after the huge strides of the 1960s.
So, I completely get her statement. And I agree with her. No, it’s not literally the first time in my adult life that I have felt any pride at all in my country. But it’s the first time that I have felt that kind of pride.
And I like it.