In a column on media treatment of Michelle Obama, Katha Pollitt (Nation, 4/20/09) points out this forehead-smacking quote from New York magazine’s David Samuels (3/15/09):
There are clear limits to Michelle’s ambition. She went to excellent schools, got decent grades, stayed away from too much intellectual heavy lifting, and held a series of practical, modestly salaried jobs while accommodating her husband’s wilder dreams and raising two lovely daughters. In this, she is a more practical role model for young women than Hillary Clinton, blending her calculations about family and career with an expectation of normal personal happiness.
To which Pollitt responds:
Would you like some manly condescension with that factual misinformation, ladies? By all means, avoid “too much intellectual heavy lifting”! If Samuels regards $273,618–Michelle Obama’s salary in her last year as head of community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals–as modest, he must be the richest magazine journalist in the world. Michelle Obama, who made almost twice as much as her husband the senator, earned more than 99 percent of the population, and 98 percent of men. Moreover, she did so while raising two small children, often without her husband, who was off legislating in Springfield and Washington. That Samuels, like a 1950s home ec teacher, advises “young women” to keep their ambitions “practical” if they want to be happy shows just how disturbing Hillary Clinton–or rather the nightmare fantasy of Hillary Clinton–has been to certain male psyches. Because what if women wanted to be the ones with the wild dreams? What if they wanted men to be the enablers and nurturers? That would be awful.
Don’t look for intellectual heavy lifting, facts, or critical analysis from New York Magazine, especially when it concerns Democrats – and especially the new “it” Democrats, the Obama family.
Throughout the campaign and beyond, New York magazine has served as de facto PR company for all things Obama. The mag’s latest ode to all things Michelle Obama ventured into Tiger Beat territory with every frivolous factoid and silly musings they could think up.
The magazine’s school girl crush on the new president is a perfect example of how Obama is more dangerous than Bush. While everyone remains in an infatuated state over the man, his administration will be getting over on them big time. Obama is a master manipulator and expert at saying one thing and doing another. Instead of drooling over President McDreamy and his Jackie Kennedyesque wife, you better be reading between the lines and the fine print with regards to the actions and statements from the administration. From backtracking on troop withdrawal from Iraq, to ratcheting up the action in Afghanistan, to throwing billions down the black hole known as Wall Street, to sneaking back in signing statements, torture, and renditioning he said he would ban – Obama is continuing the BushCo legacy right under the noses of an ignorant public and co-opted media.
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Michele and Doug