“A Class Act”: Let’s Hope Our Next First Lady Is As Exemplary As Michelle Obama
Something happened last week that was political, gratuitous and embarrassing for our country — and it actually can’t be blamed on the sequester.
Out of nowhere, the first lady of the United States appeared at the Academy Awards and announced the winner for Best Picture. Not landing by helicopter, not inside an egg like Lady Gaga, but via satellite from the White House, where she was hosting the nation’s governors for dinner, surrounded by smiling military personnel.
Immediately, the appearance — not her idea, but an invitation — became a national subject of scorn. Most of the first lady’s detractors were conservatives, like Michelle Malkin, who slammed “the White House-Hollywood industrial complex.” Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post blogged: “It is not enough that President Obama pops up at every sporting event in the nation. Now the first lady feels entitled, with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining (this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election) … it makes both the president and the first lady seem small and grasping.”
But other critics were liberals. Donny Deutsch of MSNBC, an “elite” of the first order, sniffed, “there was an elitist flavor to it.” The Post’s Courtland Milloy wrote he had “enough with the broccoli and Brussels sprouts” and all the attention paid to Obama’s toned arms and hair. “Where is that intellectually gifted Princeton graduate, the Harvard educated lawyer and mentor to the man who would become the first African-American president of the United States?” he asked.
These deeply disappointed Americans don’t exactly know what they want from the first lady — just that it isn’t what she is offering. And that’s why it’s so sad. No, Michelle Obama is not going to throw her Ivy League credentials around, or weigh in on war or peace. But she has led an awareness movement to tackle the epidemic of obesity and diseases associated with it, and she helped build a support net for military families and veterans returning from war, the likes of which they never had before.
Those who cannot understand the importance of Obama helping communities most affected by poor eating and poor health engage to improve their choices and habits must not appreciate not only the prevalence of obesity and diabetes, particularly among African-Americans, but the economic toll diabetes and other weight-related illnesses are taking on our healthcare system. Obama has not only worked on federal legislation requiring new standards for school lunches but is urging corporations to open new stores in the 6,000 “food deserts” the Department of Agriculture has identified across the country, areas where fresh food is not readily available.
Meanwhile, she has quietly invested thousands of hours — without any camera crews in tow — supporting military families along with Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president. Together they founded Joining Forces to encourage businesses to hire veterans returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Veterans groups have said Obama has hosted and participated in more events for veterans and military families than any other first lady.
Let’s hope our next first lady is an exemplary wife and mother, and a daughter who would move her mother in to the White House with her. Let’s hope she embraces strangers and hugs them tightly, just the first lady we have now.
We can all freak out if Obama appears on “Wife Swap.” But unless she does, please stand down.
Americans taking swipes at the first lady, asking why she is having a good time — when invited — with comedians and producers planning the Oscar ceremony, should instead think about saying “thank you.”
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, March 6, 2013
“Chain Of Command”: Hillary Clinton Takes Responsibility For Libyan Tragedy, Republicans Explode
For weeks, Republicans have been trying to turn the 9/11 attack on the American embassy in Benghazi into a scandal. They’ve claimed the president refused to acknowledge that the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others was terrorism, though he called it an “act of terror” the day after the tragedy. They’ve accused the White House of rejecting calls for more security that came from the embassy in Tripoli.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stepped into the fray to clarify the situation.
“I take responsibility,” she told CNN. “I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world (at) 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.”
This clear statement of chain of command has activated Republicans’ Clinton hysteria to a level that hasn’t been seen in years. They’ve said she was falling on her sword and taking a grenade for the president, who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, who often blurs the line between blogger and campaign spokesperson, responded offensively. She tweeted, “First Bill humiliates her and now Obama does.. Hillary no feminist, more like doormat.”
When Obama advisor David Axelrod tweeted, “Sick. Mitt mouthpiece jumps shark,” Rubin responded: “So is Obama going to hide behind her skirt Tuesday night? Why would the president let Hillary end her career in disgrace?”
Apparently taking responsibility for something that is actually your responsibility is a “disgrace” to Republicans.
Evidence suggests that the Bush administration ignored several warnings leading up the 9/11 attacks and the only administration official who ever took responsibility and apologized for not preventing them was Richard Clarke, a holdover from the Clinton administration.
Rudy Giuliani said that Republicans “should be exploiting” this tragedy to make a case against President Obama. Now that this plan is failing, they’ve returned to the same old sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, October 16, 2012
“Romney Proves Me Wrong”: Instead Of A Boring White Guy, He Chose A Far-Right White Guy
So here’s what I wrote last Monday: “It is still probably going to be Rob Portman.” Here’s what I wrote about Ryan:
Hey, Paul Ryan! People love that Paul Ryan! The only downside, with Paul Ryan, is everything he believes. The Obama administration cackles with glee imagining the opportunity to explain the contents of the Ryan budget to moderate voters. Ayn Rand starts showing up in Democratic attack ads if Paul Ryan is the running mate.
And then I concluded with, “please enjoy watching every pundit who confidently made a bullshit prediction pretend it never happened.”
I was wrong! (Though I think I’m right about the cackling, still.) I thought Romney was too smart and too risk-averse to go with an even slightly polarizing figure, but Romney made the “surprise” pick. Though, let’s be honest, Ryan is still a boring white guy, he’s just a boring white guy with excitingly far-right economic and budget policy preferences.
What I also couldn’t have predicted is that Romney would make his decision a Friday night news dump, leaking it too late for the evening news and announcing it on a Saturday morning when no one is paying attention to politics. He probably did this because he hates the press and he wanted to ruin everyone’s weekend. He seems to have given advance notice, though, to a few commentators, including his biggest media booster, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. Rubin, as we all remember, is unable to, say, correct malicious mistakes in her posts while she is observing the Sabbath, but she was able, thank god, to write and schedule a post on the Ryan pick that went up at nearly 2 a.m.. She thinks the Ryan pick is a brilliant, canny decision, obviously. And it totally is, as long as no one successfully explains to voters what Ryan actually believes.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 11, 2012
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