Cindy McCain, the GOP nominee himself and a host of folk on the right have attempted to skewer Michelle Obama for comments she made during the primaries about being proud of her country. But looky here at McCain's repeated comments and lo the double standard is revealed.
My esteemed fellow republicans I'm sure would say "that's different" when McCain does it. I think not.
Okay, so it is:
ReplyDeleteEven though I have enjoyed a long professional career following an Ivy League education and marriage to a state legislator turned US Senator, I really never loved America until my husband was front-runner for President...
vs
Even though I volunteered not only to join the Navy in a time of war, and even undertook the extra burden of becoming a carrier attack pilot, I never really loved America until I was captured by the enemy and tortured by them in the line of duty.
Are you sure this is where you want to take the fight?
The reality is that its a ridiculous discussion. Michelle articulated her thought in a particularly clumsy way,open to exactly the kind of twisting that has occurred on the right. Its part of the whole attack angle that seeks to paint the Obama's as exotic, elitist, ungrateful blacks and the racial subtext there is very clear. In Michelle's case, the effort is to paint her as an "angry black woman", a teeth sucking, finger snapping, neck weaving harridan who emasculates and dominates Barack. Its a smear.
ReplyDeleteFurther, it ticks off the average black person, because what it seeks to do is to brand people who voice a well founded criticism of our country as unpatriotic and anti-american. If thats the standard, then that is really branding 90% of black america a bunch of unpatriotic, anti-american folks. So I think most of us take these kinds of attacks on Barack and on Michelle in particular pretty personal and rightly so.
Lastly, if we're going to parse out what McCain said (note from the video he has said several times) then parse out her comment too. She did not say that for the first time she was proud of her country, she said for the first time I'm "really proud" of my country. So its a qualifying statement. Laura Bush extended some grace to her and said she thought she probably meant "more proud", but I imagine she would have been attacked if she had actually said that too.
Bottomline, I really hope Americans are sick of this kind of smear attack stuff. It just keeps our eye off the ball.