Erasing Michelle Obama, Some Pundits’ Comments on DNC Speech

Look, maybe pundits are just tired from the altitude in Denver… many come from sea level of zero. Here is it 5280 feet above sea level. Enough to noticeably augment the effects of alcohol imbibing; enough to make many feel short of breath; even faint. It takes about a year at this altitude to acclimate.

Or, maybe it’s because I myself ‘don’t get it,’….don’t get the deep meaning behind these repetitious lavings. Forgive me please, I think I must be in a grumpy mood. It’s been a hard last five days, which I’ll explain after the DNC convention is over.

She humanized herself tonight
(Wait, is that an accomplishment? she looks human just fine to countless people.)

She is angry, hard
(Um, that’s an exclusive right of only certain kinds of people?)

She isn’t a real American
(As opposed to unreal American? Where’s the list of authentic traits of a real American? I’ve never seen the revised statutes in this area)

Tonight, she planted herself firmly in family, her father, her working class family
(Does anyone still realize there are working class poorest of poor, and working class far more well-off people? Does anyone really believe out of work people sitting on sagging porches will identify with this trope?)

Is America ready for his black wife and his black kids?
( Which of the thousands of layers of ‘America’ are you referring to? What constitutes ‘ready?’ Why cant each presidential candidate just have a wife and kids… without the incessant Technicolor annotations? )

she looked fantastic and that matters
(matters to whom? for what reason? You make it sound like she overcame snoring and bedhead and for a change showed up looking swell)

The first lady is the nation’s official hostess
(Well, if that’s true, then who is the nation’s official Twinkie?)

She’s a working mother
She’s an Ivy League educated attorney
She is dark skinned
Her children wear braids
and she looked great
and she looked great
she proved she is capable of being the official hostess of the nation
(too, there are working class mothers who can barely pay for daycare, and there are working class mothers who have nannies… These kinds of bland comments actually erase Michelle rather than define her more clearly. It’s like calling Ahr-nald simply a Governor. It’s like calling Ted Kennedy a white haired old man.)

It is very difficult for a black woman to assert herself on both fronts; hostess and policy person
(Really? You mean, Harvard + Princeton= Nation’s Hostess? Boy, that sure makes sense.)

You know, in a way, these comments, many of them by black commentators as well as people of other RGB certified skin colors, do to Michelle, what some evangelicals do to God: reduce the incandescent to what is more easily ‘handle-able’… just life-sized filament, manageable low wattage, well-behaved, no surprises, therefore no creative fire. Like themselves. More or less.

Leaderly women ought not have to be held under a microscope to be seen in all their actual magnitude, ought they? I wonder what strange rite we have in our culture that insists accomplished women must diminutize themselves in order to fit the mold/casket already custom-made for them… by minds smaller than their own?