The Latest Scandalous Discovery About Michelle Obama
Feb 18th, 2010 | 16 responses
She put books in the White House Library about socialism! Here is the incriminating evidence, brought to us by Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com:
Rob adds this cautionary note:
By itself, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But in the context of Anita Dunn saying Chairman Mao is her favorite political philosopher? In the context of the Mao ornament on the White House Christmas tree?
In the context of Obama’s economic policies?
Well, I’ll let you make your own call.
If you say so, dude. Here is Rick Moran:
My call is that you’re a loon.Anyone looking at my father’s library would have had him arrested for sedition if they thought like Mr. Port. My dad had Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Michael Harrington, Howard Zinn, and a host of socialists, communists, and other far left authors on his book shelf. The fact that he was a dyed in the wool capitalist, a New Deal Democrat, a veteran of World War II, and a practicing Catholic would not make any difference to someone of Mr. Port’s ilk. Those books are in his library so obviously, he must agree with their content.
Of course, this is anti-intellectualism run rampant. Whoever our next president is going to be, I hope to god they have a supple and open enough mind to have read Marx and Engels, as well as Ambrose and Friedman. I hope they inculcate this attitude of open scholarship and free inquiry into their children. I hope there are no ideas or ideology they fear. And I hope they can recognize this liberty of mind as essential to the liberty of the soul.
Parenthetically, I see where Michelle Obama also placed John Hicks seminal work on prairie populism, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party on the shelf. What are we to think of someone who displays a book about a grass roots rebellion against east coast elites? That they support the tea party movement?
As it turns out, Rob Port is not just a loon — he’s a loon with egg all over his face:
Port, who was in Washington to cover the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), said in an interview it is “never fair to judge a book by its cover” and that you can’t conclude Obama is a socialist just by the books in his library. “But obviously there have been question about the Obama administration’s politics. You see a few socialist books sitting in the library and, well, that fits in the narrative.”
The only problem is the books Port photographed have been sitting in the library since 1963.
[...]
It is impossible to know if the White House guide misspoke, or Port misheard.“I guess if they have been in there since the 1960s then they have been there through several presidents,” Port said when asked about the discovery. “All I said was that our tour guide told us they were chosen by the First Lady. I thought the books were interesting in the larger context, but now I guess it is what it is.”
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16 Responses to “The Latest Scandalous Discovery About Michelle Obama”
If this turns into a thing in the media then I really really hope humanity gets finished off in 2012…
“I guess it is what it is”
Was that an apology? Was it even an admission he was wrong?
Kathy,
If you plan to document all the idiotic blather that comes out of Rob Port's blog I certainly hope you have lots of time on your hands!
There's a reason he calls his blog sayanything doncha know.
I think it was an admission he was embarrassed.
I'd actually never seen his blog before.
He's a buffoon. There are quite a number of them out there.
I'm not in the least worried about what books they put on the shelf, or what books they read, I just care about the policies they push. A socialist book on a shelf doesn't hurt our nation, a socialist agenda being forwarded does, at least in my opinion. I'm a free enterprise sort of guy.
I guess none of these books were on George W. Bush's extensive reading list. I don't recall anyone in his administration ever mentioning them.
[...] The Impolitic: Breaking: White House library has books! [...]
What does it matter when they were placed there. This “fact” will be repeated again and again until it is accepted as true. I mean, we all know they're America-hating socialists anyway, right
My God but you Goobers are vapid, vacuous vermin . . . afraid of books now, are we?
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The context matters greatly, but this book is either harmless or interesting in another way.
In any case, I probably have more socialism and hard-core left-wing books than many lefties. I think that's a good, not a bad, thing. In addition to “know your enemy” there's the instruction that always is had from having another set of eyes, from another point of view, on something (though when I was a kid I used to be liberal, as most have been; it's still more instructive now than it was then) and at times I can even be taught something new, or have my position on something changed. (All our political views or philosophies are syntheses of what we learn.)
“this book is either harmless or interesting in another way”
… which is, maybe she as well as maybe her husband are trying to learn more about the Tea Partiers.
“A socialist book on a shelf doesn't hurt our nation”
Actually, it's a way to learn about past mistakes, as well as something else:
Reading about the Socialists (as well as the Progressives in addition to the Populists) may help Obama, in dealing with the Dems, to re-channel them along their traditional modern historical path (especially since 1932) as well as to recapture public appeal or acclaim. (This past year they have achieved the opposite.)
Overreaction to this among the right wing of the center-right mainstream is to be expected.
I still say this isn't 1994. Even with this, and possibly the militias coming to the fore again, it's not 1994.
“I'm a free enterprise sort of guy”
Actually, I'm glad they're not reading works by Tugwell (New Deal blueprinter and Great Society forefather), for example, and if they were, the public would need to read “The Road to Serfdom,” as well, among the more reading-inclined, “The Fatal Conceit.”