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Michelle II

According to this article in the New York Times, Obama?s campaign is attempting to give Michelle?s image ?a subtle makeover,? making her available to to such stalwart, critical interviewers as Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg on The View. The intent is to bury what the Times is pleased to call ?the caricatures of Mrs. Obama s the Angry Black Woman? in hopes of ?softening her reputation.?

This attempt may work ? anything can be sold with a skillful enough campaign ? but in my view it is getting off to a rocky start. Even this puff piece in the friendly, fawning forum of the New York Times takes a few awkward stumbles. For example, Michael Powell and Jodi Kantor report,

[h]er own family crosses racial boundaries ? her mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are white ? and she has spent much of her adult life trying to address racial resentment.

Are Barack?s mother and sister really ?her own family?? On the other hand, as Barack?s own books reveal, his mother was hardly a ?typical white person,? which is how he described his grandmother, who raised him, speaking of her alleged racial fears.

And note this revealing example in the article of how Michelle worked to ?address racial resentment? after she had been made vice president for community affairs at the University of Chicago hospital.

Hospital brass had gathered to break ground for a children?s building when African-American protesters broke in with bullhorns, drowning out the proceedings with demands that the hospital award more contracts to minority firms.

The executives froze. Mrs. Obama strolled over and offered to meet later, if only the protestors would pipe down. She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards.

Presumably Mrs. Obama, her handlers from her husband?s campaign, and the New York Times regard this episode as a commendable example of how to deal with ?racial resentment.?

Before her husband was elected to the Senate, USA Today reports, Mrs. Obama?s salary from the University of Chicago Hospital was $121,910. After his election she was given a raise to $316,962.

Dealing with ?racial resentment? can be quite profitable these days.

Full post as published by Discriminations on June 21, 2008 (boomark / email).