ANGRY MICHELLE AND THE RACE CARD

By Don Feder

August 14, 2008

A petition on MoveOn.org (“Against FOX’s Racist & Hate Filled Smears”) is an indication of just how far the left will go playing the race card this year.

As Barack’s chances of becoming the next president dim, charges of racism will become more frequent, increasingly hysterical and detached from reality.

MoveOn.org warns: “Fox must stop injecting racism, prejudice and fear into our political dialogue. We intend to hold FOX, its advertisers, and its personalities accountable for FOX’s attempts to smear the Obamas.”

The petition is accompanied by a video which tries to make this case. Regarding Obama, Bill O’Reilly used the word “lynch” (he said he wouldn’t engage in same – in this case meaning joining in a baseless attack). The film then reminded us that “Southern whites used lynchings to terrorize and intimidate freed blacks.” Thus, by saying he wouldn’t launch an unprovoked attack, O’Reilly now is the moral equivalent of the Imperial Grand Dragon. Talk about smears.

The video focused primarily on discussions of the oft-repeated charge that the lovely Michelle Obama is “an angry, black woman.” Well, let’s see: She’s angry. She’s black. And she’s a woman. That would make her what – Mr. Rogers? Would “disgruntled, African-American female” be more acceptable?

Although, it must be admitted that most of the furious femmes of the left – like Hillary, Rosie O’Donnell, Cindy Sheehan and Arianna Huffington – are persons of the Caucasian persuasion.

In 1994, when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, a shocked media attributed the unthinkable to the “angry white male” (who supposedly was up in arms over quotas, environmentalism and the condescension of liberal elites). Was the mainstream media guilty of racism? Why is “angry black woman” racist but “angry white male” not?

I spoke at the Christian Coalition’s Road to Victory conference that year. So help me, as I was leaving the stage, a reporter for The Washington Post asked me if I was a proverbial “angry, white male.” I should have said “no, I’m an angry black woman,” and immediately claimed victim status.

The left is tormented by FOX News for the same reason it’s obsessed with talk radio – these are among the few media outlets it doesn’t own lock, stock and lapel mike.

A July 21 Rasmussen poll showed 49% of the public thinks journalists will slant the news to favor Democrats, versus the 14% (residents of another planet) who believe the media favors Republicans. The media usually go gaga over the Democrat in a presidential race. With Obama, they’re like a bunch of 1940s bobby-soxers swooning over Frankie.

MoveOn.org lecturing us about “hate-filled smears,” is like John Edwards collecting a $50,000 honorarium for a speech on marital fidelity.

· On May 17, 2005, when Republicans were trying to end the minority veto of Bush’s judicial nominees, MoveOn.org’s PAC ran newspaper ads showing a smiling Pope Benedict XVI holding a gavel in front of the Supreme Court building, with the caption: “God already has a job. He does not need one on the Supreme Court. Protect the Supreme Court rules.” The allegation that the Vatican is trying to take over American government is one of the oldest anti-Catholic canards. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan used it to whip up anti-Catholic bigotry. You remember the Klan? They were the guys usually associated with lynchings.

· On September 10, 2007, MoveOn.org ran a full-page ad in The New York Times with the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us.” Regarding the progress of our operations in Iraq, the group accused General David H. Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House” -- an odious smear of a distinguished American soldier.

· On its site, MoveOn.org ran two particularly nasty videos comparing President George W. Bush to the architects of genocide. One said of the president and the fuhrer: “Both leaders had catastrophes (the Reichstag fire and 9/11) occur allowing them to remove many civil liberties.” To howls of outrage, the website responded that the videos were part of its “really creative ads contest” but “we do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions.” It’s just a coincidence that George Soros (who provided $2.5 million in start-up capital for MoveOn.org) has said pretty much the same thing. Soros: “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans.” The bolshie billionaire wasn’t referring to the German Green Party.

· The website Israpundit discloses that MoveOn.org has “welcomed the most vicious imaginable anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-evangelical and even racist speech at an Internet forum over which it exercises editorial control.” One posting said of Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos “the whining, arrogant Jew wants Lebanon to demonstrate responsibility. This is another example of how many Jews/Zionists in our Congress use the U.S. for their own greedy purposes.” (Of 17 who posted comments, 14 agreed with this.) Another posting referred to priests as “The Catholic Pedophiles of America.” (Everyone who commented agreed.)

But this really isn’t about MoveOn.org’s shameless hypocrisy or blatant hate speech, but the way the left intends to insulate Obama from criticism.

As first lady, Michelle Obama would make Hillary Clinton look like Shirley Temple. Yes, la belle Michelle may be the angriest presidential candidate’s wife ever. Her anger mostly relates to race.

In a February 2007 appearance on “60 Minutes,” Mrs. Obama said America is so racist that her husband “as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to a gas station.” That’s right, according to Michelle, every day in America, black men are blown away just for stopping at service stations. (Presumably, she did not mean by other black men robbing gas stations.) This is the type of racial paranoia usually associated with Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and her minister of 19 years, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright.

When a writer for The New Yorker asked Mrs. Obama what she thought of Bill Clinton calling her husband’s explanation for his shifting stand on the Iraq War a “fairy tale,” the charm-school grad shot back “I want to rip his eyes out!” After a nervous look from an aide, Michelle caught herself and quickly added “Kidding!” If Barack wins, the Bushs had better take all the knives and other sharp objects with them when they leave the White House.

When Michelle started acting like a mental patient who was off medication, the more enterprising reporters began digging into her past and discovered her 1985 Princeton thesis (“Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community’) where she revealed that her undergraduate experience – courtesy of “minority outreach” – made her “far more aware of my ‘Blackness” than ever before.”

After acknowledging that she was influenced by the “black separatism” of Stokely Carmichael (in his 1967 book “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America”), Michelle shifted into whining mode. “Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites (her capitalization) at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black (sic.) first and a student second.” Perhaps she projected her own obsession with race onto her fellow students, at one of the most multicultural campuses in America.

In the paper, the future frau Obama warned “further integration/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”

Poor little Michelle After Princeton and Harvard Law School, she went on to become a corporate lawyer and board member with a six-figure salary (according to their 2006 tax return, the Obamas had a joint income of $991,286), whose husband is running for president, but she’s still, metaphorically, riding in the back of the bus.

Then there was this year’s road-to-the-White-House rage.

In a February 18 speech in Madison, Wisconsin, Michelle disclosed, “And let me tell you something – for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” which raises the interesting question: What was she before -- ashamed, disgusted, blasé?

Michelle explained that her newfound patriotism isn’t entirely Obama-centric. “And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.” Since change is equated with her husband’s prospects, this pretty much comes down to the same thing – she’s finally proud of America because Barack could become president.

In her lifetime, America achieved technological revolutions like the Internet, liberated people from Grenada to Baghdad (not to mention our role in taking down the Iron Curtain) and poured hundreds of billions in foreign aid into the Third World (and donated even more privately). But none of this made angry Michelle proud of her country. It wasn’t until B. Hussein Obama hopped aboard the Hungry-for-Change express headed for the presidency that his wife felt there was something to cheer about America.

But that was just an hors d’oeuvre. Stumping in South Carolina before that state’s primary, Michelle told congregants at a black church in Cheraw that America is “downright mean,” and “guided by fear,” as well as “a nation of cynics, sloths and complacents (sic.)”

Americans were suffering, but were too fat, dumb and lazy to know it until the Savior from Chicago came along. “Health care is out of reach (Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive,” etc. “The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten worse since I was a little girl.”

For most Americans, life has gotten progressively worse since the late ‘60s, when she was a little girl? Only a dogmatic leftist could believe such rubbish?

A hint of how the fair Michelle got these nutty notions may be gleaned from her declaration at the Pee Dee Union Baptist Church, “On behalf of my church, home and my pastor, Reverend Wright, I bring greetings.”

Michelle may not have been proud of America until quite recently, but she was popping the buttons on her vest (if she wore one) over her paranoid, racist, anti-American preacher. Even if she missed the message sitting in a pew in Wright’s church for 19 years, by this time, his lunatic raving was all over You Tube.

This was an in-your-face endorsement of the whack-job pastor who claims racism is the core of America’s identity (“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run”), 9/11 was “a wake-up call” for a nation that exploits and oppresses the rest of the world, Zionism equals “white racism,” and Louis Farrakhan is “one of the giants of the African American religious experience.”

Taken together – Princeton thesis, comments about Barack’s “blackness” making it lethal for him to get gas, I’ve-never-been-proud-of-America-until-now, and this nation is “downright mean” – Michelle Obama sounds like Jeremiah Wright in a dress with an Ivy League education.

The left knows that Michelle (like Wright) is one of Barack’s soft spots -- thus the attempt to brand characterizations of her as an “angry black woman” racist.

From here to November, the left intends play the race card with gusto.

But that’s not all. It has a whole deck to play. Just as observations about Michelle’s racial rage is called racist, concerns about Barack’s ties to Muslim extremists will be labeled Islamophobia. If you note his lack of experience, you’re also a racist.

If you question his redistributionist schemes, clearly, you hate the poor. And if you think more domestic drilling is the answer to rising gas prices (instead of putting more air in our tires), you’re responsible for global warming.

Barack Omaba isn’t just soon to be the first black major-party candidate for president. The left means to make him the first you can’t scrutinize, analyze or criticize.

Thus far, it’s not working. With Obama sinking in the polls – and Jerome Corsi’s book (“The Obama Nation -- Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality”) soaring to the top of The New York Times bestsellers list – the man who had the audacity to hope probably won’t be “reporting for duty” any time soon.

This commentary was previously published on GrassTopsUSA.com