"[It's] getting harder and harder to be cheerful…. I am so mad at the press [that] I could just strangle them! And, you know, I think I’ve decided there are going to be some people invited on the bus and some people just aren’t going to be invited on the bus."
"I am so mad...I could just strangle them!"
So, where are the rightwingers on this? Why haven't they spilled gallons of ink and taken up miles of bandwidth in analyzing this ANGRY WHITE WOMAN's outburst--this angry white woman who could possibly occupy the White House?
I challenge anyone reading this to find a quote by Michelle Obama saying, in a fit of rage, that she "could just strangle them!"
You won't, and you won't hear any rightwing blogger bothering about Mrs. Romney's threatening and angry remarks because that type of outburst, to them, is applicable only to their "scarey black person narrative."
When a white woman/man engages in that sort of rhetoric, it's merely righteous anger and not threatening anyone.
We all know what is behind this sort of racial bias, and we all understand why the bigots in the GOP--especially bigoted bloggers engage in it.
Blogger, Angry Black Woman, explains:
As Mother Jones’s Adam Serwer rightly pointed out on Twitter today: Imagine what would happen if Michelle Obama had said anything even remotely similar, adding:
You know, for such an angry black woman, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard Michelle Obama talk about strangling anyone.But she does like to encourage kids to exercise, and we all know that’s straight-up Kenyan Communism, mirite?!!1!?
Exactly.
Kathleen Parker writing for the WaPo:
"...Fox News' Sean Hannity asked his show's panel if they knew any "prominent" person who used those words ["angry black woman"]. The panelists, who clearly didn't want to say anything critical of the first lady, couldn't produce a name. Indeed, it may be that this trope has evolved from the swamp of the blogosphere, where anonymous trolls say despicable things from the cowardly comfort of their subterranean wormholes. Comment threads on right-wing blogs frequently feature hateful, racist remarks about the first lady. They don't deserve a pica of my column space, but suffice to say, they need no translation.
Meanwhile, what isn't said explicitly by prominent people is often implied. Attempting to prod his guests into saying something negative about Mrs. Obama, Hannity pulled out the old clip of Michelle saying that she was proud of her country for the first time when her husband was running for the Democratic Party's nomination. This has been played and replayed thousands of times and presented as evidence that Mrs.Obama doesn't really love her country, that she wasn't proud of it until her husband was running for president.
So what.
These perhaps were not the best words for a future first lady, but I have no trouble understanding how she felt in that moment. It may be easy for fortunate whites to say they've always been proud of America, though they're probably lying. It is less easy for someone whose ancestors were slaves, and whose own parents remember when blacks couldn't vote and were lynched for trying in some parts of the country. Given that history, one can forgive a few ill-chosen words uttered in an emotional moment.
But no. Michelle Obama has been paying for her remarks ever since. If she isn't smiling at the camera or looking riveted by every instant of her public life, she's an angry woman.
Despite the pain these critiques cause Obama and other African-American women who identify with her, I do believe that these feelings are not particularly widespread. Most see the first lady as she is: a beautiful, gracious, intelligent, elegant, devoted wife and mother of whom we can be proud.
Those who insult her insult us all and, yes, we should be angry."
