Hillary managed to keep her thesis under wraps throughout the Clinton presidency. Michelle Obama's is now apparently available for download. I'm sure that many will be commenting on it.
I have to say that I'm not sure that it's fair to judge her by this (though attempting to hide it somewhat increased the justification for why we might want to). Her recent words are bad enough in themselves, in my opinion.
[Update on Saturday morning]
Captain Ed has read the whole thing.
Again, what she thought and wrote as a college student is much less important (and perhaps not important at all) compared to what she says, writes and (to the limited degree we can ascertain it) thinks now.
So in her senior year she was striving for the same things as her white classmates. Power, position and money. Does that mean as a PRINCETON Junior, she was willing to work at Taco Bell after graduating? Or was there a "crack" franchise still open in the hood waiting for her, post Princeton?
It's just such foolish self-segregationist thinking that causes us to be a nation of hyphenated Americans, not JUST Americans. Her attitude has certainly kept on that old school, whitey power trip it would seem. She is supporting her husbands bid to be the most powerful man in the world. The paycheck don't suck either.
Who knows, maybe after he leaves the White House, they can get a "crack" dealership in D.C., so her life can be where it was supposed to be, before she became infected with white people attitudes.
I guess Steve didn't need to read the text to comment. His stereotypical views are quite sufficient to read Michelle Obama's mind. Don't tell me he actually downloaded the thesis and read it!
Keep grasping for straws guys.
Next thing to look at are the kindergarten sketches of Barack. Baracks words and speeches and positions count for nothing; you have to find the hidden agenda. Which you will find in his drawings.
Trust a bunch of goons like you find here to go fishing. Led by the gooniest of them all, the great Rand Simberg, military genius.
One thing it does show is that the solutions being proposed by this Power Couple, as with Global Climate Warming Change promoters, and the attitudes that drive all of them, are nothing new. Just the same old Leftist Progressive fertilizer stuffed into a shiny new bag. Instead of the labels "New" and "Improved", they've just used "Hope" & "Change" instead. And a little juniper berry sprinkled inside to mask the emanating smell until that bag gets opened next January.
Mike,
my stereotypical knee jerk reaction and presumed bigotry are totally based on an entire reading of her diatribe. No matter how far into it I got, I couldn't get over that blurb. She is the one who questioned her views, based on her time immersed in the majority white environment. I didn't question her views.
I had no need to grasp at straws, her entire thesis was totally built of them.
Gosh, who cares what Michelle Obama's thesis says? For that matter, even as someone who would rather vote for Wile E. Coyote than Mr. Empty Suit Obama, I think the recent fuss over her comments about when she was proud of her country are overdone.
Michelle Obama is not running for President, her husband is. What she thinks or believes should not be particularly relevant or interesting.
Is this one more hideous legacy of the Clintons? Now we are always forced to consider every married man (or woman) candidate as a "two for the price of one" power couple who are going to share the Presidency?
Eeeyuk. If that's the case, we should amend the Constitution so only bachelors and spinsters are eligible for the office.
I sympathize, Carl. But as long as said would-be First Lady is an Ivy League lawyer, recent experience suggests paying attention to said person's views is simply prudent due diligence.
As for the content of her thesis, some thoughts:
1) The bit about feeling as though she was black first and a student second to the whites she interacted with at Princeton is almost certainly spot-on. Almost all the whites she would likely have come in contact with at Princeton were ideological liberals. With liberals your primary group affiliation is always more important than anything else about you.
2) The feelings about being torn in various ways as to "loyalty" to one or another piece of the "black community" and about "authenticity," etc. is just sad. I used to reject the notion, much-beloved of left-wing campus race theorists, that there was such a thing as "White Privilege." I have come around to thinking maybe there is such a thing after all, its just not what the campus Left thinks it is. As a white, I enjoy the privilege of not having to be obsessed with my "racial identity" or of running every least action or word through some kind of "authenticity" checker before acting or speaking, respectively. I'm not much of a fan of much of what went on the 1960's, but one aspect still seems good - the attitude of caring a lot less than did previous generations about "what the neighbors would think." For black people, and for members of a number of other minority groups, it seems, exactly the opposite outcome occurred. To be black is apparently to be perpetually a walker upon eggshells - always alert for any action or expression that may lead one's racial fellows to question one's "authenticity." How sad.
Steve, if you really read it and can still say what you say, you must surely be low on the IQ scale. For a more reasoned view:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/02/michelle-obamas-senior-thesis.html
Gee Mike that's a well reasoned account of my IQ. But it seems that YOU rate my supposed IQ based on YOUR opinion of her thesis. How big is your head? It must be tough to to keep your ego trapped in there.
She says that she felt like an outsider due to her skin color.
Feeling like an outsider is the human condition Mike. Everyone feels like that at various times. Loneliness and isolation are part of being human. Psychologists and Psychiatrists make millions on it yearly. Ever take PSYCH 101?
She felt no more disconnected at Princeton, than a white student would have at Howard. Maybe less so. African-Americans are bombarded with white culture daily. There is no counter to that in the white experience.
Similarly, a person raised in the country, at a new job in NYC, would feel the same thing. Or reverse it, someone from NYC, working in some small town, would feel isolated and after some period of time would perhaps question that NYC style of thinking. I know two people who moved from NYC to Atlanta, who felt like they were living in a small town, stayed less than a year and moved back. They felt LONELY in Atlanta Mike. The term used was, "...completely out of our element". That was my cousin and her husband Mike, so it's not a second hand story or something I read online. Here's the flip side, my brother HATES it in NYC. A place he's been in and out of all his life. But he didn't grow up there, he grew up in NC, and that's where he feels comfortable.
I did read it all Mike, I just came to a different OPINION of the work than you. It could be because I've been hanging around with a variety of people, and think about what I read. I based her writing on my own experiences and those of people I know. Including some black people. That's how I arrived at my opinion of her thesis.
Whereas you sound like a typical liberal jerk who belittled me and called me, and others here including the blog owner, names. All, I suspect, because I dared to disagree with your OPINION. I had the bad form, to be non-PC as a white male, by voicing my opinion on something written by a BLACK person who just happens to be FEMALE.
How dare I!?
What I find interesting is her identity as a black or a student takes precidence over her identity of self.
Steve, here's what you said:
Who knows, maybe after he leaves the White House, they can get a "crack" dealership in D.C., so her life can be where it was supposed to be, before she became infected with white people attitudes.
You should be ashamed of yourself. This is a black kid out of her comfort zone writing a first thesis. Not the kind of material you should use to psychoanalyze her now at age 44 or make assumptions that simply exhibit only one thing and that is that you have stereotypical views that wander about seeking confirmation.
Go back and as I said read what clearer thinking conservatives say about the thesis.
Too bad you wasted your evening reading a thesis when you could have said what you said without reading it.
Mike,
I don't need to know "clearer thinking conservatives say". Isn't that what liberals usually claim, that most conservatives are mind numbed robots, following a few far right leaders without thinking? . Now you suggest that I squash my own opinion for someone else's. That seems odd. You're suggesting, I believe, that I become exactly that type conservative that liberals say is the problem.
So am I supposed to go with your opinion, or some clearer thing conservative? Very odd, indeed.
Although I am glad you addressed me directly this time. Bravo. In your first comment, instead of speaking directly to me, you addressed the other commenters, claiming
I guess Steve didn't need to read the text to comment. His stereotypical views are quite sufficient to read Michelle Obama's mind. Don't tell me he actually downloaded the thesis and read it!
Then, when I said I had read it, and I referenced sections of the work, you suggest, in your second comment about me, that I should read other peoples opinions, because MY OPINION was somehow wrong about what she wrote. How can someones opinion be wrong? Because I disagree with you or someone else I'm wrong? That's pretty interesting thinking you've got there. We're not going to agree on this, not that I thought we would. But to keep changing why I got it wrong, or who's opinion is more valuable than my own, is quite interesting.
Also, I have nothing to be ashamed of. Mrs. Obama was the one stereotyping her race and her own attitudes about her roots, Mike not me. She was concerned that she, and other black youth, would lose touch with their roots, simply because she had spent time, in your words, out of her comfort zone. I simply, and in jest only, carried that out to a ridiculous conclusion of her NOT wanting to lose touch with her black heritage, of NOT chasing the white mans dream. But that would leave her only the black man's reality. Drugs and the 'hood.
There is obviously nothing I can say that would make you believe that I'm not a racist, and I really don't care to change your mind on that. I doubt we will wind up drinking a beer together, so why would I convince you to like me better or think better of me. Who the hell are you for me to go to that trouble. I'll not try to deflate my "stereotypical" behavior, because it doesn't really exist. Ultimately, I know who and what I am.
I've previously stated what I thought you were.
But that would leave her only the black man's reality. Drugs and the 'hood.
You sure sound like a racist, despite your claims that you aren't one. If you think you aren't a racist, maybe you ought to think about why you sound like one.
JHC on a crutch!! Are you intellectually impaired Bob? Or is it simple comprehension? Did you see that the oh so offending statement was preceded with this one,
.
I simply, and in jest only, carried that [her statement about the black lower classes] out to a ridiculous conclusion
.
Uh, lemme say this again, Michelle Obama, was the one who was concerned about being removed from the black community, due to immersion in white culture and as such might not be there to help her race up from poverty. She said "lower class blacks", Bob, NOT ME.
It's not ME that says that drugs and the 'hood are the reality. That's the mantra of Mrs Obama, Mr Obama, Sen Clinton, Pres Clinton, Pres Carter, Reverend Sharpton, Reverend Jackson, Louis Farrakahn, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al. They continue to beat that "drugs and 'hood is the black legacy" crap. I don't believe it for a minute, never did. If nothing else it's demeaning for them to keep saying it.
And you can't have missed it being said, I've heard it my entire life. Do you own a TV, ever read a newspaper or magazine, heard of the internet? The one this blog exists on? It's out there everyday and since January of 2000, it's been GWBs fault!
Besides, why is it that when she / they say "drugs and 'hood" they are the bearers of truth? But when I parrot it back at them, I am a racist? They say it as if it's "fact", they build careers on those "facts", and I have yet to see them actually do anything to solve the problem, or solve those "facts" in the 40 years I've been following politics.
Bob, I'M THE ONE WHO DOESN'T BELIEVE IT, and I'm through defending that
What I said was said as parody, jest, sad pointed humor. If that offends you or Mike or Mrs Obama, tough. There is no constitutional right to not be offended. I've certainly not been protected from offense.
Let me ask you, when did you last take someone to task for saying something RACIST, about middle-class, Christian, white males? That being the group I'm from, we are woefully short of defense Bob. I hear daily where I'm the problem in America, but did you post comments anywhere in my defense recently? Ever?
Did you send out notes to any of a hundred liberal talking heads when they said white people WANTED blacks to drown, or white people didn't care about blacks post Katrina? Did you send Kanye West a nasty gram we he said GWB hates black people? How about taking the New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to task via e-mail, snail mail or telegram, for saying that Nawlins should be a chocolate city?
Here's a hint Bob, that's racist TOO! Racism isn't a one way street. running from light to dark
Steve, why would you waste your time and energy on these brain-dead liberal Kool-Aid drinkers? They are incapable of thinking for themselves and only know the "party line".