Michelle Obama in Kalamazoo last night:
To anyone out there thinking about sitting out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you, your rage does not exist in a vacuum… To the women listening, we have every right to demand that the men in our lives do better by us. We have to use our voices to make these choices clear to the men that we love. Our lives are worth more than their anger and disappointment.
This is a fresh take on the “Throw the bums out!” speech, directed not at politicians, but the layabout men stretched on the couches of pious Democrats while planning on not voting, or voting for Trump, or even (gasp!) voting Green. It’s time for women to confront such villains and “make these choices clear,” Obama seethed. Oddly, she later also noted, “your vote is a private matter regardless of the political views of your partner,” and “you get to… cast your vote for yourself and the women in your life.”
One assumes this is not a message she’d like to reach the ears of the men her husband called “the brothers” in Pittsburgh. Barack Obama on October 8th decided to “speak some truths” to black men, chiding, “Women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time… And you’re thinking about sitting out?” He did not say, though it might have been funny: “And guys, remember, voting is a private matter. If she asks, tell her of course you voted for Kamala. Then give her the I’m Mr. Hope face. You know what I’m talking about, right, fellas? This one, remember?”
That is a joke, though, and as Michelle made clear last night, jokes are part of the problem:
Most of her speech was about reproductive rights, but several times she switched into divine reproach mode. She stopped repeatedly to let the crowd know she was “angry” and “a little frustrated” that “some of us” (read: you) are “asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn,” despite being told by Donald Trump’s own chief of staff that he is “fascist to his core.” All because “some folks think he’s funny.” But the people have been instructed on this: “Nothing this man says or does is funny in any way.”
“Y’all give me great comfort in this arena. But this is a big country and that’s why all of my hope about Kamala is also accompanied by some genuine fear,” she said. “Fear for our country, fear for our children, fear for what is coming our way. If we forget the stakes in this election and — Y’all, that’s why I’m here today. And y’all know I hate politics, but I hate to see folks taken advantage of even more.”
Barack and Michelle Obama obtained the mythical status Bill and Hillary Clinton craved so much but could never reach. They were carefree kids who met in between billable hours at Sidley and Austin, went to Baskin and Robbins for a first date (“I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate,” he said), and from there conquered the State Senate, the U.S. Senate, and the White House, then on to fuck-you money and Martha’s Vineyard, a.k.a. Olympus. We thought we’d never see them again, beyond trips down the Mount to accept the occasional slaughtered ox.
But things haven’t worked out as planned, and America’s plainly annoyed Zeus and Hera have had to spend far too much time on earth. If one were to script this as Greek drama it would be hard not to read something into the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011, when Barack stepped out of character just a hair to skewer a mortified Donald Trump, at the time a resident on the fringe of the political fringe, clinging by his fingernails to a dying birth certificate story. Now that the issue was over, Obama deadpanned, the Donald could get back to issues that really mattered, like “What happened at Roswell?” and “Where are Biggie and Tupac?”
As White House Correspondents’ dinner routines go, I thought it was a rare above-loathsome performance, but the cost! Trump sat mute in a crowd of chortling Beltway aristocrats and began plotting revenge. The tragedy is the Trump retribution tour would never have worked, had the Obamas not turned themselves and their party into parodies of upper-class insularity. Barack and Michelle didn’t have to go the Jimmy Carter route and spend their post-presidency driving a used Plymouth to home-fix-it projects, but neither did they need to steam out of DC on the SS Blow Us advertising new lifestyles as preening fuckwits addicted to balls, fashion, and celebrity adulation.
For years the Obamas have been more important as avatars of upper-class taste (their 29-acre spread on the Vineyard is “categorizable as one of the world’s best homes,” per Homes and Gardens) than as public voices. Everything they do is covered as a fashion event. Even Michelle’s “angry” speech last night earned raves from Women’s Wear Daily, which praised her for delivering it in “polished power suiting in Theory pantsuit” with “dynamic bronze tortioseshell prints.” The mag also commended her “nude lip and shimmering eye shadow” and “touches of Democrat-blue seen on stones embellishing gold hoop earrings, and bold blue nail polish that illuminated from the diamonds on her wedding ring.”
That the Obamas have been essentially running the country from their second palace in DC’s Kalorama neighborhood is an open secret in the capital. In a different era they’d continue doing so forever, but in America unfortunately one needs popular support to keep power. Unfortunately the Obamas have been out of the electoral game for so long that the only emotion they know to express is impatience with mortal disobedience. Hence the latest appearance in royal garb, flashing cobalt Hera-claws and chiding “y’all” about hesitation to vote for the candidate they selected. “Now, don’t get me wrong, voters have every right to ask hard questions of any candidate,” she said. “But…” She listed reasons not to ask hard questions.
This, following Barack’s angry-Dad speech to thirtysomething young men for failing to vote for a 60-yer-old Vice President who “went to college with you,” has to end badly. Barack was quick in 2011, but lost 100% of his humor since, while Trump for all his faults is quite funny, sometimes even intentionally. Descending from the heavens to demand the rabble stop laughing guarantees they will. Do they really not see it?
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