print“Being smart is cooler than anything in the world,” America’s first lady told a gaggle of squealing, high-fiving, weeping girls at a North London school. And Michelle Obama should know, no?
“If you want to know the reason why I am standing here, it’s because of education,” she told them.
“I never cut class. I loved getting As, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler [should be “was cooler”] than anything in the world. You, too, with these values, can control your own destiny. You, too, can pave the way.” She urged them to believe in their dreams.
“For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady [There she goes again]. I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago — that’s the real part of Chicago.”
Cut the cr-p.
Michelle Obama was raised in a country where affirmative action saw to it that mediocrities like herself usurped the real meritocracy. That pesky detail the first wife forgot.
I read Michelle’s university thesis; it’s the product of a banal, third-rate mind. I grant that her meteoric rise had to do with some hard work and pushy grit, but, more than anything, Michelle is a product of affirmative action—a product of a society where, as Joseph Farah put it “black [is] the new color of privilege.”
Farah is wrong.
Being non-white is the color of privilege.
I went for a visit to the outpatient clinic at the highly regarded UT Southwestern here in Dallas. The medical school has the obligatory “diversity” program. I saw a Korean American female resident. I had a choice between her and a Vietnamese male resident.
On the way out I saw the Vietnamese resident chatting with a Hispanic male resident.
As for Michelle Obama … The medical school is home to 4 homegrown Nobel laureates and a large number of other top tier researchers. http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept117179/files/174365.html
So, who is she kidding?
“I never cut class. I loved getting “I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler [should be “was cooler”] than anything in the world. You, too, with these values, can control your own destiny. You, too, can pave the way.”
I have never liked these type of talks meant to inspire hope in others while presuming everyone would want to be like the speaker if only they had their habits and understanding. For me it is arrogance of the highest order and presupposes that the folks listening are pretty damned worthless as they are. Does it ever cross the speaker’s minds that it is more difficult to “control” than to fulfill ones destiny? Is she going to take her daughters back to the “real side” of Chicago? Will they ever learn to love being smart if they are raised in the “false” part of Washington? This stuff is self-serving, if you ask me, and has little to do with actually appreciating an audience poor in spirit for the blessed individuals they are.
Well, Michelle redlined the infamous D.C. public schools.
She chose the snotty, hoity-toity Sidwell Friends School for her daughters.
This institution is so elitist that it does not even rank students.
It’s like Lake Woebegone on “roids: everyone is above average.
I say six months.
By then the whole country will be fed up with these two empty suits.
She got where she is by being pretty and marrying an ambitious guy whose political opponents in 2004 all dropped out. “Smart” = meaning what ?? I just returned from a conference with scientists and engineers working on 3 dimensional vision, miniature autonomous flying vehicles, artificial eyesight – with attendees from academia and industry all over the US – to read about something really prestigious – being a black woman from Princeton (swoon, faint, ooo-ahh-orgasm!). Can someone tell me that awesome intellectual achievements of the Obama family? Any patents, algorithms, medicines, revolutionary manufacturing processes, peer-reviewed research articles, a new elementary particle, a musical symphony perhaps? Who the heck anointed these political hacks as the new Madame and Monsieur Curie? We have replaced the folksy goofiness of Bush II with the “intellectual” arrogance of the Obamas (while both types of “political leaders” destroy our economy and our liberty).
Funny how Palin was skewered for talking about the real parts of America but it is A-OK for Michelle Obama to refer to the real part of Chicago.
I don’t understand the message. Is she telling them that if they do everything she did then maybe they too can latch on to a man that might get elected to something? Will she give advice on how to pick the right mate and make sure he picks her, or what?
Maybe she’ll demonstrate that what she means by ‘smart’ has nothing to do with how nature works and everything to do with how to manipulate people and thereby rise to the top of the social structure.
After all, that is how you get along better than your fellow man today, isn’t it?
“She got where she is by being pretty and marrying an ambitious guy whose political opponents in 2004 all dropped out. ”
No. She is not pretty.
And she married a political know-nothing hack that, like her, rode affirmative action all the way to the White House.
[Let’s apply the same standard, though, to Bush: his road to power was through dynasty, not merit.]
Myron Pauli should know that UT Southwestern, the medical school I mentioned, has – I believe – only one black female professor on its faculty.
And she does research in sickle cell anemia.
[There are countless pockets of brilliance in the US–everywhere but the government.]
The other day, one of my MIT – Bell Lab friends who owns IBM stock called me about the little resume he got as a shareholder about Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, first black female Ph.D. from MIT (which was supposed to impress him). I once was interviewed by her and found her to be arrogant and unpleasant – turns out that she is currently living like royalty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she is their President (first black female – yada yada)…. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson_(physicist) . Her salary is $ 1.3 million, which is very very impressive, of course. I don’t think anyone found her particularly outstanding as a physicist but as the FIRST (ooo aaa) – so that was the path to glory. I will say that her faculty advisor, Jim Young, also black, was a rare real mensch (nice man) in the theory group at MIT. I HAVE met some bright people in the government but they work mostly hidden from the political types and do not advance themselves like the Shirley Jacksons et al. In fact, in politics, intelligence is generally an impediment – ask the “Great Engineer” Herbert Hoover about his 4 years in elective office.
Myron, I’m not sure about intelligence being such a ‘drag’ on politicians. Secretary Hu Jintao and several of his colleagues seem to be doing fine in spite of their ‘handicap’. Oh, somebody posted on another subject that Michelle O looked like a Ferengi. That was childish and silly, and darn, I wish I had thought of that first.