The New Michelle Obama

It's been that way for the last 20 years. Political writers, they just know.

"Likability." Can we scratch that term out of the government talkbook, or just go ahead and make Steve Carell president?

 

You make valid points, but likability has cost the Dems the last two elections. I don't think it will be an issue this time.

 

You've obviously never watched local news.

 

Boston thinks Chicago is a rank amateur when it comes to racism.

 

Chicago is defined by race more than any other major city. The original Duh Mare Daley never got around to desegregation and Duh Mare Daley II isn't going to get around to it either. They made their political bones by giving the blacks various forms of political patronage and gave the whites de facto segregation and standing up to the negroes when they got too uppity. The blacks never complained about the segregation too much because they were getting enough political patronage and the whites never complained too much because they got what they really wanted. Chicago politics have always been defined by ethnicity. In the old days, it was based on which European country your forefathers came from. Today, it is based on which continent your forefathers came from.

 

Chicago has so many ethnic groups that I have a hard time believing that there is more racism there than in the Deep South.

I will agree that Boston is one of the most racist cities anywhere.

 

I've never been to Boston.

But here in the south, my wife went into the high school on Tuesday to go through stacks of student folders. Her task was to help the counselors and administrators decide whether to take some students out of their electives and put them into reading courses. There were different reading classes, and they were supposed to put them into the classes based on how well they did on their state tests.

My wife said two of the counselors were extremely racist. Apparently, they made some comments. They also put kids into the most intensive reading classes any time they came to a folder with a "B" on the student's code. That indicated that the student's race was black. She said it was done without regard to how well they had scored. Some white students were placed in less intensive reading programs even though they had similar scores, perhaps even lower scores.

It is in that same city that I once saw a homecoming parade where whites stood at the curb and an overwhelming majority of blacks stood on the sidewalk against the downtown buildings.

Two days ago, I was flagged to the side of the road by a sheriff's deputy. I was going 42 in a 30. He let me go on a warning. Another car was pulled over while we waited. They asked for identification from the vehicle's passenger. They didn't ask for ID from my white, middle-class teacher wife.

I've been to Chicago. It might have been racist at some point. But it hardly compares to what I've seen in the south.

 

It's hard to measure which is "more" racist. Anywhere you go, you can find examples of racism.

But Chicago has a pretty rank history. When he tried opening up housing in Chicago, MLK was shocked by how "pernicious" the racism was there. Da Mare hoodwinked by doing what he always did -- throwing enough money, programs and patronage at a problem to get people to shut up, but not really make it go away, and do so without upsetting white people. His son isn't of that category, but there are a lot of people in Chicago who were around at that time, and trust me, they've had an influence on their children and grandchildren. Heck, the mayoral race that elected Harold Washington completely ripped the city in two. More whites are polite enough not to use the n-word in public, but the scars are still pretty deep on every side.

Michelle Obama would have been a toddler when MLK was in town, and a college student during the Washington election. And her formative years were when her South Shore neighborhood went from 95% white to 95% black, in a matter of 10 years.

 

Are we talking about the same Chicago that has had its city government controlled for decades by the Democrat party? That Chicago? I thought only Republicans were racist...

 

Why can't we say she comes off as an "angry woman" which she has been at times, rather than paint it as a racist remark? Said Clinton supporters (oh, this must be racist too): Obama has been given a pass by the media as a whole because he's black.

 

I don't much care whether Michelle Obama is likable any more than I'd care that Patti Davis was, for a time, the black sheep of the Reagan clan.

 

It should also be pointed out that in the NYT article it says that the "tape rumor" was started by a Clinton supporter, not a republican.