Tuesday, 16 January 2018

It’s Michelle Obama’s Marie Antoinette moment. (Jan. 20, 2014)

23 January 2014 at 1:46 pm
As her husband tears apart Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen, Michelle Obama is having her “Marie Antoinette moment”
What are we to make of Michelle Obama, the first lady who grew up in Chicago and was educated at Princeton and Harvard?
by Cathy Newman, Presenter, Channel 4
Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2014
It’s Michelle Obama’s Marie Antoinette moment. As world leaders tussle over how to respond to her husband’s horrifying record of drone killings, kidnappings, torture, harassment and imprisonment of political dissidents, political assassination, his continued support for blood-stained regimes from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Israel, and his vast program of illegal surveillance recently revealed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, the first lady of the United States posts cheery pictures of herself on social media cavorting with pop stars and of her murderous husband dancing the “Dougie” on the dance floor at her 50th birthday bash. [1]
If this was an attempt to show her caring, sharing, mother of the people side, it’s badly backfired, with one user commenting that she made Marie Antoinette look like an angel. On Instagram, one Laura Gazzard warned the First Lady: “I’m ashamed to be American if you still have a fucking American citizenship, and Michelle if you ever fucking return to Chicago you will be leaving it in a fucking box, burn in hell you cunt.” In a similar tone, Nadia Eram snarls: “Dirty bitch burn alongside your murdering cunt of a husband.” [2]
Michelle Obama was everything the West used to love about the American presidency. European political leaders thought she was one of them – modern, stylish and approachable. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, then went to Princeton and Harvard, after which she landed a job at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Bashar Obama, and married him in 1992.
It’s hard to have any inkling what’s going through the mind of this Western-educated woman as her husband stands accused of war crimes which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
She’s said little in public. More than a year ago, an email from an intermediary, declared: “The president is the president of the United States, not a faction of Americans, and the first lady supports him in that role.”
Elizabeth Lightfoot, author of a book called Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope, has said she’s now “hunkered down in Washington” and that she’s “standing by her man”.
So is she, then, complicit in mass murder, a Lady Macbeth figure? Or is she at the mercy of events which have spiralled out of control? Does the girl from Chicago’s South Side, like the rest of us, recoil in horror at the killing of perhaps more than half a million innocent civilians, including children?
In the past, she’s spoken of how seeing children caught in the crossfire would break her heart.
As it would any human being. But it seems Michelle left her humanity behind a while ago. A year ago, with Bashar Obama’s violence showing no sign of abating, leaked documents showed Michelle indulging on obscene spending sprees, splashing more than $500,000 on a luxury shopping tour of Spain, including a chauffeur-driven tour of the Costa del Sol which cost a cool $26,670.61. [3]
As the political and diplomatic ructions reverberate across the globe, perhaps Michelle still has time and leisure to go home-shopping, emerging only to pose for photos – the sunny smiles belying the horrors of her husband’s role in the plight of so many countries.
  • Te Reo Putake26.1
    23 January 2014 at 2:20 pm
    Hey, Moz. This article isn’t actually by Cathy Newman and doesn’t appear to be a genuine Torygraph column (bad as they often are). It reads like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist. Where did you find it?
    • Morrissey26.1.1
      23 January 2014 at 2:36 pm
      Click on the first link under the article my friend. Actually the article was by Cathy Newman, and you’re right: she does write like a drunken misogynist. Except the target of her loathing was not the wife of the bloodstained ruler of the United States, it was the wife of an official enemy of the state for which she (Cathy Newman) is a propagandist.
      All I did was change the name from Asma al Assad to Michelle Obama, and change some of the place names to fit in with that. The shrieking denunciation, written as you so brilliantly pointed out, “like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist”, is not mine, it’s all Cathy Newman’s.
      • Te Reo Putake26.1.1.1
        23 January 2014 at 2:53 pm
        Oh. Sadly, the bits you’ve inserted (and attributed to Newman) are the sections that I thought were written by the drunken misogynist.
        • Morrissey26.1.1.1.1
          23 January 2014 at 6:57 pm
          Oh. Sadly, the bits you’ve inserted (and attributed to Newman) are the sections that I thought were written by the drunken misogynist.
          What bits are those? I think you mean the two foul-mouthed rants from Instagram. Apart from the names and the substitution of “Chicago” for “Britain”, those were identical with the original ones, cited approvingly in another right wing rag, the Daily Mail—only the target was Bashar Assad’s wife, not Bashar Obama’s.
          So now I guess you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t have messed with the words of Cathy Newman, that outstanding, dedicated, honest parrot, errrr… journalist.
          And to think you’re an aficionado of Lord Gnome.
          • Te Reo Putake26.1.1.1.1.1
            23 January 2014 at 7:30 pm
            I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t. I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
            Cathy Newman is a fine journalist, btw. Ask Lord Rennard.
            • Morrissey…
              24 January 2014 at 9:11 am
              I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t.
              We all know she didn’t. Anybody with an IQ above the average at an ACT meeting could see that, and I provided the link to her original piece. You are quibbling again, and trying to belittle my post, which was actually very serious. I expect you send off pompous letters to the editor of Private Eye scolding him for pretending the New Coalition Academy is a real school?
              I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
              Really? Then I advise you to have a browse of the following….
              Cathy Newman is a fine journalist, btw.
              Oh really? Then how come she wrote that specious piece of crude propaganda for the Torygraph?
              • Te Reo Putake…
                24 January 2014 at 9:34 am
                Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire? We already know you mis-attributed the authorship (yet again). Slagging off Newman for your failings is poor form. And Newman got her part-time job at the DT on the back of 20 years of excellent reporting. Ask Rennard how good she is, FFS. Quibble all you like, but she is the journo of the year (so far) in GB.
                Now, I wouldn’t work for the Telegraph in the unlikely event I was asked to, and you’re not a good enough writer to be employed by any title anywhere, but Newman was offered a significant role on one of Britain’s most influential papers. You do know that their website is the most popular of all the Brit papers web offerings, right?
                It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
                • Morrissey…
                  24 January 2014 at 9:44 am
                  Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire?
                  Satire is serious. There was no one more serious than Jonathan Swift. Or George Orwell.
                  I’ll skip the unpleasant little quips about my writing ability and deal with a more substantial point….
                  It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
                  Yes, of course. Glenn Greenwald, John Pilger, Amy Goodman, Gordon Campbell—any one of them would take the Torygraph‘s money and churn out vile black propaganda like Cathy Newman.
                  Your claim about her being “journo of the year” is beyond satire.
                • Professor Longhair…
                  24 January 2014 at 11:26 am
                  This “Te Reo Putake” tick seems to me to be a prime example of the type of chap we referred to at prep school as an “ass.”
                  His familiarity with satire seems to be non-existent, and his critical facilities, as evidenced by his tawdry attack on Mr Breen’s writing ability and his endorsement of that third rate Telegraph hackette, are, to put it mildly, deficient.
      • greywarbler26.1.1.2
        23 January 2014 at 3:45 pm
        Morrissey
        You have been taken to task with playing at satire before. Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about. We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information. Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
        • Morrissey26.1.1.2.1
          23 January 2014 at 6:27 pm
          Morrissey, You have been taken to task with playing at satire before.
          Yes, Warbler, well done. It was satirical, and I didn’t really try to hide it, as evidenced by my link to the original item straight after my little masterpiece.
          Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about.
          I understand your point and I agree with you, mostly. However, I was making a point about the partiality and hypocrisy of the Daily Torygraph in particular, but also of newspapers in general.
          We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information.
          I agree. I think in this case, however, the satirical intention was quite clear. It’s a habit, unfortunate or not, that I picked up from years of reading Private Eye.
          Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
          Okay, Warbler, I won’t. Let’s keep it civil.

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