I'm sorry to waste a few moments of your life that you'll never get back criticizing this Maureen Dowd column, but the boiling misogyny disguised as faux-sisterhood is infuriating.
Unlike Hillary, who chafed at the loathed job of first lady, and Laura, who for long stretches disappeared into the helpmeet role, Michelle has soared every day, expanding the job to show us what can be accomplished by a generous spirit, a confident nature and a well-disciplined body.I also have no doubt she can talk cap-and-trade with ease and panache.
Sure sure, Dowd has to conclude with a kind of dime store gender solidarity, but it's only so she can invoke the Michelle Obama as Bride of Farrakhan stereotype that she loves so dearly:
Then the president offered a lame present of DVDs — including “Psycho” — in return for the prime minister’s cool gift of a pen holder made from the wood of the Victorian antislave vessel H.M.S. Gannet. Critics wondered if the brusqueness was because, as Mr. Obama wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” his grandfather was beaten by British colonial troops in Kenya. The press also conjured paranoia that the president’s “Lady MacBeth” had been behind the clipped treatment because, as James Delingpole snipped in a Telegraph blog, “Her broad-brush view of history associates Brits with the wicked white global hegemony responsible for the slave trade.”
Wait--because white supremacist hegemony wasn't responsible for the slave trade? Who was it, what was it, secular humanism? Too much sex and violence on television? LIBRULS? I find it fascinating that white people who, without provocation or context, accuse black people of nursing racial grudges, genuinely believe they're offering insight into someone else's actions.
In this column, Dowd lets a crew of bitter, emasculated men do the heavy lifting for her, so she can play the faux feminist with her feel-good ending. The "press" didn't conjure paranoia, "critics" didn't wonder if the president was "getting back" at Gordon Brown, the racial reactionaries in the right wing blogosphere did. The first thing most people are going to hear about the possibility that Michelle Obama conspired to diss Gordon Brown to get back at him for slavery by giving him a sub-par gift is in Dowd's column. (Think about the absurdity of that one for a moment. If you're mad enough about slavery to want to get someone back for it, a set of wack DVDs isn't going to do, feel me?) This is high-school level rumor-mongering: there is no evidence that this is true other than the deranged racism of a few wingnuts, but in order to get at Michelle without seeming petty, Dowd has to let someone else do the dirty work.
Next up is David Brooks, who needs Michelle to cover up her arms because, I can't quite figure it out:
In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.”I think Dayo Olopade has Brooks' number:
Obama’s toned arms look great, but are probably the most androgynous, least sexual part of a woman’s anatomy. So his complaint is not really about inappropriate sexuality; there’s nothing shameful (in America’s puritan sense) about being known for that “one body part.” His beef is in fact about power, of the incredibly banal corporeal variety. So Obama's "physical presence" threatens him. Yawn--we covered this with the Williams sisters. As euphemistic as he attempts to come across, I think Brooks is just being sexist.
I agree. Or rather, I think Dowd is using Brooks to be the misogynist for her, like some ingenue in a bad 80s movie standing next to a smoking car at the edge of a highway. But no one's fooled. It's 2009, Maureen: you don't need a man to be sexist for you, grow up and do it yourself.
I'm sure your arms can handle the required heavy lifting.
-- A. Serwer