Where are Michelle Obama's feminist defenders?

By GottaLaff

I just read two pieces in the Washington Post that got me riled up on behalf of Michelle Obama. My personal opinion of her? From everything I've seen, she is someone to be admired and respected. She's smart, accomplished, eloquent, confident, and an obviously loving wife and mother. She's be a superb First Lady and is already an asset to the public discourse. And boy, is there a lot of public discourse about her. First, from The Gene Pool:

So I started reading other Michelle-bashing on The Web. It's pretty intense, and equally willfully ignorant. [...] Ms. Obama's 1985 undergraduate senior thesis from Princeton [...] presents a well-articulated and completely reasonable argument, certainly for 1985. On the Web, it is treated as though it was a call for global race riots. Part of the explanation is that this sort of thing is what passes for political discourse in a ridiculously polarized society. But I think part of it is deeper and darker.

And this from Mary C. Curtis:

An educated, successful lawyer, devoted wife and caring mother has been labeled "angry" and unpatriotic and snidely referred to as Barack Obama's "baby mama."

Democrats, Republicans, independents, everyone should be offended.

And this black woman is wondering: Where are Obama's feminist defenders?

Where, indeed? She goes on:

But just as you didn't have to be for Clinton to decry the sexism in the coverage of her campaign, you don't have to be an Obama supporter to defend Michelle Obama against similar treatment. [...]

I've long been frustrated, as a black woman and a feminist, with our national conversation. I didn't hear the cause speaking up for women of color or for women who have always worked in blue-collar or service jobs. Choice was not their issue.

The woman who employed my educated mother to clean her house never quite saw her as a sister in the struggle for equality.

Just as the Rutgers women's basketball team was miscast by Don Imus, Obama is being labeled something she clearly is not. Her achievements are being dismissed.

But in America, there's seldom a cost for disrespecting black women.

I'm waiting for feminists who speak of second-class citizenship and being pushed to the back of the bus to remember the civil rights movement that gave birth to those words. After all, it was a black woman, Rosa Parks, who took her seat up front and pulled others there, too.

I'm not holding my breath, though. [...] Yet when an African American made a different kind of history, it seems that feminists can't share in the triumph.

They don't have to vote for the husband to defend the wife.

Here are a few of the comments from both pieces:

• It seems fairly obvious to me. She's well-educated, independent, intelligent, speaks her mind, and won't be a "traditional" First Lady like the Bushes.
• She has thoughts! And ideas! And can express them in an intelligent fashion! Run for the hills (where women stay in the kitchen and make sandwiches)!
• She will be well-received as soon as Barak has an affair, and she's on-stage with him for his apology.
  Then she'll be welcomed as part of the club.
• Like most educated women in the American job market, both Ms Obama and Clinton have encountered the sexism crap we've all experienced, much of it easy to laugh off. But I doubt either of them has ever been seriously blocked in their careers by sexism. Racism, on the other hand.......
• Michelle Obama can be the first lady--or she can decide to be a victim. She really can't be both because the voters are not going to be intimidated into voting for anyone.
• [In response to some very ugly comments] Wow! I'm really amazed at all the hateful comments about Michelle. It really more than illustrates the author's point. Michelle really hasn't done much different than any other first lady so I have to assume it's because of her race. Really sad.

Your turn.