What's behind Michele Obama's surge in polularity?

[Sasha Fierce]

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

First Lady Michelle Obama is even more popular than her husband, who has a hefty majority of Americans supporting him. A new Gallup poll show’s the first lady’s favorable rating at 72 percent compared to 69 percent for the president.

Also, Michelle Obama’s unfavorable ratings are much lower than the president’s — 17 percent for her versus 28 percent for him.

What a difference a year makes… On the campaign trail last winter and spring, Michelle Obama was at times considered a political liability. Some portrayed her as an “angry black woman,” while others didn’t like the way she talked about things like her husband’s dirty socks. And many questioned Michelle’s patriotism when she said she only recently became proud of her country.

But all that has changed… Another recent poll shows the first lady’s favorability ratings are up 28 percent since the summer. The most striking part of the Michelle “surge” is that she’s made the biggest gains among Republicans who viewed her negatively last year.

People are drawn to this woman; she is the real thing, and they get it. They like her focus on children and family, her devotion to her own daughters and husband, her visits to schools, soup kitchens, federal agencies, and her planting of the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt.

Michelle Obama is rapidly moving to displace a couple of the more revered women of our recent past. The British media are positively beside themsevles over Mrs. Obama’s visit; and they know something about how to get beside themselves. They are comparing our new first lady to both Princess Diana and Jacqueline Kennedy. Actually, she’s cooler than either of them.

 

[Kiranga]

First ladies don't have to make tough, antagonizing, unpopular decisions.

Like bail banks out and things like that.Hata Laura Bush alikuwa more popular kuliko George. I think it is part of the unwritten benefits of being a woman, sort of like a reward for carrying babies, people tend to be extra nice to you than the man who does not know the pain of labor.

Of course the lady must be sensible too, a junkie first lady like Betty Ford is hardly the object of inspiration, well, with a good spin master even that can be marketed.

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

I honestly don't know what the fuss is all about with Michelle My Belle....to me she's just another angry black woman.

 

[Kiranga]

I honestly don't know what the fuss is all about with Michelle My Belle....to me she's just another angry black woman.

Michelle is so angry/ aggressive Barack is afraid of her, alisema mwenyewe (Michelle don't play that).

Either that or he was being inappropriately self deprecating.

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

Michelle is so angry/ aggressive Barack is afraid of her, alisema mwenyewe (Michelle don't play that).

Either that or he was being inappropriately self deprecating.

I think it's the latter..

 

[Sasha Fierce]

Really i am not surprised for all you to say that besides its party of the game right.Look at what happened to Theresa Heinz-Kerry they accused her same thing i dont know was is it because alikuwa rich woman?besides hata Hillary Clinton pia once was criticized for this and where all this come from?Fox news! a non partisan televison network theyr are reporters are just angry like baby mama Fiasco.

Me personally i do admire Michelle obama is a smart and a succesfully black woman on paper -- college grad, married to an equally successful black man, a working but attentive mother, financially secure, immaculately turned out. But as soon as she began revealing herself as a person and airing her views a bit, she began shape-shifting in the public eye into another kind of black woman altogether: angry, obstinate, mouthy -- a stereotypical harpy lurking in all black and white people.

 

[Lusajo]

She is "REAL" yaani hayuko Fake. Ndio maana anapendwa.

 

[Kiranga]

She is "REAL" yaani hayuko Fake. Ndio maana anapendwa.

Hamna mtu aliye "REAL" kama angekuwa real kikweli angetembea uchi.

It may sound like an overkill, but the truth is we all have to dance to society's tune of niceties.Being from the south side of Chicago ana hiyo authenticity factor zaidi ya wengine, but the question is how authentic is authenticity?

In politics everything is calculated, even the small spontaneous moments.Even her "realness" is calculated.Otherwise angeshasema mengi ambayo ni politically incorrect.

 

[kui]

Y'all wrong except Lusajo!
Do you KNOW her to paint her that wrong picture?

 

[Kiranga]

Y'all wrong except Lusajo!
Do you KNOW her to paint her that wrong picture?

If you come with that "knowing her" angle, the same applies to you.Do you know her to know that we paint the wrong picture? How do you know her?

Why is that picture wrong? Because it does not subscribe to the groupthink that is so elated to see a black woman in the White House it will not asses her honestly?

You are oversimplifying it.

 

[The Truth]

Well not everyone is fond of Michelle. See the video below

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3QZ7ljo3fo]YouTube - Tammy Bruce Calls The Obamas "Trash In The White House"[/ame]

 

[Pascal Mayalla]

Nilikuwa naangalia CNN this morning, wamemuelezea Michelle kama wanamke aliyeleta mvuto mkubwa zaidi kwenye mkutano wa G.20. kwanza habow kwa malkia, pili alimkumbatia kwa kumpitishia mkono kwa nyuma kama wanaume wanavyowashika madame wao. kwa malkia kushikwa hivyo ni kinyume cha protokali za kifalme. kitu kizuri, malkia hakukasirika,bali alimkumbatia. kukumbatiwa na malkia kwa waingereza ni kukubalika.
ukweli unabaki kuwa Michelle ni bright young mother, well educated, very loving, and very genuine.
She deserves everything.

 

[Lusajo]

Hamna mtu aliye "REAL" kama angekuwa real kikweli angetembea uchi.

It may sound like an overkill, but the truth is we all have to dance to society's tune of niceties.Being from the south side of Chicago ana hiyo authenticity factor zaidi ya wengine, but the question is how authentic is authenticity?

In politics everything is calculated, even the small spontaneous moments.Even her "realness" is calculated.Otherwise angeshasema mengi ambayo ni politically incorrect.

It is not where u from, it is where u at! na kufanya hiuvyo sio kwamba kwa sababu katokea huko, no ndivyo hivyo alivyo. Hatuko zama za mawe sasa hivi kuanza kutembea uchi ili kuonyesha u-real. How many politician wanachemka kwenye suala ra realness!? Like mumewe ndivyo alivyo. So dont hate the player, hate the ____. The whole world is saying she's real (At least most)

 

[Lusajo]

Michelle is so angry/ aggressive Barack is afraid of her, alisema mwenyewe (Michelle don't play that).

Either that or he was being inappropriately self deprecating.

She's playing her role, as a wife. And thats how it suppose to be. Hiyo ya kwamba Pres Obama is afraid of her siijui, it seems your close to them to know all that, au huwa unamsikiliza Rush na kuangalia Fixed nyuzi

 

[Lusajo]

Well not everyone is fond of Michelle. See the video below

YouTube - Tammy Bruce Calls The Obamas "Trash In The White House"

What do u expect from Laura Ingraham Show!!?

 

[Kiranga]

She's playing her role, as a wife. And thats how it suppose to be. Hiyo ya kwamba Pres Obama is afraid of her siijui, it seems your close to them to know all that, au huwa unamsikiliza Rush na kuangalia Fixed nyuzi

You need to watch Chris Rock's latest special and hear what he says about a black first lady, his satire is on point.

Kama Michelle ana play her role labda sasa, kuna wakati alimuumbua mume wake kwenye nationally televised interview.I would not call that playing her role.

Just because Michelle is a black woman, and Barack is a black president, that does not mean they will be above scrutiny from black people.

 

[Kiranga]

Below is what the most liberal magazine has to say.

Subject to Debate
By Katha Pollitt
This article appeared in the April 20, 2009 edition of The Nation.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/pollitt

April 2, 2009



What is this?

Someday we'll get beyond obsessing about
first ladies--and by "we" I mean the sort of journalists who use "we" to mean "the vast majority of Americans" when it is usually just themselves and their friends. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama is getting more bouquets from the media than any woman in public life since Mother Teresa. Her clothes, her looks, her height (six feet!), her curves, her delightful combination of warmth, simplicity, charm, dignity, humor and smarts. Gone are the days when National Review put her on the cover as "Mrs. Grievance," when Maureen Dowd wondered aloud if Michelle's wifely jokes about Barack's foibles were "emasculating" and when Christopher Hitchens wrote in Slate that her undergraduate thesis, "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community," was not "written in any known language" and used it to tie her to Louis Farrakhan, a pair of African dictators and the Holocaust. Remember how Obama supporters fumed about that New Yorker cover cartoon of Barack as an Al Qaeda terrorist and Michelle as a rifle-toting Black Panther? People wouldn't get that it was satire! Seems pretty silly now, doesn't it? Yesterday's fist-bumping radical is today's mom in chief.

Well, not quite. After all, Michelle Obama is still black, although only wingnuts and black people mention it--most whites are much too polite. And she's a woman, too, which always makes for trouble. So while half the country swoons over her Vogue cover and her community service in schools and homeless shelters, there are those who feel just a little bit threatened. There are her bare arms, for example--they have muscles! "In the taxi," Dowd confided in a recent column, "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.'" Brooks didn't like "the V-neck sleeveless, eggplant dress" she wore to Barack's address to Congress, either. A supersmart black woman who's also fashionable and fit--terrifying.

And then there's this developing story line--call it the Goldilocks and the Three Bears syndrome. Hillary Clinton was too ambitious; Laura Bush (who?) was too retro; but Michelle has the woman thing just right. As David Samuels writes in New York magazine:

There are clear limits to Michelle's ambition. She went to excellent schools, got decent grades, stayed away from too much intellectual heavy lifting, and held a series of practical, modestly salaried jobs while accommodating her husband's wilder dreams and raising two lovely daughters. In this, she is a more practical role model for young women than Hillary Clinton, blending her calculations about family and career with an expectation of normal personal happiness.

Would you like some manly condescension with that factual misinformation, ladies? By all means, avoid "too much intellectual heavy lifting"! If Samuels regards $273,618--Michelle Obama's salary in her last year as head of community affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals--as modest, he must be the richest magazine journalist in the world. Michelle Obama, who made almost twice as much as her husband the senator, earned more than 99 percent of the population, and 98 percent of men. Moreover, she did so while raising two small children, often without her husband, who was off legislating in Springfield and Washington. That Samuels, like a 1950s home ec teacher, advises "young women" to keep their ambitions "practical" if they want to be happy shows just how disturbing Hillary Clinton--or rather the nightmare fantasy of Hillary Clinton--has been to certain male psyches. Because what if women wanted to be the ones with the wild dreams? What if they wanted men to be the enablers and nurturers? That would be awful.

Just after the election Rebecca Traister wrote a terrific piece in Salon lamenting the "momification" of Michelle Obama. Probably it was inevitable: "In part because of the legacy left her by Hillary and her detractors," Traister observed, "powerful couples must now tread as far as possible from the 'two for one' talk, lest the female half get smacked with a nutcracker." Besides, there was that Angry Black Woman image to banish. It might have been politically necessary, and for all I know Michelle Obama is having the time of her life--unlike most professional women who take (let's hope) eight years off, she doesn't have to worry about the cost to her career. Some days I think just being a highly visible admirable black woman is a social cause all by itself, given how little of that side of black life most white Americans see. Still, there's something depressing about the joy and relief with which the high-end media have greeted Michelle's makeover from accomplished professional and outspoken social critic to new-traditionalist homebody. They're not only not ready for Hillary Clinton, they're apparently not even ready for Eleanor Roosevelt.

In the American Prospect, Dana Goldstein recently argued that being first lady should be treated like the job it is and awarded a salary. Michelle is "a public face of the Obama administration," working behind the scenes to rally support for her husband's programs--and she endures a schedule of ceremonial duties and photo ops that would put most women on Prozac and that are not optional. She can't decide to skip dinner with the Democratic chairmen of Congressional committees and watch TV with the girls instead. If first ladies were paid--Goldstein suggests that the money could come from lowering the president's $400,000 salary--we might respect them more.

Meanwhile, we should be counting ourselves lucky that 
Michelle Obama is working for free and let her wear whatever she wants.

 

[Sasha Fierce]

You need to watch Chris Rock's latest special and hear what he says about a black first lady, his satire is on point.

what did he say?if you happen to listen then you should tell as it is than giving us some research to do.why dont you go ahead and enlighten us?

Kama Michelle ana play her role labda sasa, kuna wakati alimuumbua mume wake kwenye nationally televised interview.I would not call that playing her role.

You are not being fair.How in planet Michelle amuumbue mume wake on national TV?Kiranga now you are just hating on michelle.I have never heard Michelle say anything bad to harm her husband.Weka clip tusikilize.

Just because Michelle is a black woman, and Barack is a black president, that does not mean they will be above scrutiny from black people.

Barack ni president of united state na siyo president wa black peole or African people as you think.Hiyo ni imagination ya watu weusi kufukiria kuwa because he is african president then he will be close to african american/african than white and latinos.That is loose loose situation.

Just reading you comment nimekuja kugundua kuwa unaonekana upo so bitter with michelle and Obama for a no reason.

Lets be really she is hot and presenting it.

 

[Kiranga]

Haya, unataka vya kutafuniwa, ona hapo chini rough excerpts kutoka that 60 Minutes Interview, angalia nilipo bold

What Michele said to Barack about his Washington digs
November 17th, 2008 - 4:59 pm ICT by ANI

Chicago, Nov.17 (ANI): During the more than two-year-long campaign to win the bid for the White House, Democrat Barack Obama split his time between his family home in Chicago where Michelle and the girls lived, and a very modest apartment in Washington, which nearly burned down.
Both Barack and Michelle Obama had a few words to say on what they felt like living in that apartment, revealing it to CBS 60 minutes during an interview over the weekend.
I used to get teased, not just by Michelle, but by my own staff. They"d say, "You know, you"re the only senator that has a worse apartment than your 25-year-old staff people." Eventually, I think, Secret Service kind of looked at me like, you know, once the building caught fire, and the ceiling caved in, I said
When Michelle was asked whether she had ever lived in the apartment, she said: I visited, but I didn"t sleep there.Barack Obama said: She insisted on a hotel room.
Michelle Obama retorted: I saw it. I saw it long enough to know that I wasn"t gonna stay there.
Obama said it was a one bedroom studio apartment.
It had kind of the vintage, college dorm, pizza, he said
Michelle said: It reminded me of a little better version of the apartment you were in when we first started dating. That was a dump too.Obama: Right near Harold''s Chicken Shack.
Michelle:Yeah.
Obama: Yeah. That''s when I had the car with the-the hole in it.
Michelle: And you could see the sidewalk, because the rust had gone through.Obama: The air-conditioning.
Michelle: So that was my side. I would look and see the ground going past. And I still married him.
Obama: That''s how I knew she loved me. It wasn"t for my money.
When asked what it was like to get their first look at their new home, the White House, Michelle said: Well, first of all, Laura Bush was just so gracious. She is a really sweet person. And couldn"t have been more excited and enthusiastic about the tour. So that was wonderful.
And her entire team, their team has been working closely just to make us feel welcome. But the White House is beautiful. It is awe-inspiring. It is. What I felt walking through there was that it is a great gift and an honor to be able to live here. And you know we want to make sure that we"re upholding what that house stands for, she added. (ANI)

 

[Sasha Fierce]

LOL! So youc all that an insult?.She was trying to express herself on national tv that she loved Obama for who he is but not for what he has or achieved.I dont see anything wrong for her to say that.Angemuacha katika hali ile mngeanza ooh she is a golddigger she was after his money.wouldnt you say that?.Besidies he (obama) said it byhimself kuwa he used to be teassed by not only michelle but his entire stuff so inamaa by him ssayign that amejiumbua?.unajua sisi waafrika tunapenda kuficha makucha hapo angekuwa mke wa mwafrika kasema hivyo eeh angesubiria ngwe nyumbani.