<p>
Wow…I hadn’t seen this before. It’s from a video on youtube (Arrogant Michelle Obama Bashes America at USC) where she is addressing a group at U of South Carolina. It’s not dated.</p>
<p>Stickershock: Did you actually watch the video? I tried and got rickrolled (just like the “whitey” video). In other words, it’s a fake.</p>
<p>Edit: I managed to look at the tape. What I saw was Michelle Obama talking to a mostly black audience and urging its members to take advantage of the diversity on their campus, not to “stick to their own kind.” I don’t know what the “That’s America line” was leading to. A diverse country? Or one where people stick to their own comfort zone? I don’t know. So I will withhold judgment. </p>
<p>This is interesting because I was going to start a (hopefully) humorous thread about campaign demographics. I won’t now.</p>
<p>Actually the Google search OP specified has a video of Michelle saying stuff that is rather pretty good.</p>
<p>“That’s America” follows her statement that it’s easier to stereotype & hold onto misconceptions because it justifies one’s ignorance. She’s saying that Americans are ignorant & bigoted.</p>
<p>That’s much different than talking about “comfort zone,” which is an innocuous term.</p>
<p>I listened to the tape, and I agree with her. Ignorance is a big problem in this country, and so is prejudice. Not just racial prejudice, however, but prejudice against different religious beliefs, sexual orientations, demographic prejudice, etc. and none of us is immune.
Being reminded that we all have prejudices, and trying to step out a bit and see things from another perspective, is a good thing for college students to hear. It’s not just an American folly, though, it’s human nature.</p>
<p>What was “disturbing” to you about the video, StickerShock? It doesn’t seem to have disturbed you in the least. In fact, you seem plenty pleased about the chance to share it. </p>
<p>Where exactly do you live, that’s free of stereotypes and misconceptions, and of people who don’t care to hear anything they don’t already know? And, if that’s where you’re from, why don’t you act like it? Why the gleeful gotchas?</p>
<p>Actually, SS lives in a town where an appalling incident of racial prejudice occurred a couple years ago. I have many friends in that town, and I am sure that the vast majority of residents were very troubled by it,and I am equally sure SS was, but I think it’s also safe to say that it was a good reminder for those of us in the majority to understand what minority folk deal with on some scale every day.</p>
<p>The racial prejudice of which Garland speaks was more pervasive than just one apalling incident. In a nutshell, a private pool club existed for many, many years & quietly excluded blacks & other minorities. (The owner would only accept membership after meeting with both husband & wife. If he didn’t like what he saw, the last spot would have suddenly been filled.) Once the clown placed an ad for members, he lost his private status & the NAACP & the state civil rights division were given a window of opportunity to go after him. (A few blatant fresh examples of discrimination were the catalyst.) Once the news hit the papers, plenty of townsfolk picketed & the club was sold. </p>
<p>Garland is correct that I found it troubling; I had refused to join & over the years annoyed many friends by questioning their judgment in holding membership in the club. My kids got through the hot summers with a sprinkler & a duimp out wading pool. They survived & I never had to feel shame or guilt about knowingly supporting a segregated business. </p>
<p>But even though my town has this ugly spot in its history, I would never say, “That’s StickerShockville.” There are too many fine people & wonderful neighbors living here to paint with such a broad brush. Talking about ignorance & misconceptions, and then saying, “That’s America” speaks volumes about Michele Obama.</p>
<p>You’re just looking for a reason to not vote for Obama.</p>
<p>Anyway, Michelle Obama said this to a crowd of African Americans. She was essentially saying that we African Americans need to quit complaining about things and actually vote to change them.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but that may very well be America as experienced by Michelle Obama and by the young black students in her audience. And not just on the receiving end. After all, in her talk she was telling THEM to extend themselves beyond their own stereotypes and preconceptions. Her point seems to have been that black students’ perception that others were stereotyping and misconceiving them was, on their side, a stereotype and misconception that they should try to go beyond.</p>
<p>I think that’s a good and important message, and that she’s an effective communicator of it. I can’t imagine that you find it objectionable.</p>
<p>What you are doing here is the worst sort of “gotcha!” political discourse, and it’s far beneath you. You are taking five words completely out of context, extending them to an absurd, absolute statement, and then professing sham horror that this public figure holds such inappropriate views, notwithstanding the mountain of other evidence – including of course this particular speech as a whole – that she doesn’t. Michelle Obama didn’t say that America is only ignorant and bigoted, or that ignorance and bigotry are its primary characteristics. At most, in context, she was saying that stereotypes and misunderstanding exist in America, on both sides of the color line. It’s awfully hard to argue with that. Rhetorically, “That’s America” is no different from “That’s life” here, or “That’s reality”. That IS life, that IS reality, and everyone involved was living in America at the time.</p>
<p>You don’t have to like Barack Obama or Michelle Obama. There are plenty of principled reasons not to. But this isn’t one of them. This is crass political distortion.</p>
<p>And it borders unpleasantly on worse than that. Because what you are teeing off on is an example of Michelle Obama speaking to black students out of the experience of being a black woman in America. She is acknowledging their shared experience, and challenging them to follow her in taking a positive view. What you are choosing to object to is conventional discourse in the African-American community – both the acknowledgement of prejudice, and turning it back on her audience to exhort them not to mirror it back. In other words, you are objecting to Michelle Obama talking like a black person, out of her experience as a black person, notwithstanding that you can’t possibly object to what she’s really trying to say. </p>
<p>I applaud you for taking a principled stand in your hometown. I disagree with you on all sorts of issues, but I have no doubt that you are an intelligent, moral person who is trying to do the right thing all the time. But rather than subjecting Michelle Obama’s speeches to a fine-screen, phrase-by-phrase political correctness audit by your own lights, why don’t you listen to what she is saying and ponder what differences between her experience and yours might have produced your different ways of talking about America.</p>
<p>Thank you, Newjack! Seeing something in context makes a world of difference, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Agree with Post #6.</p>
<p>SS–of course it doesn’t represent SSville (and I tried to be general in reference to the incident because of privacy concerns). Nor does it represent the town I’m in, but it, too, has it’s share of ugly incidents, as all do.</p>
<p>My point is that, for those folks like the ones who were plaintiffs in the lawsuit, what is random to you or me, is every day for them. Just a small minority of that kind of ugliness in stores, on the street, in schools, in workplaces all over SS-ville, and Garland-ville, and all the other towns around us, and in NJ, and in America, multiplies into a steady experience for those who are the targets. It doesn’t take nearly a majority of SS-villers, or Americans in general, to make an American experience that can be very wearing and troubling for folks just trying to get through the day–when kids are turned away from a birthday pool party because of the color of their skin in 21st century America, yeah, there’s a problem.</p>
<p>Wow - listening to an 8 minute speech and taking about 5 seconds of it completely out of context and making a judgement based on that - that’s disturbing.</p>
<p>An excellent speech if you take the time to listen to it.</p>
<p>NO such problems in our little NJ burb. Here is Utopia; if, of course, your utopia worked out to be a dreamy mix of dull, duller and dullest.</p>
<p>Look, when you live outside Metropolis it comes with the lay of the land.</p>
<p>An excellent speech; clearly this was a marital match made in heaven.</p>
<p>Also quite clever.
The insinuation that “the opposite of change is fear” was a brilliant bit of marketing spin. Rovian. Good for her.</p>
<p>Also, how clever is the aphoristic “tell the old folks to take the plastic off the furniture.” </p>
<p>Of course, if the young whipper-snappers in the audience actually did it themselves in their own abodes, their unprotected furniture would be quickly abused by cigarette and joint burns, pizza, beer coffee stains, shoe prints and vomit: As it most certainly is.</p>
<p>This is of course why the frugal grandparent, raised in the frugality of the black or rural white community, had become the way they were in the first place --minimalists, they’ve come to appreciate the little they have and conserve it with pride; which is to say, they are naturally and rightly conservative where it counts.</p>
<p>I do find myself --with Stickershock-- however, being a bit put off by these repeated “that’s America” memes. It’s a bit lazy and dull.</p>
<p>In these and other moments she sounds more like a union or community organizer --for those that have not had the pleasure. </p>
<p>Still, wonderful speaker. Very smart woman. </p>
<p>Impressive and nice to hear.</p>
<p>Woodwork, your writing is sounding more and more like an old pal of mine; it’s interesting to watch.</p>
<p>We could all use a few good friends…and on the off chance that your pal was dashing, witty and uncommonly appealing, I am very happy to oblige your recollections.:)</p>
<p>Well dont know her enough for dashing, but certainly witty.</p>
<p>This thread could serve as an accurate exemplar for political discussion in America as a whole. You start with your snide comment professing to be “disturbed” by a comment made by Michelle Obama. The quote is then exposed as having been taken out of context; when anyone with 8 minutes of attention span listens to what she actually said it is revealed to have been not only unexceptional but in fact morally upstanding and laudable. </p>
<p>The OP goes silent, and Woodwork does a riff on plastic furniture covers, snottily dissing young people as a whole, apropos of… what?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, all of the the right wing drones will cluck and repeat to each other what a horrible, “disturbing” thing Michelle Obama said. None of them will actually ever listen to what she actually said in context, they’ll just move on to their next hit piece.</p>
<p>Sad. Oh, so sad.</p>