Michelle Obama To Keynote Her First Fundraiser For The Democratic National Committee
Michelle Obama is set to keynote her first fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, another sign that the Obama camp and DNC are joining forces in preparation for a general election contest against a still-formidable Republican fundraising machine.
DNC spokesperson Stacie Paxton confirms to me that she'll headline the event, which is likely to be a high-profile affair and is set for Thursday night at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
The event is also a sign that Michelle is emerging as a key fundraising draw and a key promoter of party unity in the wake of the primary. Michelle has already done events designed to win over potentially disaffected Hillary supporters.
Others expected to speak at the dinner: New York First Lady Michelle Paterson and Providence Mayor David Cicilline. It's Michelle's first event with DNC chair Howard Dean, who will also speak and will introduce Michelle.
Michelle will become one of the very best First Ladies ever! She can help bring this country together.
June 24, 2008 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree so much with that. I think America is going to fall in love with this family. As I've said before - it's been a long time since we had a family this young in the White House.
June 24, 2008 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, 8 years to be exact. Obama and Michelle, I believe, are both older than WJC and HRC were when they were elected in 1992. Let's not get crazy here.
They only "seem" younger, probaably because they are closer in age to you and me than the Clintons ever were. Just my two cents.
June 24, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very well.
I won't get carried away.
America is going to fall in love with this family just because.
They are damn nice family and I don't think he looks at other women.
June 24, 2008 4:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
and I don't think he looks at other women
Ouch.
Us magazine is reporting increased sales for this week's edition with the Obamas on the cover.
Can't buy publicity like that.
I don't ever buy Us, but I did, yesterday, just to boost sales ('cause, you know, that one magazine sold in Danbury, CT would just bust all the records, I'm sure...) and it's a pretty syrupy sweet story on the Obamas. Again, can't buy publicity like that.
June 24, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're so right about the publicity.
I really really like her. I haven't been overly fond of many First Ladies( though I used to defend Hillary Clinton against almost everyone I knew at one time) but I really like Michelle Obama and I think this will be great fun.
June 24, 2008 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was waiting for my car to be repaired, and I read the US article (the alternative was automotive magazines) and I was astonished at what a nice puff piece the article was. Really seemed to go out of their way to make the Obamas seem like ordinary folk. Barack adores Michelle, Michelle used to put Oscar Meyer Snackables in her children's lunch boxes, etc. US really knows how to do this, make people seem normal and approachable and hugely appealing. I guess that's what they do. But does Michelle really watch Dick Van Dyke reruns????
I took it as an excellent sign that we have fallen into a much better, parallel universe, and are no longer in that place I thought we were in where a black family would be just too weird to ever seem remotely mainstream.
That said, I think they are actually a fairly normal family... actually, come to think of it, it is possible the Bushes are fairly normal, too. The Clintons seemed very devoted to protecting Chelsea... I guess we have to go back to GHW Bush for a presidential parent who really screwed up his kid.
June 24, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, yeah, but the Obama girls would be the youngest kids in the White House since, what, the Kennedy kids. (Both are younger than Chelsea was & Sasha is even younger than Amy Carter was.) It would indeed be a very young first family
I think the fact that they had their kids later (like many in their generation) helps fuel the perception of Obama as "fresh" and "youthful" (or "inexperienced" and "untested" if you prefer), even though he's been in politics in one way or another for 25 years.
June 24, 2008 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of here time at Princeton..."further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant." Sounds like a uniter to me.
June 24, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Something wrong with pointing out the inequities existing in the system? Personally, that kind of language is at least a bit more diplomatic (at the very least) than what the right usually ascribes to MO.
June 24, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, a college paper pointing out racial inequality at an Ivy League university in the early 1980's is proof that Michelle Obama hates white people and wants to make SFCWallace pay reparations out of his own oxycodone fund.
June 24, 2008 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, that's how a number of people think in the world, and it isn't limited to those on the right. Personally, as a lawyer, it is using parsing of language to a new extreme. In this case, applying it to a 21 year old writing a thesis. Pretty silly, if you ask me.
I'm sad SFCW won't respond to me. I'd like to trade war stories (literally).
June 24, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I respond...I'm also at work so it's off and on thoughout the day and never after 445 (that's family time).
June 24, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it Thursday already? :)
June 24, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha ha...Dude, family time is everyday once you retire...not just Thurdays antmore...I do miss the 4 day weekends though those don't exist out here.
June 24, 2008 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn, you're right. It IS Tuesday. of course, I'm out too, so nothing would matter about the family time thing for me, unelss it were Thursday. Well, here's to tomorrow and being over the hump. Cheers.
June 24, 2008 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Swing and a miss...
June 24, 2008 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder why Michelle would've felt that way at the time? Maybe one of Michelle's roommates (whose mother tried to remove her from school when she found out that Michelle was black) can explain:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/04/12/roommate_0413.html
June 24, 2008 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote a paper about Jim Crow in college. I must be a self-hating white. After all, only a racist could address institutional inequality.
June 24, 2008 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Donnelly doesn't think Obama ever picked up on her mother's behind-the-scenes maneuvering. She remembers nothing but friendly words."
Obviously that was it...
June 24, 2008 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, cause you know a smart, observant woman like MO would never pick up on subtle racial cues.
Actually I don't think MO wants reparations - as Jon Stewart asserts, they want to enslave white people. Which of course is different from the Republicans, they only want to enslave poor people.
June 24, 2008 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
MO's roommate, back then:
"Her junior year psychology paper on affirmative action concluded that the effects of "covert, deep-rooted prejudice" are enduring."
MO's roommate's mother, today:
"If I had been treated the same way blacks have been treated, I'd be resentful, too."
SFCWallace, do these quotes thus mean these two white people are "dividers," too?
Does the fact that your candidate gave a speech in Memphis on April 4, from the balcony where King was shot, make McCain a "divider" too?
June 24, 2008 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I always suspected that McCain hated white people. His radical speech in Memphis just made it obvious.
June 24, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey look, a bit of text taken completely out of context in order to make it look like it refers to something it doesn't.
I will take that as your admission of defeat.
Unfortunately, Donnelly's observation that Michelle Obama was never confrontational about race issues (despite the recognized fact that there was institutional prejudice at work) more or less completely destroys your divisive, angry black woman meme.
You make this too easy. Your brain wasn't damaged in the service was it?
June 24, 2008 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Geez...just because there was no theatrical confrontation, what makes you assume Michelle didn't detect that something might have been up?
Being female and hispanic, I myself have let things slide on by just because often times it's not worth it. That doesn't mean I didn't know what was going on.
June 24, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
But not confronting her roommate is exactly what an angry black militant would do... they hide their anger... then they write about their evidently justified sentiments in a senior thesis so only she and her professor know about it! Tricky black militants!
June 24, 2008 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you have time...when family permits, I wonder if you could describe your take on race relations in the United States. My own prejudice is that there has been a history of institutional racism with African Americans being consistently on the short end of the stick, if not lynched on the end of tree branch.
Slavery ended about 100 years before I was born and as I came of age real progress was only just beginning thanks to the Civil Rights movement and the leadership of Martin Luther King. That leadership was curtailed when a racist shot him in the head.
It has been my prejudice that African Americans have a legitimate petition to bring. Your avatar indicates that you have a military background. . Popular understanding has it that the military has treated people with greater equity. So it may be that racism has been less effective in the military than in the population at large. Its possible that lifers see race issues differently than civlilians do. This may explain your skepticism concerning Michelle Obama's statement while at Princton.
Still I can't avoid the suspicion that you are feeding or being fed by an intentional right-wing strategy to mark Michelle Obama as a reverse racist.
I ask you to check your impulse to distrust her.
June 24, 2008 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
quoting a college paper does not mean you hate white people. I wrote a paper about intelligent design and religious zealots but that doesnt mean i hate people of faith. So college papers are only to get good grade and write what you see or feel at the moment obviously the 80s weren't good times for blacks. And saying you don't like MO because of it is only fear mongering and proves you probably dont have much of a proper education
http://www.sensico.wordpress.com
June 24, 2008 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree with Tena and Obama 1st. It will also be nice to have kids running around for a change. I think she is marvellous.
June 24, 2008 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
OOH! ARMY FIGHT!
Are you happy now that the media/politicians use the word "troops," which is nothing more than a shortening of "troopers," to describe all military personel?
I sure as hell am not. But I'm still grumpy about 3ACR back in 2005.
June 24, 2008 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was meant for the good senior NCO, btw.
June 24, 2008 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
That doesn't bother me as much as the talk show hosts who say "Semper Fi" to everyone they talk to on the phone...even if you're in the Coast Guard...
June 24, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course not! Everyone's a trooper! Just what the Cav wants, right?
Yeah, the Semper Fi stuff is extremely irritating. That should be a Marine only thing. Plus, I think there is an upper limit of IQ for people who can use that phrase... ;)
June 24, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
you go girl!!!!!!
June 24, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
As Blood, Sweat & Tears would sing:
can't quit her
She's got a hold on me
She got her hand on my soul
I can't quit her
'cause I see her face everywhere I go
In the city streets, in the country fields
In the back of my mind
I know it can't be real
For a woman to possess
All the tenderness she had
But the hands of time
Keep tickin' on my back
'cause it's been so long
Since I had her back beside me,
Yeah, I know
I can't quit her
'cause in my darkest night
She comes on like a light
I can't quite her
Try as I may, with all my might
She had a woman's touch
And a young girls eyes,
And in seconds flat I was pros'lytized
Turned around,
And made to feel sweet love
But the hands of time
Keep tickin' on my back
'cause it's been so long
Since I had her back beside me
True love is somethin'
Ev'ry young boy knows about
And he fights his whole soul all the best to find some
I was a young boy
'till I held her in my arms
Now I find that I'm strung out behind some
Hey!
I can't quit her
She got her hand on me
She got a hold on my soul
'cause I see her face everywhere I go
I can't quit her, woo ooo yeah
I know
You know I see her face
Everywhere I go!
I need her...I need the little girl
June 24, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
huh?
June 24, 2008 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Donnelly doesn't think Obama ever picked up on her mother's behind-the-scenes maneuvering. She remembers nothing but friendly words."
Obviously that was it...
June 24, 2008 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you assume too much. All sorts of people have different experiences, no matter what their race, gender, etc. These experiences tend to frame one's reference point. I don't think it should be that surprising that a 40-something black woman, now, experienced some racial prejudice when she was a 20-something black woman then.
Plus, she was in her 20's. More accurately, less than 25. Damn, I don't even think I grew up until 27, and that was AFTER two tours in Iraq. Let's give the gal a break on that one, eh?
June 24, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, I would never run for office for a bunch of reasons, but this is a pretty good one. If someone dug up the bullshit I wrote in undergrad and law school just to fucking get the assignment done and over with, I'd die of embarrassment.
Dragging up what someone wrote in college is beyond desperate and beyond ridiculous.
June 24, 2008 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen!
I never gave running for office another thought because of this crap, and someone ready to pounce with "We smoked pot together in college."
There is no depth to which the Repubs won't sink.
June 24, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
given that I never stopped smoking pot, there's reason number 1. I've been married 3 times, too.
There're loads - loads of other reasons. I've enjoyed myself rather more than not. I always liked Susan Sarandon's line - the nuns who taught told her at an early age that she was "too full of original sin."
I suspect Susan and I will be spending eternity on the 2d level of hell, with the rest of the Lustful.
June 24, 2008 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
You da best!
June 24, 2008 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you think that she might have picked up on the fact that her roommate, Donnelly, never had anything to do with her, and never socialized with her. Do you think that Michelle Obama might just have picked up on that.
June 24, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Michelle Obama wasn't confrontational about race issues even though there WAS institutional prejudice working against her.
Yeah, that sure helps your "angry black woman" argument...
Were you dropped on your head as a child?
June 24, 2008 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is great. I really like MO. I have seen a couple of her speeches on YT and they knocked my socks off. She just may be a better speaker than BO. He is more fiery but she connects better I think.
I think the Obama's seem younger than the Clintons did because they have young kids. Chelsea was already a teenager when they took office wasn't she (although yes, I agree the Clintons seemed older at the time because I was younger...much younger). The Obama's look young and 40 something is mentally younger now than it was almost 2 decades ago. (at least that is what I keep telling myself)
June 24, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was my point about having a young family in the White House.
It had nothing to do with how close in age the Obamas are to the Clintons and everything to do with the ages of their children.
Over and above that I do believe they are an extremely nice family and he's a real husband, not one of those part-timers who likes to forget he's married for frequent intervals.
;)
June 24, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. That little fist bump display just seemed so sweet and genuine.
But on another topic, because I just couldn't resist, and I'm engaging in serious displacement activity, this was the headline when I just clicked on HuffPost:
Bush: "I Am Reminded Of The Great Talent Of The -- Of Our Philippine-Americans When I Eat Dinner At The White House"
June 24, 2008 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL! O my god - that's amazing even for CooCoo Bananas!
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!
June 24, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can tell whenever BO & MO are together that this is no political marriage of convenience. Either he is a really really good actor or he is smitten.
On the subject of Bush's Phillipino cook... you would think after 8 years no amount of stupidity from Bush would surprise me - and yet he still does. What a difference President Obama will be.
June 24, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/24/dodd-and-feingold-try-to_n_108963.html#postComment
Could this be true? I think the headline is somewhat misleading but I've got my fingers crossed and have the HOPE!
June 24, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg,
Have you heard updates on Dodd and feingold this afternoon?
June 24, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
If a woman from the south side of Chicago had forged prescriptions for drugs and stolen drugs from a children's charity, she would likely have been incarcerated and would have been forever branded a felon. Cindy McCain, a wealthy woman married to a powerful U.S. Senator, committed exactly those crimes (see current Newsweek cover article "Behind That Smile") and skirted around the punishment that most other citizens would have been subjected to. Just imagine what the pundits would be doing with it had been Michelle Obama (a woman from south side Chicago) who had been addicted to drugs and committed theft and fraud? Not exactly on the same level as Mrs. Obama's "gaffe." I don't judge Mrs. McCain for her drug addiction. She was troubled and needed help and compassion. I applaud her for whatever charitable work she does that is not used to promote an orchestrated image. But there is a troubling double standard in our justice system and in the standards we set for some and not for others that pervades everything. White people (I am white) don't generally see this, as their conditioning is different. It needs to be pointed out again and again for us to see it for what it is. The more white people catch on and speak out, the less "angry" people of color will seem when they simply bring attention to the obvisous. I don't glory in bringing down Mrs. McCain, but she lives in a very fragile glass house and should know better than to throw stones. Is the media going to continue to give her a "get out of jail free" card throughout this campaign?
June 24, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah -- a black woman from the south side of Chicago, stealing drugs. If they are demonizing MO now, just imagine if that was her story instead of Barbie McCain's.
Sadly, I don't think it is going to get any better. Let's just be thankful that Obama is winning despite the ridiculous press.
June 24, 2008 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kaity ...great post.
As Obama says, the biggest deficit this country has is an empathy deficit.
Posts like yours remind us that we can change. That we can believe in what is right and work to achieve it so that everyone in this nation will know the American Dream is possible not just for them but for their kids and grandkids too.
You are so on target when you said that situations like Cindy vs. Michelle are very problematic and indicative of the injustice in the system that was at the core of what Michelle experienced while at Princeton and even today as a Harvard trained lawyer.
Great post.
June 25, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have that exactly right. Just exactly.
Just like if Rush Limbaugh was some Dade Co. playa who got caught doing what Rush was doing, he'd be in prison right now, too; and for many years to come.
June 24, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I am going to have to go through boxes in my attic after November 4th and retrieve the local newspaper picture of my neighbor and I with Michelle Obama taken with my neighbor's camera. I had a silly grin on my face, probably because I was so short standing next to her that the top of my head come only to her shoulder. But, er, maybe it was because the first words I said to her was, "When your husband came out to speak at the Convention, I thought he looked like he was 14 years old!" She just laughed when I blurted that out.
We Democratic women had a state wide luncheon in 2004 and Michelle was the speaker. Michelle Obama knocked our socks off and had us laughing and loving her within moments of beginning her speech. I have been a big fan of hers ever since that luncheon. Never then did I imagine that she would one day be our First Lady!
June 24, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink