John Podhoretz on Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama today said that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.”

Really proud of her country for the first time? Michelle Obama is 44 years old. She has been an adult since 1982. Can it really be there has not been a moment during that time when she felt proud of her country? Forget matters like the victory in the Cold War; how about only things that have made liberals proud — all the accomplishments of inclusion? How about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991? Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s elevation to the Supreme Court? Or Carol Moseley Braun’s election to the Senate in 1998? How about the merely humanitarian, like this country’s startling generosity to the victims of the tsunami? I’m sure commenters can think of hundreds more landmarks of this sort. Didn’t she even get a twinge from, say, the Olympics?

Mrs. Obama was speaking at a campaign rally, so it is easy to assume she was merely indulging in hyperbole. Even so, it is very revealing. ...

Michelle Obama — from the middle-class South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, Princeton 85, Harvard Law 88, associate at Sidley and Austin, and eventually a high-ranking official at the University of Chicago — may not be proud of her country, but her life, like her husband’s gives me every reason to be even prouder of the United States.

Barack Obama and Tony Rezko superposed on the Obama mansion

better house photo here

In this 10:06 video of the second part of a speech made January 31, 2008 in Wilmington, Delaware, Michelle Obama is complaining about how “they move the bar.”

This is the reality, we’re told, for “regular folks on the ground,” people like Michelle Obama herself with what she calls “my simple, little life,” all this is not fair. It’s just not right.

Rather than being blocked by some moving and shifting bar, Michelle Obama has obviously experienced considerable upward mobility. She graduated from Princeton and Harvard, presumably receiving both racially-based admissions preference and scholarship assistance. If so, the latter did not prevent her from claiming that her father, a democrat party precinct captain coincidentally employed at the municipal filtration plant, had been able, in the good old days of the early 1980s (before “they” started moving the bar), to send two children to Princeton.

Neither has any bar kept Michelle Obama from occupying a $316,962-a-year position as vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Her simple, little life occurs domestically in a 96-year-old Georgian revival home that has “four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar,” purchased in 2005 for $1.65 million.

Mrs. Obama’s lifestyle is additionally enhanced by an adjoining parcel of real estate, previously associated with her house but offered for sale separately in 2005, which was purchased for $625,000 by the wife of Obama campaign donor and long-time supporter Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who has been subsequently indicted for extortion.

The Reskos sold the Obamas a portion of the second property, all of which is only accessible via the Obama’s property, and also paid for the erection of a fence. “The bars keep moving.”

Sources:

Chicago Tribune 1-Nov-06

ABC News 10-Jan-08

Isn’t it wonderful that the consequences of changes in the world, all the inconveniences and dislocations produced by economic progress, can be repealed if we just give power to “regular folks” like Barack & Michelle Obama?