There were some real barn-burners at the DNC last night, one of several is below the fold. This one is the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and it includes the lead in from non professional regular mom Elaine Brye; the real America, the real middle class, it was a theme that ran throughout the evening and it ran well. MObama’s speech is being judged the best ever delivered by a first lady, and one of the things that made it so good was it’s all true, nothing forced, nothing spun. Oh, and as a superficial male obsessed with my own insecurities and the body shaping it evolved into over time, I have to say, the First Lady may have been hitting the gym, real hard, because she looks a little bit buff.
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Didn’t the RNC not even acknowledge the military throughout? Or was that just Rmoney?
Also there’s such a diverse crowd there. They’re not all angry white guys.
Michelle Obama came across as speaking from the heart about her life experiences in America. She sounded like she was talking to the average American and relating to them. She spoke of struggles with her father’s health problems, paying of student loans, and parents sacrificing for their children’s future. Things ordinary Americans can relate to.
Ann Romney, on the other hand, came across as someone speaking to her garden club as she reminisced about the days when they had to live off Mitt’s stock portfolio while he worked on his MBA.
Yeah, it’s stark. The other thjing that jumped out at me last night, these dems weren’t cowed by the right-wing mahcine or media. I think it was Patrick Deval who said “I won’t stand by while this president is bullied out of office.” That’s exactly how I and a lot of people feel, the Teaparty has a lot of asshole-bullies in it, but in years past some dems were pussies about saying the truth. Hopefully, no more.
I have had some serious issues with the national Democrats for many years, and with President Obama for the last three. This convention has left me feeling hopeful. Now, if only I could shake the feeling that this is just election year bread and circuses.
Given that Jen is leaving off blogging because of the incredible sexism she’s been facing… maybe not a good time to start panting in public.
Yeah. And can you leave off calling people who don’t live up to your expectations of integrity “pussies”? FFS.
Holy smokes! It’s sexist to say someone looks buff? Naw … sorry, no sale folks, that’s a compliment anywhere in the country. And on a broader note, this is something that the right makes inroads with becauser there’s a tiny bit of truth to it: we, that is liberals, can be oversenstitive assholes sometime.
People work out to look different from the way they would look otherwise, it doesn’t always work, but that’s the main reason people work out. There have been articles written about Michelle Obama’s “buff arms” and athletic build. She chose to concentrate on childhood obesity and getting kids into a more active life, there are workouts posted online variously titled or described as MObama’s buff arm routine. So, yeah, no sale :)
@Stephen #6 – Would you have made the same kind of comment about a man?
All too often, especially in the political arena, men are judge by what they say while women are judged by how they look. That is the only point I’m making.
Women are not objects to be judged like a piece of meat.
Imagine for a moment that every fucking time a black person came up to a podium to speak (or put out a video or wrote a blog post or hosted a tv show), the audience *had* to make some sort of comment about how strong or weak he or she appeared to be in terms of physical labour potential, harkening back to the recent past when to be black meant you had an owner who had the legal right to get physical labour from you whenever they wanted. “Oh yeah I wonder how many bales of cotton he could pick in an hour.” “She looks so weak. Not worth the money it would cost to feed her.” “Look how brawny he is.” “Her biceps are huge.” And on and on and on. Every single time (and those are the *nice* racists–the ones who aren’t threatening to whip PoC into submission and calling them niggers). And yet rarely are white people’s physical strength or lack thereof ever commented on. And then you come along saying how buff Michelle Obama is right after some statement like “Oh, and as a superficial white person obsessed with my own insecurities and the body shaping…” Yeah. That wouldn’t be racist at all.
Michelle Obama’s worth isn’t tied up with how fit and fuckable she is. You get it now?
Oh, and I noticed that you must think using “pussies” as a slur to degrade people is just fine, since you didn’t apologize.
I hate how misogyny has turned a perfectly good insult meaning “small-souled” into “fights like a girl.” Pussy (in the context of an insult) was originally a shortened form of pusillanimous.
Side note: It’s “Deval Patrick” not “Patrick Deval.”
No, we don’t need to be judging women by their appearance. Republicans do that enough, like Erick Erickson tweeting last night that liberal women are “ugly”.
On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong with complementing a woman’s appearance, which I think is all that Stephen meant to do. Michelle Obama did look particularly good last night, though I think her natural poise makes her particularly attractive even on her worst days. Considering how much crap she’s taken from republicans over ridiculous things like wearing sleeveless outfits* or calling her “Moo-chelle”, I don’t find calling her “buff” to be particularly offensive.
As for the word “pussy”, Kevin pointed out that it originally was short for pusillanimous, but today, it’s so closely associated with female genitalia that I doubt most people are aware of that bit of trivia. Best to avoid using it in public.
*If I were her, I’d never wear sleeves again, just as an F-U to the wingnuts.
What? How do you say on the one hand we don’t need to judge a woman by her appearance and then say that there’s nothing wrong with judging a woman by her appearance? Or is it okay, as long as she’s not being judged as ugly or fat? As long as she meets your personal bar of sexual attractiveness, then it doesn’t matter that she’s being treated as an object whose physical suitability must be graded? Or maybe you’re saying that we don’t *need* to do it, but it’s okay to do it?
Well, you must think it’s okay because you decide to voice even more judgements about her appearance.
As for pusillanimous=pussy, You need a citation for that. Every dictionary I’ve seen gives no such etymology.
Well, because that isn’t what I said, but if you’re dead set on finding any reason for offense, then there isn’t much I can do. If giving someone a complement is “judging” them, then we might as well all lock ourselves in our homes live our lives virtually.
For what it’s worth, I also thought Julian Castro looked really nice last night, too. He has the kind of “leading man” looks that will give him a little bit of advantage in a profession like politics where he’ll be constantly in the public eye.
And that’s pretty much all the time I intend to waste on this subject.
Yeah, yeah. Just like “bullshit” was originally “bull-sheet”, a derogatory Protestant expression meaning that what was being claimed resembled what you would find on a sheet of paper from a Papal Bull.
Hmmm, apparently my dead-tree etymology guide is contested on that particular issue by other reliable sources. Very well, I advisedly retract my previous statement. Interesting, since pusillanimous conveys exactly the meaning of the insult being delivered without the gender-negative implications. Fucking languages, how do they work?