Another Obama Myth

“No Drama Obama?”  What a curious handle to bestow upon a professional TelePrompTer reader so obviously type-cast to play a real-life Matt Santos in the current installment of the reality show called “American Presidential Politics” that he should be a card carrying member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and be forced to show it to the country on You Tube along with the vault copy of his birth certificate before inauguration day.  Are you kidding me?  Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was one drama after another, yet there’s this larger-than-life myth of a seamless, leak-free campaign run with military precision, conceived of, and directed by, the greatest political general ever, Barack Obama.  Puhleeze.  The Telegraph is the latest media outlet taking that erroneous theme and running it ragged, quoting yet another source not close to anybody involved in anything:

Most shocking to Mr Obama’s team is the loss of discipline and control that they have experienced since coming to Washington.

The President-elect’s campaign was tightly controlled, with very few uncoordinated leaks. The candidate was known as “No Drama Obama.” David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief of the left of centre magazine Mother Jones, summed up the problem: “The presidential transition of no-drama Obama became infected by the never-ending soap opera of the Clintons. And it really is time to turn that programme off.”

No leaks?  NAFTA-gate?  The HuffPo “race memo?”  Or, were those “coordinated leaks?”  No drama?  Can you say “Bill Ayers?”  “Jeremiah Wright?”  “Monster? “  “The Rezko he didn’t know?”  “Illegal immigrant auntie?”  Nothing soap operatic about “Bitter-gate,” right?  What is wrong with people that they think they can just push a blatant, outright, bold-faced lie far enough, and long enough that it becomes an accepted truth?  Maybe the most tightly controlled, well run, internet-savvy gaffe machine political campaign in history has conveniently forgotten about a little-known invention called “Google.”  Which would be bad news to one of his biggest legitimate donors.

Oh, there’s been drama from Obama, alright.  It’s just that when there is, his enablers in the media and blogosphere conspire to allow him to point fingers and blame somebody else and get away with it.

On behalf of Hillary Clinton, and speaking only for myself, bite me.

Who Cares About Michelle Obama’s Butt?

Who, besides, presumably Barack Obama, cares about Michelle Obama’s butt?  Erin Aubry Kaplan, aka Erin J. Aubry, that’s who.  She’s a columnist whose work has been featured in the L.A. Times, Essence Magazine, L.A Weekly, and Black Enterprise among others.  She’s also contributed essays to books like Body Outlaws, and Mothers Who Think.  And, she has a thing about butts.  Big, black, female butts to be exact.  The author of a 1998 Salon article about Jennifer Lopez’s abundance, entitled “Back Is Beautiful,” (she thinks Lopez is “a possibly African-descended Latina,”) Ms. Kaplan is back in Salon with a dissertation on the First Lady-elect’s derriere called “First Lady Got Back.”

Why?

Beats the hell outta me.

Again I ask, who the hell cares about Michelle Obama’s butt, let alone what it means to society?  Forget about examining the socio-dynamics of it’s size and shape, and it’s impact on American women of color’s self-esteem and/or lack thereof, has anybody else ever even looked at it?   I mean, I’ve seen Ms. Obama sitting down, so I assumed she had a butt, (when I happened to think about it, which was never) but, frankly, there’s nothing about her face that would make me want to look at her ass.  Though many have spoken of her beauty, grace and charm, she “don’t float my boat,” if you catch my drift.  Not to be indelicate, but as a woman who has enjoyed the company and favors of a few other women in my day, as far as I’m concerned, she’s a dog.

But that’s beside the point.  Why would anyone, especially a woman, especially a straight woman, ever write more than one treatise on booty?  I can’t imagine why any woman would write one, but I’m trying to give Kaplan the benefit of the doubt.  But, really, what’s up with that?  I’m a black woman and I’ve never once wondered what impact my ass had on society at large. Or anybody else’s, for that matter.

Yes, some people objectify women, but writing article, after article, about the particular cultural implications of black women’s behinds and the impact on the feminine psyche due to the exploitation of such objectification in our shared popular culture, runs the risk of objectifying us further under the guise of social commentary.   Kaplan writes:

Lord knows, it’s time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it’s been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho’s, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they’re certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

Now, Hillary Clinton has a “black ass?”  What the hell is Kaplan talking about?  Black women are considered the source of the big ass?  How?  Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture?  Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Kaplan seems to be a fine and justifiably accomplished writer, but this obsessive “thing” she has about her and other people’s butts is an issue she might want to spend some time discussing with an expert.  It needs to be examined.  It’s not healthy.  And, if she really thinks Michelle Obama’s rear end is worth celebrating, for any reason, Erin Aubry Kaplan can forget about the doctor, any fool could tell her she has lost her mind.

And I bet her ass is huge.

UPDATE: Mr. Kaplan responds to her critics.  Basically, she says she wrote the article because she felt like it.  No other reason is valid, imo, regardless of other people’s reaction.  If you have to explain it or apologize for it, you shouldn’t write it.  If you do, let it stand.