US Features
After blunders, Michelle Obama learns to enjoy campaign
By Peer Meinert Aug 23, 2008, 2:46 GMT
Michelle Obama smiles at her husband, Illinois Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama as they depart town hall style event at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania on 21 April 2008. EPA/JEFF ZELEVANSKY
Washington - Michelle Obama studied at Princeton and Harvard, has a doctorate in law and is not exactly lacking self- confidence.
'I've got a loud mouth,' she once said about herself.
In spite of that, she initially did not take to the limelight. She let out a couple of howlers at the beginning of her husband Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid for the centre-left Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
'I don't want to paint some unrealistic picture of who we are,' she said at the time, almost helplessly.
On Monday, she will be the opening speaker at the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado, where she will be joined on stage by her brother, Craig Robinson, a university basketball coach; and Obama's Indonesian-born half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, in a bid to burnish the candidate's public image as a family man and American.
Michelle Obama has learned from her mistakes. The woman who could become the first black first lady in US history is now more relaxed in public, and her admirers are already talking of a 'black Jacqueline Kennedy.'
The 44-year-old cannot be easily overlooked. She is 1.8 metres tall, elegant and fit. Her sleeveless dresses reveal sculpted arms that have brought 'oohs' and 'ahs' from the fashion industry's chattering class.
She says she gets up at 4:30 am every morning to exercise. Discipline and an iron will are among Michelle Obama's qualities.
She grew up in a modest home in the South Side of Chicago, the city's poor black neighbourhood. Her father was a fitter at a city water plant, and her mother was a secretary.
She says she initially did not believe in the promise of upward social mobility, and that it was never so apparent to her what it meant to be black in America as when she attended the elite Princeton University.
'No matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong,' she wrote in her college thesis.
After her studies she joined a renowned law firm in Chicago, where she met her future husband. Barack Obama, an intern, was put under her watch, and the couple married in 1992. She later gave up her job in the law firm, and like her lawyer husband, turned to work with a more social and community bent as an administrator at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Their daughters Malia and Sasha were born in 1998 and 2001.
Michelle Obama was initially sceptical about her husband's presidential candidacy.
At the start, she made several mistakes. Her remarks that the outpouring of support for her husband's candidacy had made her 'really proud' of her country for the first time in her adult life brought a shower of barbs from conservative critics who charged she was anti-American and 'unpatriotic.'
One magazine termed her 'Mrs Grievance,' as a tough and bitter woman ridden with complaints.
More recently, Michelle has been appearing with their two young daughters in a bid to help voters picture her family in the White House.
'It's hard being a working mother in this society, period,' she said recently. 'Women don't have living wages. That's who I worry about.'
Barack Obama calls her his 'rock,' says she is 'smart' and relies on her to tell him things other's don't dare.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
you are right about that; sinking his boat, that is.
more crap spouting from SP who's obsessed with the 'F' word, basements, his mother, and BJ's. What, if any, intelligent drivil is expressed by him is lost in all of this. Obama's wife is an intelligent woman, and like Hillary, is a threat to the good ole boys' mentality and antique ideas! They'd be more comfortable with someone like poor Pat Nixon.
How can she enjoy the campaign when she has been locked away to keep her big -America hating mouth shut?
I hope her handlers remember to feed her.
Thanks for the PR fluff from the Obama campaign by the way.
..posters like the above would rather throw their stones than acknowledge that this woman is just another culture-of-grievence liberal minority who had to be gagged to keep her true beliefs out of the news, after distinguishing herself on national TV.
if she were a Repubnut, you'd be all over her............
And why are you so intrigued by the 'F' word - like some little Jr. High boy? It somehow ruins anything intelligent you might have to say. And would you use that in terms of Laura Bush? Partisan politics to the max! Are you aware that there are many brilliant people on both sides of the fence?
Obama's mother's original Social Security Number Application
webofdeception.com/obamamother'sssapplication.html
Is Obama's mother running for President?????
Chicago Sun-Times
BY TIM NOVAK AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters
Sen. Barack Obama's wife and three close advisers have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that steers patients who don't have private insurance -- primarily poor, black people -- to other health care facilities.
Michelle Obama -- currently on unpaid leave from her $317,000-a-year job as a vice president of the prestigious hospital -- helped create the program, which aims to find neighborhood doctors for low-income people who were flooding the emergency room for basic treatment. Hospital officials say such patients hinder their ability to focus on more critically ill patients in need of specialized care, such as cancer treatment and organ transplants.
Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program -- called the Urban Health Initiative -- to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. Obama's wife and Valerie Jarrett, an Obama friend and adviser who chairs the medical center's board, backed the Axelrod firm's hiring, hospital officials said.
Another Obama adviser and close friend, Dr. Eric Whitaker, took over the Urban Health Initiative when he was hired at U. of C. in October 2007. Whitaker previously had been director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Obama has said he recommended Whitaker for the state job, giving his name to Tony Rezko, who helped Gov. Blagojevich assemble his Cabinet. Rezko, a former fund-raiser for Obama and Blagojevich, was convicted in June on federal corruption charges tied to state deals.
Medical center officials and Obama's presidential campaign staff say the Urban Health Initiative -- along with a three-year-old companion program called the South Side Health Collaborative -- will dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents. They say that, rather than having to wait hours at U. of C.'s emergency room, those patients get seen sooner and at less expense at neighborhood clinics and other hospitals. U. of C. even offers them a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers and sometimes provides the doctors at those facilities.
'Senator Obama sees community health centers as a vital part of efforts to invest in prevention and reduce costs,' said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman.But the Urban Health Initiative has critics, including South Side residents and medical professionals.
'I've heard complaints from a handful of constituents, but I've also had calls from people in the health care profession complaining,' said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle, whose 4th Ward is just north of the hospital. 'The medical professionals who have come to me are accusing the university of dumping patients on its neighboring institutions. ... Whether it's being implemented in the way that's in the best interest of the patient, I can't tell you.'
misleading headline!
She looks like a klingon.
page: 1
SP4: This is because....Aug 23rd, 2008 - 14:25:51
...the campaign shut her the f--k up, and arranged fluff press moments for her, before she sunk the campaign.
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