I’ve mostly kept a promise I made to myself after the election to ignore the right’s shrieks of horror about President Obama. But like the next guy, I’m a total sucker for ill-conceived allusions to sixties radicals. So I was delighted to see the above clip over at Coates’s place. Sure, it’s bizarre when Juan Williams inexplicably compares Michelle Obama to “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress”. I mean, had he said “Kwame Ture in a designer dress”, now that would have made sense. Honestly, maybe a charitable soul should remind Williams that the New Yorker cover was a drawing rather than a photograph. Because, dude, when Bill O’Reilly is the voice of reason during your on-air segment, things aren’t going your way.
Really, though, I was more amused by Mary Katherine Ham’s warning that Ms. Obama needs to mind her P’s and Q’s lest she become another Hillary Clinton. Last I checked, Clinton’s resume looked pretty good: first lady, senator, and now secretary of state. But she killed Vince Foster with the wrench in the Roosevelt room! Okay, fair point, it’s probably time to go back to ignoring these people.
27 comments
January 28, 2009 at 3:40 am
Gabriel
They lie without consequence; they ruin people for sport.
I would kind of like to know if there is one person in this country that refused to vote for Barack Obama because of his wife. This sounds like a liability that exists only in the minds of the pundits.
January 28, 2009 at 6:13 am
drip
Williams was on a local DC talk show as a panel member when he opined that Obama was not a constitutional law professor. A couple of the other guests disagreed, but he stuck to his position. A caller said that she had taken professor Obama’s course, that he was excellent and properly addressed as “Professor.” Williams then stated that as an adjunct faculty member, he could not be a professor. Then someone called in and read a letter from the Dean of the U of Chicago Law School stating (in a long winded law school dean way) that Obama was a Professor at the Law School, that he hadn’t always been but became one through his excellence as a teacher and his achievements he had become one. Williams then said that he wasn’t a real professor and it wasn’t important anyway. What an arrogant fool the man is.
January 28, 2009 at 6:16 am
drip
Please strike the second ” he had become one”. And Williams went to Swathmore and is likely one of the Swartmorefascists referred to in the prior post.
January 28, 2009 at 6:42 am
silbey
probably time to go back to ignoring these people
No, it’s not. This is the start of the Republican campaign against Michelle Obama. Just like they did with Hillary Clinton in 1993-94, the GOP’s going to go after Michelle Obama. The remark about “becoming another Hillary” is a dead giveaway.
January 28, 2009 at 7:39 am
drip
silbey — Word.
January 28, 2009 at 8:02 am
eric
Surely this is unpossible. Juan Williams, “one of America’s leading journalists, is a news analyst” for NPR. You must be thinking of someone else. Our National Public Radio network would not employ someone given to such unseemly language.
January 28, 2009 at 8:04 am
Matt Lister
What happened to Williams? I haven’t listened to NPR regularly for quite a few years (I mostly listened in car and haven’t had a car for more than 9 years now) but I thought he used to be a fairly reasonable if rather bland and often banal commenter. Now it seems that he’s often in the news for being a moron. Was it just that this sort of thing gets him on Fox and that pays more so he does it? Or was there something specific (like the way many people were driven insane by the September 11th attacks?) Or was he always more vile than I’d thought?
January 28, 2009 at 8:06 am
Ahistoricality
“becoming another Hillary”
Yeah, if Michelle Obama isn’t careful she could have her own political career and be a power in politics for years after her husband’s presidency.
What a fate.
January 28, 2009 at 8:08 am
kid bitzer
ta-nehisi’s got the goods on him, and i’d say the answer is:
always this vile.
here he is in 1991:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D91F38F930A35752C1A967958260
January 28, 2009 at 8:09 am
Ahistoricality
Or was he always more vile than I’d thought?
I suspect that the existence of Fox gave him more room to express himself, and the cover of being an NPR veteran gave him more credibility than he deserved. He used to be a competent political analyst, but began using “balance” during the Clinton years as a cover for giving right-wing talking points lots of exposure and credence.
January 28, 2009 at 8:10 am
ari
Coates, after brutally taking down Williams with a hail of nerdtastic references (Gandalf! Grima! gangsta rap!), administers this coup de grace. In short, it seems Williams has been a toad for a very long time.
January 28, 2009 at 8:19 am
Sir Charles
Re Vince Foster: And she would have gotten away with it too it wasn’t for those meddlesome right-wingers.
January 28, 2009 at 8:22 am
ari
Oh look, pwned by kb.
January 28, 2009 at 8:50 am
silbey
They’re going to go after Michelle and they’re going to go after the daughters. Remember John McCain’s lovely little joke in 1998?
“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.”
January 28, 2009 at 8:54 am
ari
If *they* go after Malia and Sasha, the blowback will be immense. Which isn’t to say that *they* won’t do it, just that if *they* do, the forces of unfettered cuteness radiating from those two little girls will crush *them*. Michelle, though, is a grown-up, and from what I’ve seen can fend for herself.
Yes, I’m fresh out of asterisks. Why do you ask?
January 28, 2009 at 9:57 am
silbey
*N*o* *R*e*a*s*o*n*
January 28, 2009 at 10:25 am
eric
Remember John McCain’s lovely little joke in 1998?
I’m hurt you would even ask.
January 28, 2009 at 11:18 am
jacob
Juan Williams (and wife, presumably) named his daughter Reagan in 1981. ‘Nuff said.
January 28, 2009 at 11:20 am
Sir Charles
If John McCain had made that joke about my daughter, by the time I got finished with him he would have been begging to be returned to the tender mercies of the Hanoi Hilton.
How the Clintons can stomach the man is beyond me.
January 28, 2009 at 11:33 am
JP Stormcrow
Juan Williams inexplicably compares Michelle Obama to “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress [emphasis added]
Jeez, it’s like you’ve never even heard the Whitey tape.
January 28, 2009 at 11:47 am
silbey
I’m hurt you would even ask.
My apologies, Oh Grand High Vizier.
January 28, 2009 at 11:57 am
davenoon
Juan Williams is one of my least favorite people in the world. His WSJ column last week enjoined his fellow “reporters” to pile on Obama because it would be less than “fair” to him to do so — this from the guy who was selected by the Bush administration to moisten the presidential taint, having performed admirably in a similar role earlier that year. When NPR refused to allow the taint-moistening to occur under their aegis, Williams pissed himself. He’s treated Cheney and Fredo Gonzalez with similar delicacy, but now’s he’s decided that it’s time to be “tough” on the president, and his first course of action is to resume his previous life as a misogynistic prick. Nice.
January 28, 2009 at 1:02 pm
drip
I thought my dislike of Williams was idiosyncratic. I see that I was wrong. And did he name his daughter Reagan or Regan ?
January 28, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Ron Tunning
I’m still trying to envision Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress and imagining how effective that would have been for a “radical” leader of the sixties. The image that keeps recurring is of “Flip Wilson”, whose public persona was not nearly so threatening once he assumed his “Geraldine” role.
What I so enjoy about Michelle Obama is that not only does she project an image of style and grace similar to that which Jackie brought to the White House with relative ease, following as she did in the footsteps of Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower, but Michelle combines the elegance of Jackie’s fashion sense with an equally cultured and dignified political acumen.
January 28, 2009 at 2:36 pm
urbino
Okay, fair point, it’s probably time to go back to ignoring these people.
It’s always already time to ignore these people.
January 28, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Charlieford
I knew Stokely Carmichael. Michelle Obama is no Stokely Carmichael.
January 28, 2009 at 9:20 pm
jacob
Drip: As far as I can remember, it was Reagan. Supposedly it was for a family dog (I’m not sure that naming your daughter for a dog is really any better), but in 1981, does it matter?