Playing The Victim Card
By Michael Reagan
May 23, 2008
Barack Obama, the left's new Moses, has come down from his lofty mount to proclaim a new commandment: "Thou shalt not criticize my wife, Michelle."
Appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," Obama tried to remove a potentially troublesome issue from the campaign -- his wife.
Told that "certain Republicans" have questioned the lady's patriotism, Obama told anchor Charlie Gibson, "If they think that they're going make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable. These folks should stay off my wife."
As Ann Coulter noted in her book "Godless," it's a time honored custom among liberals to hide behind alleged victims in order to gain immunity from political criticism of anything they say or do.
In their lexicon, anybody who has had a single misfortune -- or who endures what liberated women see as the terrible ordeal of motherhood or housewifery -- is a victim, and since Mrs. Obama must suffer the inconveniences of being a wife and a mother, she's qualified for victimhood and must be immune from criticism.
Having gained that immunity she, is free to make outrageous statements without having them reflect on her spouse.
In one fell swoop, Barack Obama rids himself of the burden of having to explain away her comments, just as he has tried to explain away all those Anti-American rantings of the Reverend Wright.
Reminded that Michelle had informed her fellow Americans that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," a pretty straightforward statement that requires no parsing, Obama explained that she really didn't mean it.
He left it to campaign spokesman Bill Burton to say, "Of course Michelle is proud of her country, which is why she and Barack talk constantly about how their story wouldn't be possible in any other nation on Earth. What she meant is that she's really proud at this moment because for the first time in a long time, thousands of Americans who've never participated in politics before are coming out in record numbers to build a grassroots movement for change."
But that's not what she said.
It was only after that sorry explanation didn't wash that he contrived his new approach: even though his wife is a key participant in his campaign, traveling far and wide to preach Obamaism, she may not be held accountable for what she says and does.
After all, she's a wife and a mother and is thus far above the fray. From this point forward she's free to say anything she wants without having it stick to her husband.
That frees her to continue to say that Americans have become "cynical" and "mean," and have "broken souls."
The New Yorker magazine reported she told a Baptist congregation "we're a divided country - a country that is "just downright mean," we are "guided by fear," we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. "We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day...Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I'm young. Forty-four!"
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