I hadn’t seen this quote from Michelle Obama until today, but it immediately brought to mind a post I did a few months back, arguing that Michelle Obama hates America. In that post, I quoted Ms. Obama complaining that
we’re a divided country, we’re 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,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”
From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to “finagle” to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.) Health care is out of reach (“Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America”), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won’t be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. “You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt,” Obama said. “See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s’posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!”
So we all can see that Michelle Obama feels left out. She doesn’t have a trust fund and she apparently feels entitled to some of what Dick Cheney has. She’s waiting to “get hers.”
Now read this quote, from a speech that she gave to a group of average middle class women.
“We spend between the two kids, on extracurriculars outside the classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements. And summer programs… Do you know what summer camp costs?”
$10,000 each year on piano, dance, and sports — for two kids.
$10,000!
That is about 25% of what over half of the people in the US have to live on each year and the Obamas can just toss it away on piano lessons. Then they pull out their Platinum AmEx to cover the costs of the kids summer camp. Wouldn’t want them to miss a chance to chum around with Buffy and Tad at Grand Mamma’s estate in the Berkshires now would we?
What makes it harder to swallow is that with their two salaries, they are pulling in about half a million each year (not including the book sales and other income). However, they have the unmitigated gall to complain about their costs as if they are struggling to make ends meet. She’s actually complaining that, at 40, they’re “just out of debt”!!!! How many other 40-somethings in the world can state that they are “out of debt.”
It’s no wonder that the average, working class, blue collar people in this country find the Obamas to be increasingly odious. They are THE personification of the rich, liberal, snob. They literally complain because they have paid off their debt and only have $1,000 a month to spend on their kids piano/dance lessons.
Most of the country barters with their piano-playing friends to get their kid’s lessons or cuts back on other expenses like cable, phone services, or sets their thermostats at 79 or 80 degrees to afford an extra $75 to $100 a month for their kid’s extracurricular activities.
