What did you do with your economic stimulus check?
Me? I paid a bill down some, and stocked up on some groceries. But if you’re like Michelle Obama, it wasn’t nearly enough. Why, it’s enough to buy a pair of earrings but that’s about it:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, complained the government’s $600 economic stimulus check was only enough to buy “a pair of earrings” while stumping for her husband.
“You’re getting $600 – what can you do with that?” Mrs. Obama said in Pontiac, Michigan last week. “Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month. The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”
She made these remarks at a “working women’s roundtable discussion.”
Although Mrs. Obama has been praised by fashionable outlets like Vogue magazine for her sense of style, her comments about $600 earrings reinforces an unflattering image of the Ivy-league educated Obama lawyers. They’ve both been called “elitist” several times though the course of the presidential campaign season.
see-dubya makes a good point here:
Actually, Michelle Obama has a point here: the $600 stimulus package tax rebate is kind of a gimmick. But she chose a typically Obamesque way of expressing the thought, complete with an implication that taxpayers are wastrels who will just blow their money on luxuries:
The only thing I would disagree with there is that she seemed to be including herself in that group of people who couldn’t do that much with a $600 stimulus check (and keep in mind that some stimulus checks were bigger than that).   Apparently the “suffering” Michelle Obamas of the world don’t understand that a woman could actually get a nice pair of earrings for under $50. Heck, for us working gals, it’s more like under $25.
Barack Obama expressed recently in a puff piece interview in Glamour (!) magazine that he gets “infuriated” at attacks on his wife and would prefer that people debate him, and not her. I’ll tell you what, O-man: the minute Michelle Obama stops making silly and/or controversial statements about both this country and its citizens, many of her critics – including me – might just oblige you. Until then, she’s fair game for criticism, just like you are.
When you inject yourself into the spotlight in the manner that she has done, naturally you’re going to get a response from critics.  He’s trying to put himself in a chivalrous light, but there’s more to this picture than meets the eye: this is just another reminder that Barack Obama is not only interested in painting himself as a victim so as to make any criticism of him be seen as an unfair, mean-spirited, and/or racist attack, but he’s doing the same with his wife.
Ben Smith notes another couple of points from the interview:
He notes that Hillary was subject to the same sort of flack when she was the spouse [Note: is he unaware of some of the vicious attacks that have been launched on the current First Lady? — ST], and he really does’t like it: “I don’t have a thick skin when it comes to criticism of my wife,” he says.
I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t have a thick skin – period.
Related Reading: Obama and his surrogates continue to play the “confused” card against John McCain. Is this a coordinated attempt to attack McCain on the basis of his age, or a legit characterization of McCain’s policy differences with Obama as well as McCain’s gaffes?
Newsflash: OBAMA GOES TO THE GYM!!!! The AP isn’t sure if he’s “running for president of the US or Mr. Universe.”