In their latest softball interview with People magazine's Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, President Obama and Michelle Obama explained all the racism they’ve experienced and the “impact of stereotypes.” No one at People will fact-check anything the Obamas claim about their personal indignities.
“There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys,” Obama said, including himself.
“He was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,” Michelle claimed, “and somebody asked him to get coffee.”
Merry Christmas, America -- too bad you're a motley collection of thoughtless, entitled racists. People didn't recall this can happen to Team Obama, too! MRC's Scooter Schaefer reminded me of this story from 2011: "Four-star Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli -- the No. 2 general in the U.S. Army -- says he is absolutely not offended that [top] Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett mistook him for a waiter at a fancy Washington dinner this week and asked him for a glass of wine."
In the wake of the national outrage over blacks dying in conflicts with police (and not blacks dying by the hand of other blacks), the president knew this sounded like a pretty tiny set of slights, so he discussed what his [imaginary] son would experience if he dressed casually.
"The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced," President Obama said. "It's one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It's another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress."
Michelle kept adding to the tales of woe and the world’s tiniest violin:
"I think people forget that we've lived in the White House for six years," the first lady told PEOPLE, laughing wryly, along with her husband, at the assumption that the first family has been largely insulated from coming face-to-face with racism.
Before he was president, with a Secret Service detail “Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs," Mrs. Obama said in the Dec. 10 interview appearing in the new issue of PEOPLE.
“I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new."
Earth to Mrs. Obama: doesn’t the average Target customer know that the staff is always dressed in red? (My son is currently a Target employee.) Wouldn't they know someone in a Nike hat and sunglasses isn't on the staff?
How dumb would someone be to miss the AP photographer and the Secret Service agents when they treated you like an employee? This story seems as phony-baloney as the rest of the Target PR schtick-acle.
