Chicago Daily Observer

Hillary Rodham Clinton recited her lines and hit all of the chalk marks when she assumed center stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Tuesday, but something seemed to be lacking.

Her speech was crafted and approved by the Obama team, but for some strange reason the junior Senator from New York never managed to achieve the maximum response from the planned applause lines. Was Clinton’s delivery less than perfect or were her supporters in the convention hall sitting on their hands? Whenever Clinton spoke about her personal experiences during the past campaign, there was a greater degree of emotion in her voice. When speaking of Barack Obama, she resorted to a flat monotone.

Predictably enough, the mainstream media lauded Clinton’s performance and pronounced the Democratic Party united for the fall campaign. Then why was the assembly hall so quiet? You might hear louder applause from polite spectators ... Read More...

A few years ago, executives at the prestigious University of Chicago Medical Center were concerned that an increasing number of patients were arriving at their emergency room with what the executives considered to be non-urgent complaints. The visits were costly to the hospital, and many of the patients, coming from the surrounding South Side neighborhood, were poor and uninsured.

Michelle Obama, an executive at the medical center, launched an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics to deal with their health needs.

That effort, in time, inspired a broader program the hospital now calls its Urban Health Initiative. To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

I have to confess that reading columns by Michael Sneed is something of a
guilty pleasure. Sneed’s column is one part gossip, one part political intrigue
and one part scandal mongering. Journalistic accuracy, however, is not
necessarily a prerequisite for the inclusion of an item in the column.

I was somewhat startled and surprised to read in Sneed’s column this morning
that both Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama (formerly Michelle
Robinson), have allowed their law licenses to become inactive. As Sneed pointed
out, both of the Obamas could complete some paperwork, pay the necessary fees
and reinstate their law licenses. The item continued by stating that various
politicians choose to go on inactive status when they are no longer engaged in
the practice of law on a regular basis. For example, both Governor Rod
Blagojevich and US Senator ... Read More...

In their Michelle Obama piece, which is titled, “The War over Michelle,” Time’s Nancy Gibbs and Jay Newton-Small note that conservatives and some others “hear ‘whining’ from a woman preaching a ‘Gospel of Misery,’ about everything from her student loans to the high cost of piano lessons,” and other “deteriorating conditions.”

They point out: “They are probably right that most Americans have a happier impression of the past 40 years. But the skies have darkened in the past year … Those who hear Michelle in person often talk about feeling that they are seeing for the first time a political figure who understands what their lives are really about.”

I now have it from two three four sources (three who are close to senior Republicans) that there is video dynamite–Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Republicans may have a lousy record when it comes to the economy and the management of the war in Iraq, but they are hell on wheels when it comes to opposition research. Someone took the chance and started reviewing the recordings from services at Jeremiah Wright’s United Church of Christ. Holy smoke!! I am told there is a clip that is being held for the fall to drop at the appropriate time. The last thing Barack and Michelle need is a new clip that raises further questions about her judgment and temperament.

A comment from Jim Bowman’s Blithe Sprit

Margaret // May 20, 2008 at 11:04 am

How does this woman manage to keep her high-paying job if she’s campaigning all the time? If her job is important enough to require someone worth $300,000, it would seem that it would need doing all the time.

In an interview with Good Morning America, during which Barack Obama called the so-called attacks on his wife Michelle “low class” and “detestable” and warned the Republicans to “lay off my wife” he seems to ignore a basic reality of politics–when someone chooses to enter the political arena, whatever they say becomes fair game for the other side.

Michelle Obama’s senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain “on the periphery.” Read the full thesis here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

The thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community” and written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in 1985, has been the subject of much conjecture on the blogosphere and elsewhere in recent weeks, as it has been “temporarily withdrawn” from Princeton’s library until after this year’s presidential election in November. Some of the material has been written about previously, however, including a story last year in the Newark Star Ledger.

Chivalry is still charming, as Barack Obama proved when he recently warned Tennessee Republicans to leave his wife alone.

He was commenting on a GOP Web ad that highlights Michelle Obama’s comment, made at a rally in February, that she was proud of America for the first time in her adult life. When asked about the ad Monday during an interview on “Good Morning America,” Obama said Republicans were welcome to pick on him and his track record, but not his wife.

Sen. Obama has sent out a snippy statement via ABC‘S Good Morning America warning his opponents they should “be careful” in making his wife an issue “because that I find unacceptable.”

The Chicago Daily Observer has been a critic of Sen. and Mrs. Obama since starting publication 9 months ago, so we flatter ourselves to think that Sen. Obama may be distressed by any scrutiny or criticism of his full time campaigning wife in our newspaper. The thought of a man trying to gain trust as the Chief Executive of the United States threatening his political opponents with retribution for daring to speak out against his political campaign is truly stifling to democracy. Michelle Obama is campaigning for a man promising to raise our taxes, tear up trade agreements with Canadians, and establish gender based wage equity across industries enforced by the Federal Government. Isn’t it punishment enough to ... Read More...

Liberal talk-radio star Ed Schultz has been a Barack Obama guy. In April, he spoke at a Democratic fundraiser in Fargo, and caused Obama to disassociate himself from Schultz’s remark that John McCain is a “warmonger.” Sampling the show in the noon hour here in Virginia on Tuesday, Schultz said Obama’s “lay off my wife” comments on ABC were a “little sensitive” and “really short-sighted.” Schultz thought it implied to people “And don’t believe her when she’s on the stump.” Here’s a summary from my quick note-taking:

Editors Note: Ed Schultz is broadcast on AM-820 Chicago Monday – Friday 11AM-2PM.

Barack Obama is sticking up for his woman. Very manly. But that doesn't mean he is right.

The headline on the May 20th Chicago Sun-Times reads, "Leave My Wife Out Of This." Well, that isn't up to us. It is up to the Obamas. Does she want into this hot kitchen or doesn't she?

Back when little Chelsea Clinton was struggling through puberty in a very public way she sometimes found herself the brunt of ugly and unfair "humor." Shame on those who attacked her. She didn't make her father president and she didn't make her mother a lightening rod.

But now she travels the country, mostly to colleges, stumping for her mother. She's fair game in terms of what she says and the positions she champions. So is Michelle Obama.

Barack shouldn't be so thin-skinned about this.

When Mrs. Obama told America that she has ... Read More...

Firing a warning shot across the deck of the entire media, Sen. Barack Obama warned the press against covering subjects which he does not like. Stating “If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful”, Sen. Obama made clear that he does not want his full time campaigning wife scrutinized, as his political opponents could benefit from this scrutiny.

(Isn’t Obama supposed to be the Web 2.0 candidate? How dare his opponents have the audacity to use YouTube to highlight controversial points that the mainstream media have neglected to cover.)

So we are faced with an editorial decision. Should we let Sen. Obama dictate what he wants covered during this campaign, or report as if there is a free and independent press in this country?

The answer is a simple one. The First Amendment guarantees the Freedom of the ... Read More...

Earl Bush, press secretary to Mayor Malaprop, the late Richard J. Daley, once famously criticized reporters for printing what Da Mare said, not what he meant.

Apparently, the same rule applies to Michelle Obama, who was so moved by the success of her husband’s presidential campaign that she enthused that for the first time in her life she’s proud of her country. Nice.

She and her husband Barack Obama quickly backfilled, to make us think that we didn’t hear the words she spoke, or that she spoke words she didn’t mean. Barack said her statement was taken out of context (our fault, apparently, for listening to the words) saying she meant that she was proud of American politics because “she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone. But she has seen large numbers of people get involved in the process, and she’s encouraged.”