“… Ma Belle”

You’re on the front lines. The enemy is shooting at you. Suddenly, you stand up and yell, “Hey! Don’t shoot at her! That’s my wife!”

Well, man, if you didn’t want them to shoot at her, you shouldn’t have let her join the army. To the enemy, she looks just like the rest of the soldiers, except she’s got longer hair.

There’s plenty to shoot at. Michelle is a big, noisy target. There’s the “first time I’ve been proud of my country” moment. Every time you get a look at her talking to “her own”, she’s full of vinegar and piss. Just like a man, not like anybody’s little wifey.

Whose idea was it for her to get up and badmouth America? Yours, Barry? Certainly not mine. Is it you she’s speaking for? Herself?

She’s cute enough, she could have been a sweetie. But she feels guilty, like every rich, white adolescent who wants to give away the family fortune to those less fortunate. In the seventies, I knew a kid who lived in a mansion and wanted her folks to turn it over to the boat people.

Michelle Obama has white liberal guilt. She’s trying to pretend she suffered. All the way to Princeton, Harvard Law and beyond.

Obama says she lived a “Leave it to Beaver childhood.” Pardon me, but wasn’t that supposed to be good? What the hell is she complaining about? She had to share a bedroom with a sib? Who didn’t? That’s the way we all lived, Michelle, it’s not because you’re black. We didn’t have our own rooms and our own TVs and our own bathrooms back then. I’m lily white and had an outhouse – no indoor toilet. Not bad, Michelle, I tell you, it gives you a weathered ass, an ass that can take it.

But let’s be fair. Michelle has a hard ass. It’s Barry who’s whimpering every time a blow falls. I’m sure Michelle liked her portrayal in the New Yorker cartoon. Secretly, man, secretly. Don’t you know women? Ever see them look at their reflections as you’re walking by a store window with them? They care how they look. Michelle looked damn good with that bandolier and that beautiful face. Secretly, Michelle is smiling. “Not bad,” she’s saying, “thin waist, curly hips … I’ll take it!”

But Barry wants a pass for his wife. He’s an old-fashioned guy and wants to protect his woman. Jesus! Bill wanted a pass for Hillary, and she was the candidate. Only it turns out that Barry wants a pass for himself, too. What are we allowed to talk about? His race? God forbid. Only he can do that. His record – not fair, he’s too busy to vote. His ideas? Touch one and it morphs into something else, it’s so sensitive. He doesn’t even like us talking about his noble physique.

Barry, you’re a candidate. Give us something we can sink our teeth into, and let us have it! Don’t keep grabbing it away. What did you do with your Reverend, anyway? Tie him up, or just put a sock in his mouth?

Barry, I’m going to talk about your race, because nobody’s paying me; I’ve still got free speech. What are you? Black or white? You had one black parent, one white parent. Exactly half and half, right down the middle. Rare indeed. It’s enough to make me want to elect you. Few people in this “fair” land can claim a black parent and a white parent, because although there are plenty of whites, there are pitifully few blacks. Most blacks are really bi-racial. There was plenty of white blood blended with the black, because as everyone knows, young, nubile slave-girls proved irresistible to their white owners. So these days, every child of a so-called black and white union is more white than black.

Our problem is language. We’ve defined black to mean one drop of black blood. Even Langston Hughes objected. Because when you abuse the language, you muddle thinking.

Now that we’re back to the language wars: African-American. We’re all African-American, no matter what our color, no matter what we look like. The race of man began in Africa. I am an African-American. And proud of it. Anybody here who is not an African-American must be a Martian.

But there are social issues. Since we can’t really tell who’s black and who’s white, how about using some other criteria? Let’s talk about poor people, or disadvantaged people, and stop grading them on their color. If there are folks out there without big-screen TVs and hot-tubs, let’s deal with it, whether they’re white African-Americans, black African-Americans, yellow African-Americans, red African-Americans, or beige African- Americans.

So Michelle, get over black. “Michelle”, “White House” sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble.