PrintAugust 12, 2009
Michelle is Right: America is Mean!
Last year, when Michelle Obama declared, "America is a mean country," I disagreed. As the white mom of multi-racial children, I knew our country had its share of race problems, but I never would have called America "mean."
Apparently, Michelle's "mean America" comment was simply premonitory. Last year, I was a sweet, naïve, middle class, white Italian-American businesswoman and single mother. This year, I'm a racist, Brooks-Brothers'-suit-wearing, rabid, Nazi, right-wing, political terrorist wacko. How did that happen? And when did owning a Brooks Brothers' suit become a bad thing?
I am a 52-year-old white single mom of Italian immigrant descendants, and before Michelle's husband became the 44th President of the United States, I'd never been called a racist, a terrorist or even a right-wing wacko. My great-grandparents emigrated legally from Genoa, Italy, through Ellis Island, where their unpronounceable last name was changed to "Olcese," the name of the itty-bitty northern Italian town they'd left to pursue the "American Dream." My ancestors traveled west across the United States and settled in California, where every subsequent generation of my family was born. I arrived in Oakland, California, in 1957, at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, born to politically conservative parents. My father, grandfathers and great grandfathers were captains of American industry: they'd all worked hard to become high-level executives in banks or owners of successful companies that bore their surnames. A Brooks Brothers' suit was the best American suit ever made; my father and grandfathers wore them proudly.
In the Seventies, I attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, admittedly an über-liberal arm of the nationally-admired UC system. I graduated with several degrees and pursued my career in marketing communications for defense electronics corporations in Southern California. I eventually married the only conservative black man in America, and I moved with my husband to Reno, NV, where we adopted 2 special needs, bi-racial foster children. In all that time, I was never called a racist, a political terrorist or a right-wing wacko. Apparently, I'd lived a charmed life, free of the meanness that Michelle had experienced.
The first time I was called a racist was last year, in 2008, before the general election, when an angry female driver saw my McCain/Palin sticker proudly displayed on the back of my 10-year old, gas-guzzling, Ford Expedition XLT SUV. As I innocently drove my teenage sons and their football buddies home from school, the female driver sped up alongside my car and started screaming expletives while angrily shaking her middle finger at the passenger window of my car. My dark-skinned sons rolled down their windows and laughed at the ignorant, angry woman who'd just called their mama a racist. "Mom, that lady is an idiot! Can't she see we're black?"
I thought that was an isolated incident. I was wrong. A short time later, I unwittingly sent my 4 siblings what I thought was an innocuous email posing the rhetorical question, "Why do America's enemies want us to elect Obama?" The vociferous responses I received from my sibs let me know in no uncertain terms that a vote for anyone other than Obama meant you were certifiably insane and a racist to boot! (Apparently, they'd all bought reserved suites on BO's "Hope and Change" train, and they were drunk on Obamatine.) I was the only member of my sibling group to believe in Jefferson's small government and Lincoln's liberty versus tyranny. The tirade of angry name-calling I received in subsequent sibling emails would have made Michelle's "mean" term blush a deep shade of Palin pink.
After Barack Hussein Obama became president, American became exactly what Michelle said it was, mean! For example, when Obama stepped in the proverbial poop by immediately taking sides with his "down for the struggle" black buddy Gates over the white cop who arrested him, the woman who made the initial 9-1-1 call received hundreds of angry, threatening calls from people who claimed she was a racist! Shocked at the irony, I wrote an article for American Thinker entitled, "Obama's a Racist." I received a flood of email from angry citizens, too...but these letter-writers were angry that they had been called "racist" for not voting for our black president! Apparently AT readers had been called racists, just for exercising their American right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
And now, as I, my friends, and even my elderly mother speak loudly at town hall meetings to tell our elected representatives we don't want government-run health care, we are being called Nazis, racists, political terrorists, rabid mobsters and angry, right-wing wackos, just because we are exercising our God-given right to freedom of speech.
Michelle, you are right, America is mean. The Obamanation is the meanest America I have ever known.
Kelly Anderson Wright is a business owner, writer and single mother in Reno, NV. Her email is pray4sneaux@yahoo.com.
