Smearing Michelle: The American Prosepct

Quoted via The American Prospect:

From the moment Barack Obama began contemplating a presidential run, conservatives saw one thing about him they didn't like a bit: his wife. She had a career of her own. The way she kidded her husband about his morning breath suggested that theirs might actually be a marriage of equals. And most of all, she was black. Way, way too black.

So it shouldn't have surprised anyone when a phony story started making the email and Internet rounds claiming that a videotape existed of Michelle Obama giving a speech in which she supposedly said something or other about "whitey." When asked about it, she told The New York Times, "I mean, 'whitey'? That's something that George Jefferson would say." And who else says "whitey"? Virtually no one under the age of 60 -- the term is a relic of the 1960s, that primordial ooze from which all cultural conflict continues to seep. more