The chip on Michelle Obama's shoulder

And every time she opens her mouth McCain will get more votes. The RNC should put her on the payroll.

I'll make this quik,Isin't astrology and religion a confict of interest?Think about it.

Was I the only person taken aback by the way the first contestant to be sent home from Oprah's Big Give was given the boot - suitable for Trump's flunked out Apprentices perhaps -- really rather "utilitarian" of them to say she gave NOTHING. Did she not give her time and energies to the TV execs (on Oprah's payroll) to make very profitable entertainment? What message are we sending America? Since when does "presentation" count as a metric for the merits of ones' generosity?

The poor girl and her luckier partner got lost looking for the military barracks where their vet and his family were waiting for them to "save" them from a dire fate - homelessness (wazzup with that - Doesn't the DOD have social workers to help these guys get settled? I know the Vet does, my mother-in-law a WWII marine uses their services all the time)

Is this the new face of Compassionate Liberalism a la Winfrey-Obama?

E-e-e-u-w-h -- Fear Factor, Liberal Celebrity Edition might be a better moniker, since the self-sacrifice we Christians value so highly as the path to salvation gets short shift in this Brave New World...

I wonder if some economist could do a study about how much pricier our healthcare is because we fee-payers have to cover the cost of Michele-Obama-like- -do-gooders?
(I'm sure Philadelphia's largest employer, the University of Pennsylvania Healthcare System has a similar Ivy-leaguer running the "Dept. of Diplomacy" with the economically disadvantaged neighbors in the rundown quarters encroaching all around (until the helpful Liberal City Mayor or even more helpful Liberal State Governor hands 'em title by eminent domain to demolish homes and ....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_City,_Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania#University_City_Science_Center

lay grass and plant trees?

maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=3300+Chestnut+St,+Philadelphia,+Philadelphia,+Pennsylvania,+United+State

Oops,

Crunchy Con got you mixed up with Barney Zwartz who runs a blog at The Age!!

King Kev is the current Aussie PM

If a black president is so important, I wonder why America didn't rally behind Alan Keyes? Where was the fervor?
I am thinking that Bill Cosby would also be a great candidate.

I am astonished Michelle was ever permitted to graduate let alone land a job given her appalling ignorance of the rudiments of expository prose.

Oh yes, now I remember. The leftist doctrine of actio affirmativa. An unmerited Princeton education and salary exceeding her productive competence is not "reparations" enough?

One minor point. I've marked papers at a fairly high ranked law school --- you can never be shocked at the number of spelling errors in a paper by a post 1975 high school graduate.

"you can never be shocked at the number of spelling errors in a paper by a post 1975 high school graduate."

I taught high school English at at inner-city private school from 1984 to 1992. Students who transferred into my class from public schools often complained because I emphasized the fact that spelling matters, and graded accordingly.

But jus bemember...back when Michelle rote her papper they didden have spelchek yet.

All this psychobabble is just another way to undermine a political rival. It's a shameless personal attack masquerading as rank speculation. That good Christians would indulge in this is reprehensible. To pretend it is politically relevant is laughable.

You know, you're really going to have to do better than that. If you think any criticism or critical discussion of a Democrat is unchristian or (I know this is coming too), re: the Obamas, racist, you're not ready for the real political world. The Obamas are human beings, like the rest of us. True, we're not being asked to vote for Michelle Obama, but for her husband. Yet her husband has described her as his most important advisor. I think that's as it should be, and I commend him for his esteem for his wife's opinion. But that does mean it's important to find out what she believes and why she believes it.

The point of Spengler's column, as someone pointed out, is that Michelle Obama hasn't outgrown her young adult resentments. She doesn't seem to realize that she has become part of the same elite class she despised in college. It's really rather rich to travel around whining about how you're right there in the trenches with most Americans of any race when by any conceivable measure you are wealthier and more powerful than the vast majority of Americans. Michelle Obama is no longer a victim, if ever she was.

Oh boo hoo hoo. I'm attacking the way she raises the issues, reflecting a sense of grievance to which she is largely unentitled, in my view. You are simply going to have to get used to the fact that criticism of the Obamas is not the same thing as blasphemy. I know, it's going to be difficult, but please do try. It will make things easier later.

Spengler's pieces on Obama have been, quite frankly, whacked and full of psychobabble.

That said, Michelle Obama needs to spend some time alone with political consultants and should learn to listen to their advice. I say this as someone who spent a good chunk of time last night caucusing for her husband. Is it fair that she's being judged by snippets of conversation and her appearance? No, but that's politics. It's always been this way and it will be in the future. Her husband's been created enough problems for himself lately without her adding to them.

Sorry, Mont D. *Law* -- "codswallop" is such a wonderful word, I misremembered your name! Kudos on the diction!

Am guessing that Barack's handlers will do to Michelle what Hill's handlers have done to Bill: get her out of sight. There's nothing at all charming about this woman. Petty, phony and self-absorbed.

Her senior "thesis" at Princeton was dreadful. How DID she get into Harvard Law? When I think of her, I am reminded of the "Peter Principle" made famous in the late 1960s by Dr. Laurence Peter: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

If Michelle Obama's college thesis is fair game, maybe we should keep mentioning that Laura Bush killed someone with an automobile as a teenager.

Or, maybe, we could be charitable, as Christians are supposed to be.

Peace.

If Michelle Obama's college thesis is fair game, maybe we should keep mentioning that Laura Bush killed someone with an automobile as a teenager.

Or, maybe, we could be charitable, as Christians are supposed to be.

What's more, she seems still to have the same ideas she did when she was at Princeton.

Seems like fair game to me.

Rod,

It's really rather rich to travel around whining about how you're right there in the trenches with most [human beings] of any race when by any conceivable measure you are wealthier and more powerful than the vast majority of [human beings].

Isn't David Kuo struggling with the same thing right now? Any American reading this blog is far wealthier and more powerful than the vast majority of people on Earth. For us to care, to fight, to be conflicted about a system that victimizes others for our own comfort-- yeah, it truly is rather rich. My own hypocrisy tears me up daily. It's a struggle shared by all honest Americans.

I'm not wealthy like Michelle Obama's wealthy. But even an American grad student's stipend makes me far more privileged than most folks on this planet. I think I know how she feels... when you have so much more opportunity and privilege than the folks you've grown up around, yeah there's some resentment. Some righteous anger, some conflicted "why me?"- especially when you land some of these benefits simply because of who you're related or married to. Some real honest from-the-bones identification with those whose lot, but for the grace of God and a large dose of arbitrary fortune, would have been your own.

John Edwards says that the struggles of the poor are no longer his own. Michelle Obama, it seems, says that they still are- because she knows her life interacts with and affects those who struggle. And then she has-- as all Americans have-- the white man's burden placed on her shoulders and feels awful about it.

Roland de Chanson--

I am astonished Michelle was ever permitted to graduate let alone land a job given her appalling ignorance of the rudiments of expository prose.

Then, God help us, please never read a paper in the social sciences! Especially not any draft before it's been computer-spellchecked and professionally copy-edited. The clunky prose and laughable spelling of respected university researchers will astonish your brains away.

If Michelle Obama's college thesis is fair game, maybe we should keep mentioning that Laura Bush killed someone with an automobile as a teenager.

Why? George Bush isn't running for President.

"So Michelle Obama isn't as patriotic as we'd like our First Lady to be-- if you can't understand why a black person might feel that way, you're awfully dense."
I can understand it fine, and I don't blame her for her feelings. Thing is, white people have been falling at Obama's feet precisely because they think he represents a kinder, gentler type of black person who doesn't feel that way. The fact that his closest advisor does feel that way should give the fainters pause, and it's not un-Christian or unfair to point that out.

If you read Byron York's piece, Michelle Obama specifically says that she has been blessed with resources and she tells people not to feel bad for her. Also her comments are taken out of their original context and it is extremely clear that York has put them together in a way that suits his purposes. She seems to be responding to people who are amazed that she is doing so much while she has young kids at home, which is something she has spoken of in other places. She does not seem to be painting a meta-picture of herself as a struggling woman, working to hold it all together just like the less fortunate women around her. There is no context provided for her comments about the cost of lessons and summer camps, although a wealthy person sharing this info is rather unseemly. However, it is not at all clear that she is complaining. She may well have been saying, "we are so fortunate that these are our worries - I know you all have to deal with much more important stuff than the nonsense we're dealing with." We just don't know.

I am amazed at the class envy which seems to undergird much of this conversation. If we are Christian people who understand that wealth is not the measure of a good life, then why would we assume that wealth eliminates the struggles over much more important, profound and lasting things? Does Michelle Obama's monetary success mean that she no longer has any right to be upset over the place of african americans in this society? Does her monetary success erase everything else that has happened in her life?

Rather than guilt, many successful african americans go through life with a resentment that they are treated well only so long as the people around them know of their success. If it were not for their money, they would not be afforded as much respect. Even my husband will not leave the house in sloppy clothing because he knows that he is treated quite differently if he is not signalling through his dress that he is not a "poor, scary negro". He always wears a suit and tie when flying, even if he isn't going to any business functions until the next day because he knows that he is treated much better when he is dressed as a business man than if he's just a black man getting on a flight. These things wear on people, do cause resentment and are highlighted, not removed, by wealth.

While many people have been hoping that an Obama presidency would help to heal racial divides, I'm afraid that it will do so for a segment of the population, but that it will make things worse for another segment of the population. It could well devolve into some very nasty stuff. The problem is that much of this conversation surrounding Michelle Obama betrays a lack of understanding of and compassion for things which are seen as simple, unremarkable facts of life for most black folks. For African Americans and many people who have close relationships with African Americans, much of this conversation has a ring of, "see? They're not like us! I thought they were supposed to be the 'good negros' and here they are holding onto race resentments and sympathies we don't approve of." This will further alienate a lot of african americans, which is really the source of our differences to begin with (the forced separation and subsequent alienation of black folks, that is) and make our situation worse, not better.

Any how, there's my $.02. Ignore as y'all see fit.

Are there any who are as well-remembered (or even more remembered) than their husbands?

Dolly Madison.

Michelle Obama's problem is that she is stridently "reverse racist." The bleak picture as she paints of the America where blacks are oppressed is psychological projection. In her world, the mere perception of the slightest hint of offense to her delicate "blackness" is enough to indict America as a whole.

The resentment and envy she feels toward(white)America, the "exclusionism" which she attributes to (white)America, the "oppression" of which she accuses (white) America, these are all plainly discernable to anyone who listens to what she says, instead of rationalizing for her.

The fact that no America she has ever experienced has hindered her in any way from full enjoyment of the fruits of a world-class education (arguably undeserved), or of economic success (arguably undeserved), and of a level of privilege that few americans of any color enjoy are a flashing neon sign saying "Hypocrisy" in giant red letters over her every utterance.

The cognitive dissonance of someone who emits such a mentality of resentful entitlement while at the same time decries the society which has rewarded her so fulsomely, reveals the dark schism in her psyche which is what so many people find baffling, scary and repellent.

While the rationalizations of her defenders may appear reasonable to the casual observer, in the end they won't matter one bit. People have a visceral reaction to her hypocrisy, just as they have an emotional reaction to the rhetoric of her husband.

Her rhetoric is not reflective of her reality. Just like her husband's.

He always wears a suit and tie when flying, even if he isn't going to any business functions until the next day because he knows that he is treated much better when he is dressed as a business man than if he's just a black man getting on a flight. These things wear on people, do cause resentment and are highlighted, not removed, by wealth.

I don't doubt that a well-dressed Black man is treated better than "just a black man."

John T. Malloy proved as much in his book, Dress for Success (1976) - i.e., dressing in upper-middle-class styles will get you more respect than dressing in lower-middle-class styles, and I don't think it had a lot to do with ethnicity.

[I don't recall that he included ethnic comparisons in his book (i.e., if well-dressed Black men were treated differently than average-dressed or well-dressed White men, etc.), though he did comment, IIRC, how certain colors - e.g., bright colors on Latinos - fed into stereotypes and should thus never be worn by persons in those groups. He did get into ethnicity a bit, for (IIRC) he told people NEVER to wear brown business suits when dealing with Jewish clients, due to mental association with Nazi brownshirts.]

Malloy's methodology was to dress people in upper-middle-class styles and colors and lower-middle-class styles and colors (e.g., light-colored raincoats vs. black raincoats) and tabulate public reactions (e.g., did people allow them to enter buildings or revolving doors ahead of themselves, etc.). He deduced from his studies what colors and styles were identified by people as being "upper-middle-class" and which thus gained the wearers more deferential or polite treatment from other people.

On a local matter, he also wrote that businessmen should never wear short-sleeve dress shirts, but he got such a load of mail from businessmen in Dallas about how unbearable and silly it was to wear long-sleeve shirts in Dallas in the Summer that he made Dallas an exception.

(I hope I got the above right; it's been more than two decades since I read the book.)

Back to the topic at hand....

She doesn't like white folks. Simple as that. She& Hubby&their African Herrenvolk church can all go cr@p in a hat.

It would be oh so racist if we all pretended to like someone we thought not very likable solely because we might be accused of being racist.

My impression of Michelle Obama, from the few times I have seen her, is, as SLATE magazine said, of a woman whose default position is set at "aggrieved." I've also read about her numerous "humorous" attacks on her husband as "stinky and snory" and as "not as good at making his bed at his 5 year old daughter." I find her a really unpleasant woman, but I'm prepared to revise my impression if her behavior warrants it.

I'd rather be called a racist than act as a cowardly, hypocritical phony.

Get over it, Rod.

In my experience, Michelle's comments reflect the typical attitude among lawyers educated at top (read: left-leaning) schools and now pulling down six figures a year in the big, bad world of corporate law: a reflexive liberal guilt and a sense of grievance "on behalf of" the poor and struggling that absolves them for what looks a lot like selling out for personal gain. As long as they condemn our society as racist, classist and unfair, they can consider themselves still "in solidarity" with the poor minorities they championed as lefty undergrads, despite the awkward fact of their own BMWs and big houses. Any suggestion of "Wow, this country is great -- I owe everything I have to the opportunities it gave me and my own hard work" would be redolent of the selfish, greedy, fat-cat Republicans ritually deplored back at Harvard and Yale. Because Michelle and others like her, black or white, have been socialized since age 18 to verbally align themselves with society's victims against the (Republican) forces of darkness, what sounds to others like whining and carping probably sounds to her like speaking "truth to power." Whatever it is, it's awfully tired.

Explain how Obama is appeaser in chief. Because he rightly opposed the Iraq war?

"What I find interesting about this is its comparison to John Edwards. He never shut up about that damn mill his father worked in, but he also had the personal grace and political sense to realize that he had been very, very blessed by life, and only wanted more opportunity for those farther down the ladder."

I don't think it's wrong to be angry at the fact that your society forced you to climb out of a pit to achieve a good life. It created the pit, after all.

I don't think what essentially boils down to a sort of survivor's guilt makes you phony.

Rebeccat says:
"While many people have been hoping that an Obama presidency would help to heal racial divides, I'm afraid that it will do so for a segment of the population, but that it will make things worse for another segment of the population. It could well devolve into some very nasty stuff. The problem is that much of this conversation surrounding Michelle Obama betrays a lack of understanding of and compassion for things which are seen as simple, unremarkable facts of life for most black folks. For African Americans and many people who have close relationships with African Americans, much of this conversation has a ring of, "see? They're not like us! I thought they were supposed to be the 'good negros' and here they are holding onto race resentments and sympathies we don't approve of." This will further alienate a lot of african americans, which is really the source of our differences to begin with (the forced separation and subsequent alienation of black folks, that is) and make our situation worse, not better."

Here Rebeccat is correct, in the sense that a broken clock is right twice a day.

No one will begrudge black people thier resentments and hostility, what every other American will object to is the sanctimony with which these resentments and hostility are shoved in our faces by fat-mouthed hypocrites like Michelle Obama.

See: Presidential Campaign of Al Sharpton; Presidential Campaign of Jesse Jackson, etc.

MoeLarryandJesus, I could never stomach Barbara Bush either. Laura Bush, on the other hand, is just fine...

I'm sure there are no other spouses of elected officials who ever got a major raise after their spouses took office, at least not in the history of the Republican party, if not the nation.

I'm sure that all white people are fully capable of correctly judging the "blackness" of any African-American person's life experience, not to mention the worthiness of his or her very being, for having the nerve to speak about the conflicts in public.

I'm sure that anyone with mixed feelings, who has had a range of experiences and maybe sometimes shown bad judgment in who or how they spoke, is a complete hypocrite. Especially if s/he is straddling a couple of worlds that are comprised of very different expectations and experiences.

Wow. No wonder people like being conservative.

There is no melting pot for African Americans. No matter how accomplished you are, you are one traffic stop by a cop with racist attitudes from being assaulted, one rent-a-cop security guard from being backed against the wall at gunpoint for a robbery, even if you are the employee who called security after the incident (this has happened to a friend of mine).

Rebeccat is right. Maybe some beam-removal is in order in this discussion.

The fact that the assumption seems to be that once a person is rich, they are disqualified from experiencing, much less talking about, anything other than how grateful they are to be rich is pure class resentment. When every comment about the challenges of black people, or people struggling with economic issues are met with, boo-hoo, you rich hypocrite" this betrays class resentment which is just petty and anathema to a Christian view of money and what really matters.

Like someone said above, it is very telling that no one wants to deal with the issues she raises - they're only interested in undermining her right, as a rich privileged person to raise them.

I think there is something to be said for the idea that michelle obama can be an unpleasant personality. However, it also raises huge red flags for me to see so much of the critisism towards her predicated on her financial success while NO credence is given to the effect of race on her (which apparently was supposed to disappear into goopy-mounds of gratitude once she became wealthy). She was black before she was rich.

PS, Rod:

Computers were ultra-primitive in the mid-1980s, not to mention printers. So Mrs. Obama likely TYPED her opus.

In tens of thousands of words, there was only so much you could catch with the correction fluid. Not automatic like SpellCheck today (not that SpellCheck is an unmitigated boon, either).

Affangul Im 55 so I lived through that 80's period. If she was the only black at her large law firm in 1989 we can pretty safely assume they had none in 1988. Only 20 years ago and there were whole areas where there were essentially no people of color. Hard to believe that could happen w/o some inherent prejudice in the system. I doubt she was welcomed with open arms by everyone. I do hope you realize btw that Harvard law grads have law firms chasing after them whatever they look like. Harvard law grads make big bucks. If she had stayed with corporate law Id expect her to be pushing 400k to 500k. In spite of everything she would still be subject to harassment I would never be just because of her color. In 1991 I walked into a bar in south Florida with a black friend of mine in uniform (Air Force) and was told "we dont want his kind in here".

This stuff is so overblown anyway. We are concerned that she will suddenly start talking him into being a bitter decisive Jesse Jackson type? She hasnt done it yet so why would that suddenly happen now? If we are going to make the spouses important here then lets at least be fair and compare Obama with McCain. Why doesnt Rod generate a table for us showing what each wife was doing at comparable times in their lives. We can start at 21 if you want to consider that an adult.

Steve

I am Asian, not White, not Black. I do think about what I wear when I go to the airport, but I get by just fine in business casual, I don't need to go all the way to a full suit to avoid the potential of being hassled. But I am also gay. And I wouldn't even DREAM of holding hands with the man that I'm with outside of very few neighborhoods, and I live in New York City. That's just how it is.

My point is that everyone has issues they have to overcome, even straight white males, which some people tend to forget. Adults learn to deal with these injustices. That doesn't mean to forget about these injustices, or to forget about the people who bear them worse than others. It means to let go of the resentment. You can't heal a divide coming from a place of anger.

What I find so unattractive about Michelle Obama is how bitter and angry she still is in spite of all the many things she has to be grateful for. That personality defect of hanging onto that anger is IMO a fair object of scrutiny for a potential First Lady.

I find that I make far more typos now that when I used a typewriter because the spell checker is often innacurate. So I still have to go through the work word by word.

But in the bad old days, my master's thesis was hand typed and there were no typos allowed.

Erin:

You missed my point.

It's not that everyone shouldn't be a good speller; it's that in the pre-SpellCheck era, you had to be a good TYPIST to be a good speller, unlike today. Maybe Michelle Obama just wasn't a good typist. Seems logical to me.

In any case, amazing that she's simultaneously being touted as a threat to the very republic and someone who's such a dimbulb that she can't spell her way out of a paper bag.

One or the other, people ...

Sig:

That was beyond brilliant.

I don't think what essentially boils down to a sort of survivor's guilt makes you phony.

Michelle Obama's victim complex is survivor's guilt? That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!

Your way with words is brilliant Sig. I have only been blogging for 2 or 3 months but I am generally impressed by the level of discourse here with you being a prime poster. I thank you and the others who post so eloquently.

Steve

Channeling Jerry Falwell Rod?

Steve

Temper, temper, Roddy ol' boy. Still going through meat withdrawal? Take the Kitten's advice and stay away from the keyboard for a while.

Michelle Obama has a lot of emotional issues ("the rage of a privilege class") because she's been the beneficiary of racial quotas ever since she was 13. She tested into the best public high school in Chicago, Whitney Young (which requires an entrance exam to get in, but had an explicit quota reserving 40% of spots for blacks). But, all the nice things that affirmative action has done for her just make her feel more insecure and more angry.

At Whitney Young, she didn't distinguish herself in either grades or test scores, but, to the surprise of her teachers and counselors (who send lots of kids to the Ivy League and didn't think she had what it took, got into Princeton, where she felt extremely self-conscious over her lack of intellectual ability. Her senior thesis at Princeton is semi-literate, but she then got into Harvard Law School, where once again she felt like people were putting her down for not being too bright. She got a spiffy corporate law job at Sidley Austin, but didn't pass the bar exam the first time it was available. She finally passed, but then left the firm (presumably realizing she'd never make partner) for a much a lower paying job working as a fixer for the Daley Administration. She then enjoyed a vague but mildly lucrative career in the diversity racket, finally hitting the jackpot when her husband became a Senator. Two months later, she received a pay raise from the U. of Chicago Medical Center, where she works in community relations and diversity, from $122k to $317k.

Yet, despite all the largesses, the Obamas still had to get Tony Rezko involved in the purchase of their mansion in 2005.

For documentation, see:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080225_michelle_obama.htm

I thought Rod's post wa funny.

Thanks for your post Steve. I think I knew a lot of this from other sources but its a helpful compilation. My take from your post and others is that Michelle has been a fairly hard working, higher than average IQ person who has been troubled about her past. It also sounds like shes a decent Mom and wife. Psychoanalysis aside where is the evidence that this has or will turn Obama into a racialist? My goodness, why hasnt Mary Matalin turned into a conniving, word twisting flaming liberal (OK Im not a Carville fan). Why hasnt John McCain started stealing drugs?

I understand that this is all politics and this is how its played. For me though, I will continue to hope for a real debate on the big issues facing us Afghanistan, Iraq, abortion, the deficit, Social security, healthcare etc. rather than one sided assaults on a candidates wife.

Steve

The interesting part of the election is that it will certainly expose the dark underbelly of intolerance and racism. A number of posts here clearly demonstrate what real racism looks like.

Affangul, I raised the idea that it's worth considering whether or not God brings judgment upon nations today, as he did in the Old Testament, and as Abraham Lincoln believed He did with the Civil War, re: slavery. And now I'm Falwell reborn. Just another day on the Crunchy Con comboxes. Welcome to our world!

A number of posts here clearly demonstrate what real racism looks like.

Is there an emoticon for snorting?

I raised the idea that it's worth considering whether or not God brings judgment upon nations today, as he did in the Old Testament, and as Abraham Lincoln believed He did with the Civil War, re: slavery. And now I'm Falwell reborn. Just another day on the Crunchy Con comboxes. Welcome to our world!

Well, you have been complaining lately about gaining some weight...

Michelle Obama = Buffoon with an affirmative action diploma, married to a charismatic man. If she were a white woman attorney on her own, she would be handling low fee, crappy, divorce cases out of the trailer park. Real racism is holding blacks to a lower standard than others. Blacks can compete with anyone. Expect that of them, not something less.

Well, you have been complaining lately about gaining some weight...

God will judge America by allowing Harvey Fierstein to marry Barack Obama in Massachusetts and become First Lady because He is mad at me for becoming a tub this winter. It's all so clear to me now...

[No one had yet brought up gay Jews, so I figured I would make Daniel's night. I kid. I kid because I love.]

Daniel,

Should you be watching "The View"?

A bit off-topic, but I need to say my two cents about Rebeccat's comments regarding clothes.

Your husband may get extra attention in his suit when flying because he is unintentionally falling into a different stereotype: The *overdressed* black man.

I'm white, but am very self-aware of my clothes for professional reasons and due to a fragile ego. The ideal outfit to get respect while avoiding the condescension of people thinking your are dressing above your station is:

Pressed khakis or slacks, button down shirt or polo, perhaps with a sweater and/or casual sportjacket, nice shoes without too much tassling or ornamental hole-punching. To go the extra mile, deploy a pocket square or handkerchief that matches the shirt or sweater.

If your husband wears that, I guarantee people will assume he's a lawyer or in finance, and be very careful around him.

Of course, I do also like to get dirty splitting wood, and go someplace bobos hang. Then wait for the condescension, and slap it down with big words while channeling a WFB demeanor. That's less dangerous for me because I'm white, but for the added peril your husband does get the delicious pleasure of invoking lefty race guilt.

While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get your drift, Rod, many of us, who've made our way through a maze that was not intended for us to maneuver, can understand what Michelle is saying. I would say that I pray that the tide of clarity and understanding will, at some point, bring you to a point of recognition. However, that doesn't appear to be a promising event in the larger scheme of things for you as you sound very much "married" to the underlying premise that prompted you to write this article.

Godspeed.