This week's Radio Derb is up on iTunes and Taki's Magazine: instructions in the box here. It's all about the Democratic Party convention and the speakers. Here I am on Mrs. Obama.
Having been thoroughly mean-spirited towards Mrs. Romney last week — sample quote from Segment 7 of last week's broadcast, quote: "Who cares what the candidate's wife thinks, anyway?" End quote — having thus insulated myself against charges of partisan rancor in this small zone at least, I feel free to let loose with some mean-spiritedness in Mrs. Obama's general direction.
(And please note that not only is there no jot nor tittle of partisan rancor here, there is also no sex bias. My political idol during my last years back in the mother country was the great Margaret Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher's husband Denis hardly ever spoke in public and never gave a speech at one of the Tory Party's annual conferences. If he had had the ill grace to do so, I should have mocked him just as I am now mocking Ann Romney and Michelle Obama. Fortunately Denis Thatcher had far too much good sense, and was far too much of a gentleman, ever to obtrude himself so coarsely into a scene where he had no business being. A brief pause here to remember the late Denis Thatcher, a true English gentleman and a real conservative. [Brief silence.])
Well, Michelle Obama. The first time Mrs. Obama registered on my consciousness was that interview on the 60 Minutes show back in 2007 when she told Steve Croft that, quote: "As a black man, Barack can get shot going to the gas station." Given that rates of interracial violent crime run about 85 percent black-on-nonblack versus only 15 percent nonblack-on-black, that may be the wrongest thing anyone ever said on 60 Minutes.
And that's the lady: not merely black, but obsessively interested in her own blackness. [Clip: "I'm black, y'all …"] Do you remember the title of Mrs. Obama's college thesis? Here it is, quote: "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." That's the title: seven words, two of which are "black."
It's not the blackness that lowers the lady in my estimation, it's the narcissisim. Our culture's full of it, and I hate it. I turn away in disgust from newspaper and magazine articles by some woman on what it's like to be a woman, by some homosexual on what it's like to be a homosexual, by some Mexican on what it's like to be a Mexican. Keep it to yourself, pal. It's not interesting.
The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a famous article — well, it's famous among philosophers — titled "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" Now that might be an interesting thing to learn, if we could get a bat to tell us. The question "What Is It Like To Be Barack Obama's Wife" strikes me as a whole lot less compelling. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
