Well, I’ve listened to an hour+ of commentary and been on a dozen blogs and no one is mentioning the thing that (to me) stood out most in Michelle Obama’s speech: she started at least a dozen sentences with the word “See…” to the point that the repetition became a distraction and annoyance.
I took it this way: ”See, it’s like this” and “See, let me tell you how” and “See, this is what you have to understand.” As she delivered her lines, she was just shy of being vein-poppingly earnest. Which is to say, she wasn’t quite convincing except in her obvious desire to make us See what she thinks we need to See in order to put she and her husband in the White House.
Coupled with the finger pointing and subtle head-bobbing which both increased as the moments ticked on (go back to the video and watch for it) I couldn’t help but think, “You can take the girl out of the South Side, but you can’t take the South Side out of the girl.”
No soft dress, salon-styled hair, and suave speech writer can make Michelle Obama other than what she is: an overtly proud and condescending woman with an attitude a mile high.
2008 August 26
Ha…accurate observation.