For anyone who’s wondering: No, she’s not running. In her new memoir, “Becoming” — a book whose reportedly enormous advance rendered its contents almost as closely guarded as the bullion at Fort Knox — Michelle Obama puts to rest any speculation about her political ambitions. “I’ve never been a fan of politics,” she writes, “and my experience over the last 10 years has done little to change that.”
SO EVEN HER PREACHY HUSBAND CAN’T PERSUADE HER. REMEMBER HOW MUCH HE WAS GOING TO ASK OF US?
A month after President Obama started his first term in 2009, Michelle Obama was sitting in the balcony during a joint session of Congress, where she could see a cadre of Republicans scowling while her husband delivered his address. “They would fight everything Barack did, I realized, whether it was good for the country or not.” She continues, “It seemed they just wanted Barack to fail.”
PLEASE. YOU COULD SAY THE SAME OF DEMOCRATS.
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SHE LOVES GEORGE W. BUSH!
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Politics, though, turned out to be a weird mix of elite pretensions and schoolyard bullying, amplified by opposition research.
WHICH HER HUSBAND NEVER ENGAGED IN.
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“When they go low, we go high”
THAT’S ABOUT THEM, NOT US.
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Her father tended boilers; her mother stayed at home to care for Michelle and her older brother. Even as her father’s body began to break down from multiple sclerosis, he insisted on going to work. His illness taught her the necessity of meticulous planning, of showing up not just on time but early — “the lesson being that in life you control what you can.”
HER FATHER WAS A PRECINCT CAPTAIN.
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the couples counseling that saved their marriage when she felt as if his political career “would end up steam-rolling our every need.”
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For all the attempts by conservatives a decade ago to paint her as a radical, Obama seems to be a measured, methodical centrist at heart. But hers isn’t a wan faith in expanding the pie and crossing the aisle. Her pragmatism is tougher than that, even if it will come across as especially frustrating to those who believe that centrism and civility are no longer enough. As she writes in “Becoming,” she long ago learned to recognize the “universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go.”
SH WENT TO WORK FOR RICHARD DALEY AND TOOK A MAEK UP JOB AT UC FROM HER FRIEND AND TRIED TO KEEP POOR PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR ER.
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OF COURSE THEY AREN’T THE RADICALS THEY WERE MADE ABOUT TO BE. THEY AREN’T CHANGE-AGENTS EITHER. THEY’RE CORPORATE DEMOCRATS.
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At promotional events in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and elsewhere, Mrs. Obama will appear at sports stadiums with high profile moderators like Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Reese Witherspoon and Valerie Jarrett. (In some venues, front row seats with a “meet and greet” package are priced at $3,000; 10 percent of the tickets in each city are being given away to local charities, schools, and community groups.)
[ Read The Times’s review of Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.” ]
With the publication of “Becoming,” the Obamas now seem set to make their mark not just in politics, but in popular culture. Last year, they announced a joint book deal with Penguin Random House that was rumored to exceed $60 million, a large portion of which is going to their foundation and other charities. This year, they signed a multiyear production deal with Netflix, to produce films and television shows through their company, “Higher Ground Productions.” (They recently acquired screen rights to Michael Lewis’s new book, “The Fifth Risk,” for their company.)
Posted on November 12, 2018
