The New York Observer reports on Michelle Obama's "long, impassioned" speech last night, in which she tried to shake the elitist label applied to her husband and herself. “See, there’s a whole lot of talk in this race about elitism and people being out of touch,” she told a crowd of about 1,500. “Let me tell you something: the last thing I thought [was] that of the candidates running in this race, that Barack and I would be pegged as the elitists. I tell you, that came as a shock to my system ... I’m like, ‘Man, inn’t politics great’” Underscoring her working-class upbringing on the south side of Chicago, she emphasized the modest nature of her and her husband’s lives, mentioning that they only fully paid off their student debts a few years ago.
Jim Geraghty of the National Review Online comments that Barack Obama is called "elitist" by some not because of his early lifestyle but by his attitudes — "i.e., I know what motivates small-town voters even more than they know themselves. Very few people I encounter, including my readers, really are bothered by him vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands with his kids." Geraghty goes off on Michelle as well: "It's also the complaining—Michelle Obama time and again telling audiences how hard she and Obama have had it—that spurs the elitism charge..."
The World Net Daily also attacks Michelle Obama's public "gaffes." Asked how she feels about Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairytale" to describe her husband's characterization of his position on the Iraq war, she replied, "I want to rip his eyes out!" Noticing an aide giving her a nervous look, the World Net Daily reports, she added: "Kidding! See, this is what gets me into trouble."
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