Why?
Never too late to drag out this ol’ Saturday Night Live classic:“Racist Word Association”, featuring Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase, back in the 70’s. It made quite a stir then, as dusty as it seems now. I hope smart SNL writers can make some new hay with it.
Really, this new allegation is just stupid. It’s playing on fears that, as good as Obama sounds, he has a full-blood angry Harpy wife who will tear the near-and-dear values of this country to shreds. Angry Black women are Scary! They hate us for double whammy reasons! Somewhere in there is a kernel of realization that uh-oh, perhaps with centuries of oppression, there is a good reason for at least a tad bit of disgruntlement.
But, Michelle Obama, she’s travelled the road society gives to get where she is now. She has worked hard , and I can’t see her yammering like that, she’s too smart. I do see her as having a tough job ahead as the first African-American First Lady, and also see her as doing the job with aplomb.
“I don’t see color.”
– Stephen Colbert
Obama was asked about the rumor today and basically told the reporter to get fucked for even asking.
There’s a rather thorough debunking here.
The highlights are that the Rainbow-PUSH conference in 2004 did not take place at Trinity Church as Larry alleged and Michelle Obama wasn’t a speaker there. I’ve read elsewhere that a couple of reporters (from ABC, I believe) who covered the luncheon where Michelle Obama was a “special guest,” (not a speaker and there was no “panel”), said that she didn’t speak at all, much less go on a “whitey” rant.
This thing had all the earmarks of email Snopes-fodder from the beginning. It was all too good. “Michelle Obama said ‘whitey!’ It was a half hour rant! It was at Trinity! Lousi Farakhan was there! Bill Clinton too!” A classic internet tall tale. They don’t know when to stop.
of course, that hasn’t stopped Sean Hannity from talking about this “tape which I don’t have, but will make Barack Obama unelectable and end his career.”
His comment today after mentioning that Obama had denied the asinine rumor: “It will; be intersting to see how this story unfolds.”
By the way, Sean Hannity once supported a neo-nazi for Congress. His name was Hal Turner. I think that should get mentioned everytime he tries his bullshit, race-baiting litany with Obama.
The problem with “I won’t dignify that question with a response” responses—which is essentially what Obama delivered—is that by painstakingly avoiding the word “no,” they imply “yes.” I’d rather have heard him say “no, it isn’t true, AND you can get fucked for even asking.” My WAG is that he doubts the existence of the tape, but knows his wife well enough to know it’s not out of the realm of possibility that something will turn up, and doesn’t want to risk a video clip à la “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…” becoming the leitmotif of his political downfall.
True or not, this type of thing is going to continue to be a problem for Obama, particularly now that he’s the (presumptive) nominee and his opponents can finally concentrate all their efforts on race-baiting. Unfortunately I think it won’t be difficult to scare a requisite number of wavering undecideds into casting their vote for the nice, safe, doddering old white guy instead.
People who believe in this sort of inane crap aren’t parsing Obama’s words this way. He’s trying to discourage reporters from turning every idiotic rumor about him into another “Rumors about Obama” story because he’s aware of how this stuff works.
I think it’s a question of precedent, not uncertainty about his wife (come on, do you really think it’s really possible she went on an ungrammatical rant against “whitey?” Who even SAYS “whitey?” The whole described scenario is cartoonish and absurd and does not comport with anything we know about Michelle Obama. It sounds exactly what what it is – a white, racist fantasy about how black people talk at Rainbow-PUSH events). If he dignifies THIS question, then it opens the door to having to address every other asinine internet accusation against him. It’s an old political trick – make outrageous accusations just to force the other guy to deny them.
This particular allegation can already be debunked for other reasons (as I said, Michelle Obama was not a speaker at the conference in question and the Johnson post gets a number of other details wrong as well about that conference), but even denying it gives it public attention. Witness Sean Klannity treating it as if it’s actually an “unfolding story.” If Obama dignifies this crap, then tomorrow he’ll have to deny murdering choir directors, being an al Qaeda mole and being the antichrist (the latter is not a joke. “Obama is teh ANTICHRIST!!1111ONE” is a genuine viral meme out there right now).
My essentially meaningless contribution to this thread is to say that my dad had a good friend nicknamed “Whitey” who was called “Whitey” by everyone who knew him, including everyone at work and everyone at his church. He was a white man.
I do not think “whitey” is a racial slur equivalent to “nigger.”
Ms. Obama, would you like some tea?
Why tea? Coffee is much better.
Larry Johnson sez that McCain supporters have the tape and it’ll come out in September, he swears!
OTOH, a conservative blogger notes the rather coincidental similarities between this whole scenario and a 2006 political thriller novel, The Power Broker.
Larry Johnson and his little circle jerk of hateful morons will be completely incinerated by their own fury or choke on their own bile long before the general election.
Actually, it’s Michelle who’s the antichrist. That’s how she was able to rant about a 2005 event (Katrina) in 2004…
Speaking for myself, if this turns out to be true, there’s no way I’m voting for Obama. Sure, McCain voted with Bush most of the time, and I find those policies to be the worst things to ever happen to this country in my lifetime; but I simply cannot vote for a man who married a woman who used a term that I need to pretend to be outraged about to feign equivalency with the racist terms whites use. What’s that compared against thousands of deaths? Hell, most of those were brown-people deaths, and God only counts those as like 2/5ths a death or something.
The only blogs I’ve heard of in the first few pages were right wing blogs: townhall, freerepublic, michellemalkin…that sort of place. And of course the blog of Larry Johnson who seems to be the bozo whose idea this was.
By the bottom of the second page of the search you suggest, there are links to the video! They turn out to be rickrolls. 
Gotta love Fox News’ fact-free reporting.
Seriously, “the blogosphere is dumb” is way off the mark here. A more accurate statement would be that the right-wing noise machine is willing to throw whatever trash they can find at their domestic adversaries, no matter how little factual support it might have, in the hopes that some of it will stick.
A search on YouTube for ‘obama whitey’ brings up a sweet rickroll as the first result. I am so gonna get a bunch of people at work tomorrow with that one.
I dropped a couple of rick rolls on Larry’s blog. I think I’m banned now.
Even if it turned out to be 100 percent true that she said “whitey”, McCain supporters would be stupid to make a big deal out of it, what with their candidate himself (and not his wife) saying in 2000 “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/18/MN32194.DTL
It might to tough to spin that one as less innocuous than “whitey”.
I’m sure you were all waiting for an update: this worked awesomely.
All I had to do was tell a coworker “Hey, you heard the video turned up, right? Search ‘Obama whitey’ on youtube, it’s probably the 1st result. And turn up your speakers, so we can all hear. It really sounds like she’s saying ‘whitey’…”
Without even sending a link, I hit one primary target, and with his speakers turned up, two collateral hits.
And yes, we find rickrolling hilarious in my office, and it will be funny forever. FOREVER!!
Hmmm…how do I rickroll Revtim?