Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal on Thursday apologized for an email that made fun of first lady Michelle Obama's hair style and mockingly called her "Mrs. YoMama."
The emails featured pictures comparing Mrs. Obama to the Grinch, a Dr. Seuss character, because of their similarly wind-blown hair.
"Sorry, just had to forward this latest holiday message," O'Neal reportedly wrote in the email he shared with fellow Republican lawmakers. "I've had worse hair days, but this is pretty funny."
According to The Lawrence Journal World, O'Neal forwarded from his personal computer the email that said, "I'm sure you'll join me in wishing Mrs. YoMama a wonderful, long Hawaii Christmas vacation - at our expense, of course."
Boy, I remember all the horribly racist emails about Laura Bush. Oh wait, never happened. And they'll keep doing it and apologizing only when they get busted as long as they can keep getting away with it.
But the story that shows that the GOP absolutely knows that President Obama and his wife are likeable people? Michelle and Barack getting the Clinton Second Term treatment a year early with a new "White House insider" book by Jodi Kantor.
The dramatics that surrounded the passage of health care reform -- culminating in Emanuel's near-resignation -- reflect the type of struggles that routinely pitted Emanuel against the first lady during the first two years of the Obama administration. The two jockeyed for influence over the president even before he formally took office.
Kantor, who interviewed for the book 33 White House staffers (many on several occasions) but not the president or the first lady, reports that Michelle Obama had "doubts" about the choice of Emanuel as chief of staff. Emanuel, in turn, had been opposed to bringing Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas' longtime mentor, into the White House as a senior adviser.
Once the administration began, the frictions only escalated. Emanuel rejected an effort on the part of Michelle Obama's chief of staff, Jackie Norris, to be part of his 7:30 a.m. staff meeting. The administration did not outfit her with a speechwriter for some time. And the first lady's office grew so isolated from the rest of the presidential orbit that aides there began, as Kantor writes, "referring to the East Wing as 'Guam' -- pleasant but powerless."
Sam Stein, who really ought to know better, gleefully buys the portrayal of the First Lady as pretty much every awful stereotype ever associated with successful black women: mean-spirited, arrogant, overly controlling, petty and disdainful of her "betters". Michelle Obama is an asset to the President and to the country, and just a few days into 2012 it seems the plan is to completely trash her in an effort to sink her husband.
Where have we heard this story before?
It just gobsmacks me to see that as much as folks like Stein complain that Democrats aren't given a fair shake in the Village media (and they aren't most of the time) we have Stein guilty of breathlessly pushing this gossipy "Michelle Obama's really an awful person" nonsense. I thought the Manic Progressive crew wanted Rahm out of the White House anyway. Instead, we see that Michelle's a insecure screamer and the return of The Democrat In Charge Is An Emasculated Wuss from that "bastion of liberalism", FDL.
And I shake my head as I realize there's now a concerted effort at the top to lower Michelle Obama's likeability ratings as low as possible because she is such an amazing asset to the President. Yes, official Washington hated Hillary Clinton when she was in the White House. But they absolutely despise even the thought of an accomplished PoC in the position.
2012 is going to be an unremittingly slimy year for the Obamas. And the worst part is I truly believe part of the reason this is being done is to get Hillary 2012 folks off the hook. It's not racism if it happened to the Clintons too, you know.
Except as the top of the post recounts, what Michelle Obama is going through is much worse.
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