Pardon me, but I don’t understand the starry-eyed response from certain parties to the first set of Democratic Convention speakers, particularly Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama.
First, I couldn’t figure out who Michelle was there to talk about, her brother? Her Dad? Her opening was nonsensical, out of context, like we’d broken in uninvited to a private conversation.
I admire Ted’s courage in facing down cancer, and if his speech had been in support of Hillary Clinton, maybe I would have found it moving and even historic.
But he’s supporting an empty suit, and that’s not exactly blockbuster material.
I may be jaded about the Kennedy’s enthusiasm for Obama because of an insider’s insight into the family values that was shared many years ago by a college friend of my sister’s.
This friend was a Southern girl, pretty, bright, vivacious and immensely charming. She was also “pleasingly plump”, having put on and kept that notorious freshman 15.
She loved the Kennedys and although the details escape me, managed to not only get herself introduced to the family but to become someone they took under their wing.
She reported, though, that a condition of their friendship with her was that she lose weight so that she would fit in with the aristocratic, athletic persona that the Kennedy family cultivated.
If you don’t believe that body image is important to the Kennedys, then take a look at the skeletal Mrs. Schlossberg and Mrs. Schwartzenegger.
With all of the talk about Hillary’s derriere, then, not to mention Bill’s avoirdupois, there is no way in hell that the Kennedys would ever be friends with the Clintons. To the Kennedys, the Clintons are po’ white trash simply because of the way they look. And the Obamas are “their” kind of people because Barack and Michelle wear clothes well and their kids are adorable. Period.
I believe that the Kennedys are as bigoted about appearance as the worst white supremacist in the KKK, and they are shoving the Obamas down our throats in the mistaken believe that being thin equates to being noble, virtuous and even on the correct side politically.
And I find that bizarre and maybe even a little obscene.
I believe that every prominent Obama supporter is for him and ag’in’ Hillary for exactly the same reason: appearance. Hillary is 60 and she’s carrying a bit more junk in the trunk than is maybe healthy, but she’s a meticulous woman who always looks bandbox perfect.
For the rich and the nouveau rich, though, this isn’t enough.
Thinness is their compensation for over-indulgence in other things, for wasting the planet’s resources on their expensive homes and their expensive toys.
Their psychology is so twisted that they actually have convinced themselves that they are not environmental terrorists (the Kennedys ridiculous opposition to the scientifically sound Cape Wind project being one notorious example) because they starve themselves.
I’ve known this for a while, and it’s been in the back of my mind ever since I heard Caroline say that Barack Obama reminded her of her father.
For pity’s sake, Caroline Kennedy was four years old when her father died! What can she possibly remember about her father that she hasn’t assimilated from photos, films and the elegiac memories of his admirers?
And what on earth does Barack Obama have in common with JFK anyway? JFK was a Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote a book about people he admired. Obama has written not one but two books about someone he admires, himself.
JFK was a Navy veteran wounded in combat. Obama got free rides for his entire education starting in high school, then became embedded in the Chicago political machine, betraying his friends and cultivating criminals in the process.
JFK came from a privileged family whose famous motto is “From those to whom much has been given, much is expected.” The Kennedy family’s loyalty to one another is legendary.
Obama evidently comes from a privileged background on his father’s side, but has taken gifts and political favors in order to advance himself. He’s done nothing to help his father’s mother or his brother, both of whom live in poverty, and he threw his mother’s mother under the bus during the primaries.
Aside from ectomorphic frames, a Harvard education and two children apiece, then, what do these two people have in common?
Bloody nothing, and I suspect that the public has figured this out, to the chagrin of Pelosi, Dean, Kennedy and all the other “pull the wool over their eyes” heads of the Democratic party.