Michelle Obama was in London this past weekend to do some events to promote her memoir. On Sunday, Stephen Colbert was the moderator/host for “Becoming: An Intimate Conversation with Michelle Obama,” at The O2 arena. Michelle and Colbert talked a lot about the political landscape in America these days under Donald Trump. Michelle still refuses to say his name, which is sort of amazing. I think she’s probably said the name “Trump” in public maybe three times in total, in the past decade. Sunday night was no different, and she tried to inspire hope that Americans will be able to come back from this “low” point. Some highlights:
On her husband’s popularity: “I have to remind people that Barack Obama was elected twice in the United States. That really did happen,… That wasn’t make-believe. The country actually did accomplish it, and half the people who voted in the last election, if they could have, they would have voted for him for a third term. We have to remember that what is happening today is true, but what happened before was also true… That should give us some solace at some level.”
The low times: “Yeah, we’re in a low, but we’ve been lower… We’ve had tougher times with more to fear. We’ve lived through slavery and the Holocaust and segregation and we’ve always come out on the other end, better and stronger.”
Trump’s America is like living with a divorced dad: “We come from a broken family, we are a little unsettled. Sometimes you spend the weekend with divorced dad. That feels like fun but then you get sick. That is what America is going through. We are living with divorced dad.”
On whether she watches the news: “I only let some of that stuff into my world when I’m ready. You can’t have a steady diet of fear and frustration coming in.”
The mom/dad imagery is quite common in American politics, where the Democratic Party is largely seen as “the mom” who wants you to go to the doctor and believe in common-sense economics. The Republican Party is the “dad” who sometimes wants to invest everything in the big He-Man military, but mostly wants to blow his paycheck at the racetrack and mutter endlessly about how immigrants are ruining the country. We need new imagery, clearly, because these days, daddy is a white supremacist, serial child abuser and an unhinged fascist. As for Michelle’s optimism that we can get through this… I’m not so sure. I haven’t been sure in some time. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but here we are.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I have nothing deep or helpful to add. But I really like her shirt.
Ditto
I don’t think we are going to make it through. I’m not saying the USA will be gone in a year. But I am saying that 45 was a diagnosis of an acute and terminal illness. The Supreme Court. The multitude of federal judges put into place. Our head long plunge into actively making the environmental issues destroying our habitat worse. Our racism and hatred for other. Our deepening tax free love affair with exponential capitalism and our tax freedoms granted to corporations. The world wide upset and money raising over Notre Dame burning yet not one word about the three intentionally burned black churches in Louisiana. The absence of funds raised for starving children, bombed out orphaned Syrian refugees …. humanity is gravely ill. And the USA is terminal. We are aligned with fascism. The spread of fascism is exponential and unstoppable – you need an upheaval to unroot it. An election cycle won’t do it. I am deeply fearful for my children.
I am a white woman. White men hate it when I say any of the above. Any of it. They lack the ability evolution has granted women and those in vulnerable minority groupa. We have always been in a vulnerable position in almost every society. We are the canaries in the mine and we are screaming our heads off and the white men go la la la la it’s fine!
I don’t want to agree with you because it makes me feel so ill but you make all good points. The virus of racism, of hatred of the “other,” came out of dormancy and continues to spread around the globe. We’ve seen this before and now it has a new anti-science twist, allowing for planetary destruction alongside likely pandemics.
I’m in Canada greatly concerned that the Conservative party will win the federal election in October. If that happens, especially aligned with the destruction wrought by Ontario’s Conservative government (we have 40% of the Canadian population), say goodbye to so many things that made Canada one of the last holdouts of even moderately progressive social policy in the English-speaking world. Fellow Canadians who have been smug and complacent about being more virtuous than slothful Americans — it can happen here.
Who ARE These People, you make some solid points! Canadians have been complacent. We really had a good thing going in Ontario but people will never be satisfied, so we swing in the opposite direction with Ford. There’s already a nasty whiff of starving public services, demonizing unions, so that it can all be privatized. It stinks. Gawd help us if the Conservatives take the federal election.
I distinctly remember reading — possibly in comments on CB — “future essays about the USA will include the phrase, ‘factors contributing to the end of America include electing Donald Trump as president.'” It made me cold then and I think of it often as we continue with America: The Caligula Years.
I just started Michelle’s book this morning and am loving it so far. It makes me feel like it is going to be okay someday Kaiser and fellow Celebitchies! 🇨🇦❤️
It is a delicious read. Bring back the Celebitchy Book Club and let’s all talk about it, say I!
(FWIW we also do not say the T word at Casa Some Chick.)
I love her! I have in-laws who ask me how I can, Melania is so much prettier (1st-I think Michelle is beautiful, 2nd-beauty is not a prerequisite for how someone is. I am NO beauty and do not follow that belief I think because I am no beauty). I have her hope that we will survive this, I keep thinking all my Trump friends are older white men, a few older women and the kids are just extremists. I have to believe that the last election was a fluke, they felt they couldn’t take Hillary since they knew of her, give Trump a try! I have to believe they now understand that is not the way to vote and that Trump is a horrible, horrible person. I have never called him President any time I talk of him, and never will. He cares nothing about making sure I am taken care of, I have no desire to give him the adulation he craves!
Ha! Trump supporters have no ground to stand on judging someone based on physical attractiveness.
Yeah, no kidding.
Melania’s face has been completely rearranged by surgeons. She looks like a squinting cat with a wig on only less cute. I’m sorry to say your in-laws have no taste.
Love you Michelle but living with dads isn’t that bad. I lived with my adopted dad after my parents divorced and it was pretty cool considering he was the parent that was the most together.
My biological father was Chilean. I think living in America today is similar to what my biological father endured as he watched the country he loved go to hell under Pinochet. From everything I know, Pinochet and Trump have a lot in common except Trump is less willing to make people disappear…as far as we know.
So far, he hasn’t done anything too irreversible but I’m scared of what would happen if he wins reelection.
thank you! my husband was a single dad and he held it together way more than my stepkids’ mom who took off on the kids multiple times, so her comment about divorced dads rankled me. they got sick during that time too! 🙄 I get what she’s trying to say, but I feel like dads get enough crap of being considered the “secondhand parent”. the stereotype of the divorced dad who only sees his kid every other weekend isn’t as common anymore.
Judges get lifetime appointments. The radical takeover of the judiciary system is irreversible in many a lifetime.
On a larger scale, climate change has just about reached a tipping point and is NOT reversible. It takes massive global effort to even slow things down and that’s not happening.
Refugee children have already been disappeared.
@who are these people
Conservative judges being appointed is not the end of the world and also why I’m worried if Trump is president past 2021. He’s dangerous but he’d be even more dangerous if he’s allowed to be reelected. But I refuse to work myself up over politics and an unbalanced incompetent.
I dispute your claim about refugee kids. We all know WHERE the refugee kids are. We just don’t know WHO those children belong to. Climate change? We’re all holding on to the delusion of hope that doesn’t exist. I’ve already accepted that humanity will be lucky to see the 22nd century and if we do it’ll be a planet I don’t recognize. I refuse to panic at this stage and I wish others would calm down. If Trump wins 2020, I may change my tune but I think the focus needs to be to take him out, not investigate every crime he’s done. What’s done is done, we need to move forward.
There’s far more important things in life than politics and being spoon fed reasons to panic from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc.
@ Lucia
You don’t seem to understand the scope of what conservative judicial appointments can do. It may be that you’re speaking from a position of privilege or just don’t understand the scope of their power. However, for many people the “far more important things in life” are directly affected by court rulings handed out by these conservative judges. They’ve shown a willingness to overturn precedence and all it takes is a 5-4 majority at the SC to roll back many of the things we’ve enjoyed for the past few decades.
Agreed. She needed to use a different analogy. Many of us grew up with divorced parents and had weekends with our divorced dad that we treasure. That was a poor choice.
That being said, I’m terrified of the upcoming election and believe Trump will get re-elected as I don’t think the Democratic party will get it’s shit together in time and 18-30 yr olds & people of color continue to not vote in large enough numbers. I will have a small % of hope, but I’m very scared.
I love how the word “Trump” is bleeped on Broad City. I’m nearly finished with reading Becoming and realize how much I took the Obamas for granted when they were in the White House. Sigh.
Spending the weekend with my divorced father made me uncomfortable and anxious. So Michelle is correct.
well, she’s correct about your dad. still not a very good comment for her to make.
Some of us had sh-tty moms. Let’s refocus on equality and just use the gender neutral phrase “bad parent”. Men shouldn’t dominate every category out there, come on now.
I always feel like it never gets said enough..how sexism is a major problem/played a major role in the election. Yes obama won twice and i think wouldve had a good chance at winning against Trump. The country is still not ready for a female president.
Agree. bell hooks wrote that she believes sexism is a stronger force in our culture than racism. I really had no idea what to make of that, I read this years ago, you know? Long before 08. And it is so interesting how often that bell hooks book has come back to me. She even predicted we would have a black, male president before we had a woman president of any race.
Here for bell hooks.
Sexism and rape culture are literally everywhere. In many places almost all the women directly suffer from it, whether sexual abuse of some level or obvious glass ceilings at various levels (like can’t even go to school after the age of 11).
In contrast racism is a lot of places but in highly homogeneous places like east Asia there will be a lot more pain from sexism than racism. (Even if they indirectly have racist policies like China’s investment/loans in Africa.
Just in the us and Canada, white, black, Asian, south Asian, middle eastern and native men kill their wives no matter if their wives share their backgrounds or not . There are news stories every year of men of all cultures being wanted for murders of their wives exes girlfriends stepdaughters students relatives aquatintences and strangers.
If bell hooks was comparing violence related to sexism vs violence related to racism I think it’s obvious why she’d come to that conclusion, especially just counting deaths.
It never ceases to amaze me that the same country that elected Barack Obama twice then elected the current President (I know, he didn’t win the popular vote, but were Obama’s races even close?). It does give me some hope, but also makes me very sad.
Nope. I feel like I am living with an abusive husband. I feel I have been forced into a marriage with an abusive husband, in fact. Sorry, I used to spend weekends with my divorced dad. It was nothing like this.
This is a much better analogy and I completely agree. Can I add to that and say an abusive husband who is a complete narcissist with low intelligence, no class and who delights in bullying and belittling others and is a cheat and shady in his business dealings.
And he’s a racist and has no empathy , doesn’t care about children and has incestuous tendencies.
This is a much better analogy and I completely agree. Can I add to that and say an abusive husband who is a complete narcissist with low intelligence, no class and who delights in bullying and belittling others and is a cheat and shady in his business dealings.
ETA: And the abusive husband you were forced to marry is an unnatural shade of orange, has a horrific hairstyle that doesn’t do him any favors and highly overestimates his own appearance. He also boorishly takes a larger portion of dessert than his guests and claims his weight to be sixty lbs less than he actually is. Sorry for the rant, Celebitches, I just couldn’t stop. Can you tell I don’t like the guy?
that is an analogy that makes a lot more sense to me!
Yes, I agree, a much better analogy. Trump is the abuser-in-chief.
What she said isn’t fair to divorced dads. Some of them are divorced not because they have problems, but because the marriage wasn’t sustainable.
That’s a good analogy. I hope her optimism is founded and we get through this.
I’m with her on limiting the news. I never watch the evening news but did so last night due to the Notre Dame fire, and it was one horrific story after another. I don’t know how anyone could watch that regularly.
I LOVE Michelle, but I don’t like this statement about divorced dads. Does she mean kids somehow feel less good being with their dad? Does she mean dads can’t comfort sick kids on their own? Am i misunderstanding?
She may mean that. Look, they have a very traditional marriage, sorry, but they do. And I think it even caused them problems early on, no? I am pretty sure I read that. Obama had TONS of work to do on gender when he was first elected. Don’t kid yourself. He is a better man today, no doubt, but he had his issues. So, if she has been in a traditional situation, of course she is the mom and does most of the child rearing. Especially in the sense of Mom being the bad guy. Dad being the fun one. That is an old fashioned way of child rearing. But I have no problem believing it was in play here.
funny, I’ve found it to be the opposite: mom gets to be the fun guy, and Dad gets to be the disciplinarian. my husband has never gotten to be the fun parent, at any rate.
It depends on the marriage. I was the bad cop in more of the young child, day to day interactions but when it was time to get Serious, my husband got to do the dirty work. As our kid got older, I started to pull back, he started to step up, and now the kid says he gives good advice and that I’m “chill.”
Speaking as someone who has a lot of experience working with young children (as well as my own divorce*) what MO said is generally true. Of course there are exceptions! I can think of 2. Out of 500+. And maybe 5 where things were equal.
I was fortunate enough to attend this at the O2. Michelle was honest, inspiring and genuine. She really set perspective for all in the room – the point around slavery and the holocaust was made in relation to Brexit, that the world has been through worse and comes out the other side if we all get to work. And it’s true. Things have been worse.
There’s an election in my home province in Canada (Alberta) that seems to very much be mirroring the 2016 US Presidential election – the toxicity and rhetoric breaks my heart, but doesn’t surprise me. I appreciate her point about getting to work, but I’m tired. I’m not here to make the idiot masses understand that casting votes for anti-LGBTQ+ candidates or men that call women who make their own choices for the bodies “murders” makes them BIGOTS. After her talk, however, I’m feeling a bit more inspired and re-engaged.
I am with you, SarSte, and it’s very disheartening to read the polls, and see what will probably happen in this election. Don’t know how anyone can justify a vote for this toxicity.
Starsje and Cat, I’m there with ya! I’m worried about the election results today. Why is no one talking about his very VERY problematic past? Jesuit university drop out, went after the LGBTQ with the intent to harm them (GSA in schools) , attacking women’s right to choose, and trying to turn them into criminals. He is not fit to lead.
It’s so hard to watch and made worse by the fact that people I know, love, and respected are choosing to steer the province in such an obviously dark direction. I live in the UK nowadays and am not eligible to vote. I feel helpless… but still paying close attention and thinking about home lots today and all those who will be so massively impacted by this change in government (I hate that I think of it as an inevitable outcome but…). I’m trying to remember there is brightness where we least expect in times like these, trying not to turn off completely. Hope you find a little bit of light in whatever the outcome is today.
Ontario here … sending good vibes that it works out for Alberta. If Alberta and Ontario both wind up with Conservative premiers, it’s dark times for sure. Canada is not immune and there is underlying racism here just the same as in other places. It’s a reckoning for Canadians who have felt superior to other places, for sure. To learn your fellow voters can be just as venal, hateful and short-sighted and that your politicians can exploit an archaic voting system to bad ends – it’s not pleasant.
Ontario really felt like foreshadowing for the AB election… and, because the East decides the election, I am increasingly concerned that it was foreshadowing for the Federal election as well… Dark days for sure.
I admire her and her husband very much but that remark is just too facile and tone-deaf. It’s a lot worse than a weekend with the (stereotypical, cliched) divorced dad. Divorced dads don’t separate babies from their families and oversee a gross redistribution of wealth from poor to rich. And I share Kaiser’s pessimism/skepticism. I think this upcoming election may be the point of no return for this country. Unless the existential issues of climate change and income inequality are addressed seriously and yes, drastically, we are headed to HellWorld.
I love her too, but I wish she would have said abusive husband instead of divorced dad. It stigmatizes divorce AND dads. If there’s a divorced dad there’s a divorced mom and people judge them too. Wrong choice of words.
I’m from Israel and after the last elections I think most of my friends and I have lost hope of anything ever changing here too.
We really felt there was a chance to get a more centrist government but now is going to be worse than ever. From education, to LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, to the Palestinians. It’s all going to get much much worse. So I know how Americans feel
Vv, sending hugs from Canada. So many of us are so disappointed and sad about your election outcome.
Thank you 🙁
I hope Netanyahu finally goes to jail though I doubt it
Love Michelle too, but the divorced dad thing bothers me. Before I met my husband, he was divorced and taking care of 2 very small children when his ex had a bit of a breakdown and was unfit for a while. He’s a WONDERFUL father. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being super sensitive. Don’t love this at all.
You’re not being super-sensitive and your husband sounds wonderful. Sometimes Michelle, to sound “relatable,” I think, uses superficial analogies and dated stereotypes that don’t hold up on closer examination.
I think I am being super sensitive to this as well, because my husband was also divorced and was taking care of a teen, preteen, and toddler when we met. He’s been a single parent to my oldest two stepkids numerous times when their alcoholic mother would abandon them. He’s a great father and always stuck up for his kids, and took care of them when they were sick, and when their mom was around, he still had them as much as possible. My stepdaughter was just talking about how the only meals she learned how to cook was from her dad (and later me).
So I really don’t like her analogy, and I think the suggestions about it being more like an abusive marriage are better.
I know her comment doesn’t ring true for all divorced dads but her comment actually made me chuckle a bit.
When my parents split up, my dad would have me over on the weekends. I remember him making me a burger and it was cremated on the outside but somehow still frozen in the middle. I tried to eat it anyways because he was like a stranger whom I wasn’t comfortable being alone with. I was frustrated, depressed and disappointed. This administration is kind of like that for me x’s a thousand.
Incredibly disappointed in this comment by her, Dang
I agree. As if all divorced dad’s are failures or not capable of taking care of their own children. Newsflash, there are plenty of single moms doing a horrible job raising their kids. She really should have used a different analogy.
You know what if our current president can say “mr kellyann conway” as a way of emasculating kelly anns husband im okay with this. Yes i know im playing the “two wrongs dont make a right” but thats just the way it is these days..
This comment by her…ugh. I ADORE Michelle Obama. I think she’s brilliant, compassionate, truly good at heart, and absolutely gorgeous…but this comment feels tone deaf and gaffe-ish. Not her best moment. I get what she means, but I think a comment like this is less universal than she thinks and is probably rather alienating to a lot of people. Oh well–she can’t be that close to perfection all the time. I hope she doesn’t trot this analogy out again, though.
Gaffe for sure.
Im not a big fan of her fashion or interviews however usually that’s becuase she doesn’t say anything very new, she says stuff I felt was obvious so I don’t find it interesting. I think this like her first gaffe.
It’s edging on toxic masculinity and honestly we can probably make a big impact as women if we protect boys from it. That’s my personal opinion, a friend did her thesis on it and it influenced me.
Divorced dads are not an oppressed group. Generalizations will never apply to all instances of a situation. We all got what she meant about Trump. About Trump!
This is why we can’t have nice things…
I, too, really like MO. Her comment is very old fashioned and insensitive. Over half the dads in our country are divorced, right? As a divorced mom I don’t find the comment funny or accurate. My ex is a great dad.