By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--June 21, 2015
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“I know the struggles many of you face, how you walk the long way home to avoid the gangs; how you fight to concentrate on your schoolwork when there's too much noise at home; how you keep it together when your family's having a hard time making ends meet. But more importantly, I know the strength of this community.”Portraying herself and husband Barack as hard done by, poor folk in a hostile world is Michelle’s repetitive narrative. But both Barry and Michelle were raised in middle class families, leading charmed lives before a life of privilege, granted by political opportunity, took them all the way to the White House. These are two community activists in office who know the benefits of being seen in the image the public love best, the underdog. In her most recent globetrotting project, Michelle has been promoting her ‘Let Girls Learn’ campaign, launched earlier this year in collaboration with her husband. 'We know that a girl with an education can shape her own destiny, lift up her family, and transform her community,' a White House statement on the initiative said. (White House)
'That is why President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be championing our efforts to help adolescent girls around the globe attend and complete school through the initiative, which will build upon the public engagement campaign the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched last summer.'First on the ‘Let Girls Learn’ travelogue whistle-stop was England, where Michelle pushed the same activism theme in her address at Mulberry School in Tower Hamlets (Daily Mail, June 18, 2015:
'Perhaps like a lot of you we grew up surrounded by our extended family. I had grandparents, aunts, cousins living just blocks away from our apartment. 'Our home was often busy with family coming and going and because our apartment was so small there wasn't much privacy. 'I can remember how hard it was to concentrate on my homework because someone was always talking or watching TV right next to me.”Richard Littlejohn in Britain’s Daily Mail wants to know “did Michelle Obama not see the irony in delivering a speech on female emancipation to a school full of girls in headscarves in the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets”. (And is this the face Britain wants to show the world?)”
“None, repeat, none of this is directed at the Mulberry or its pupils. But no one can claim this school is representative of our wider society. “More than 90% of the pupils at the school are Muslim from mainly Bangladeshi backgrounds, and as their pictures proved they have no option to wear headscarves and long robes.”How’s that for letting girls learn?
“It was bizarre, to say the least, to watch the wife of the President of the United States preaching equality to a single-sex audience dressed from head to toe in what most of us would consider to be a symbol of separatism, female oppression and a rejection of Western democratic values. (Littlejohn). “While we’re at it, what was she doing there in the first place? Surely her remarks would have been more appropriate in Riyadh or some other outpost of fundamentalist Islam. And it’s not as if America has an exemplary record of educational equality, especially in the inner cities. “This stunt was just another self-serving gimmick, right up there with Michelle’s flippant, doomed-to-failure hashtag internet campaign to free the 200 girls kidnapped in Nigeria by the Islamist barbarians, Boko Haram. “In any event, British Muslim women are already free — theoretically, that is — to pursue formal education and any career they choose. In practice, some of the brightest and best girls are forced to stay at home once they leave school, or take part in arranged marriages.”When Michelle came to the palace, she came bearing gifts: “During her visit to Kensington Palace yesterday Mrs Obama brought with her gifts for the youngest members of the household - Prince George and Princess Charlotte. (Daily Mail, June 17, 2015)
“For George, the First Lady brought a red Berlin Flyer P-Wee Wagon while Princess Charlotte was gifted an Alpaca blanket and a rocking chair, Kensington Palace confirmed. “In December 2014 President Barack Obama presented the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with a bear for Prince George during their tour of the US.”As far as is known neither Obama has ever given a teddybear to any American child, including the surviving children and grandchildren of the worshippers slaughtered on June 17 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Upheaval and political unrest have reached the worrisome stage in both the U.S. and the U.K. Young people from both countries are fleeing from home to join radical groups like ISIS, who openly recruit online. The girls Islamist terrorists don’t slaughter outright in the Middle East are being kidnapped and forced into marriage. Young people in both America and England are leaving universities and colleges with the bleak prospect of only scarce jobs available. Though the current U.S. administration will never own up to it, young people in particular are vulnerable to messages advocating revolution delivered by big wig celebrities like Michelle Obama: As Michelle Obama told students at Oberlin College on May 25, 2015 (Time Magazine) :
See, that is how you will rise above the noise and shape the revolutions of your timeWas Michelle really in England to sip tea with Prince Harry and to cozy up to Barack’s brother David Cameron? Will she, someday after her destructive husband’s mercifully out of power, paste pictures of the royalty she visited in the Obama family album? Or was Michelle, a self-centered activist at heart recruiting other potential activists for the anti-free enterprise capitalist cause while posing herself as a pity-inspiring underdog?
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