Don't Cry For Us, America!

Music to read by (Nah, too obvious):

“There was a man in the jungle / Trying to make ends meet / Found himself one day with an axe in his hand / When a voice said ‘Buddy can you spare that tree / We gotta save the world — starting with your land’ / It was a rock ’n’ roll millionaire from the USA / Doing three to the gallon in a big white car / And he sang and he sang ’til he polluted the air / And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar.”

“And then there’s the woman who once me advised me at the law firm in Chicago where we met. Once, uh, she gave me very good advice. That’s why I decided to marry her. And once Michelle and I had our girls, she gave it her all to balance raising a family and pursuing a career. And something that, could be very difficult on her, because I was gone a lot. Once I was in the state legislature, I was teaching, I was practicing law, I’d be traveling. And we didn’t have the luxury for her not to work. And I know when she was with the girls she’d feel guilty that she wasn’t giving enough time to her work, and when she was at work, she was feeling guilty she wasn’t giving enough time for the girls. And like many of you, we both wish there were machines that could let us be in two places at once.”

- President Barack Obama, April 2012

"Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life."

- Hillary Rosen

“Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, ‘How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?’

“It’s a constant sense of guilt. It’s guilt, feeling guilty all the time.

I’m fine, because I have a strong informal support network. I have a mother who lives five minutes from me. I don’t know what I would do, even if we weren’t running, I don’t know what I would do as a professional without having that kind of support system. So that keeps me sane.

“I know we’re spending — I added it up for the first time — we spend between the two kids, on extra-curriculars outside the classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth. And summer programs. That’s the other huge cost. Barack is saying, ‘Whyyyyyy are we spending that?’ And I’m saying, ‘Do you know what summer camp costs?’

“We don’t complain because we’ve got resources because of our education. We’ve got family structure.  So I tell people, 'DON'T CRY FOR ME.'

The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids.

“Barack and I were in that position. The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids. We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond."

"So I tell people, 'DON'T CRY FOR ME.'"

- Michelle Obama, Zanesville, Ohio, February 2008



According to an article in the Chicago Tribune in 2006, Michelle Obama's compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she was a vice president for community affairs, "inexplicably" jumped from $121,910 in 2004 -- that would be before Obama was elected to the Senate -- to $316,962 in 2005 -- that would be just after he took office. By the way, the hospital never filled the position of "vice president for community affairs" after Michelle Obama left to join the presidential campaign of her husband, which is unsurprising since it had created the job for her.  Getting back to the money that the "poor, struggling" Michelle Antoinette had to scrimp and save to spend on piano and ballet lessons, the $316,962 in 2005 does not count the money that she received from serving on numerous corporate boards.

As a Senator, Barack Obama was paid a mere $162,100 by the U.S. taxpayers.

In other words, she didn't need Barack, Jack, Jack's jack, or Jack's magic beans. 

“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

- Senator Barack Obama, 2007

 "Let me just interject on this. The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record.  I've been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I've said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That's what they do. But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable.  [Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans] to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class ... and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable."

- Barack Obama, 2008

"You know essentially, you've taken on sort of the most sympathetic person in the candidate's realm, the wife, who is taking care of the children, supporting the husband, doing everything she can because she loves him....it's a stupid strategy."

- Hillary Rosen, 19 May 2008 

UPDATE:  NBC Epic Damage Control Fail:  Andrea Mitchell: Michelle Obama 'Has Not Worked Out Of The Home.'

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