From Feministing:

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Fox News is at it again.

On an episode of Fox News Watch this weekend, conservative pundit Cal Thomas revealed that there are no black women who aren't the "angry black woman." (Cue scary music!)

Here are a few snippets from the transcript, Michelle Obama Watch has more here and here. You can also watch the video here.

CAL THOMAS: In this campaign, we are being asked to accept three things simultaneously, the first woman with a credible chance of being president, the first African-American with the chance to being president and, whoever Michelle Obama is going to be styled, the angry black woman, first lady? This is an awful lot.
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THOMAS: I want to pick up on something that Jane said about the angry black woman. Look at the image of angry black women on television. Politically you have Maxine Waters of California, liberal Democrat. She’s always angry every time she gets on television. Cynthia McKinney, another angry black woman. And who are the black women you see on the local news at night in cities all over the country. They’re usually angry about something. They’ve had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting. They are angry at Bush. So you don’t really have a profile of non-angry black women.

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Conservative columnists accuse her of being unpatriotic and say she simmers with undigested racial anger. A blogger who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton circulates unfounded claims that Mrs. Obama gave an accusatory speech in her church about the sins of “whitey.” Mrs. Obama shakes her head.

“You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,” she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: “I mean, ‘whitey’? That’s something that George Jefferson would say. Anyone who says that doesn’t know me. They don’t know the life I’ve lived. They don’t know anything about me.”

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Then came some rhetorical stumbles. In Madison, Wis., in February, she told voters that hope was sweeping America, adding, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” Cable news programs replayed those 15 words in an endless loop of outrage.

Barack Obama often blurs identity lines; much of his candidacy has seemed almost post-racial. Mrs. Obama’s identity is less mutable. She is a descendant of slaves and a product of Chicago’s historically black South Side. She burns hot where he banks cool, and that too can make her an inviting proxy for attack.

Fox News called her “Obama’s baby mama,” a derogatory term for an unwed mother. Christopher Hitchens, a Slate columnist, claimed — with scant evidence — that her college thesis proved she was once influenced by black separatism. National Review presented her as a scowling “Mrs. Grievance.”

The caricatures of Mrs. Obama as the Angry Black Woman confound her, friends say. Her own family crosses racial boundaries — her mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are white — and she has spent much of her adult life trying to address racial resentment.

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And their response is the same: "No, no, I'm not, really I'm not, you don't know the real me!"

Obama's wife in 'pathetic' gaffe

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Appearing on The View, a leading US morning talk show, Michelle Obama was asked by Barbara Walters whether she wanted her husband to be president.

Mrs Obama said "no", and was then heard to say: "He was sweet and pathetic".

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor clarified after the programme that she had actually said "sweet, empathetic".

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What crap. I believe she was actually describing some mild pains suffered by Barack while flying to Stockholm last year, saying that his was a "Sweden-path headache".

The article continues:

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During the interview, Mrs Obama also vowed to emulate first lady Laura Bush and be a model White House wife.

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Michelle Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer, an American success story pulling down more than a quarter million a year as a university vice-president, but this week everyone was talking about her sundress.

They were chattering about her revelation that she doesn't wear pantyhose, that she shops at Target, a sort of upscale Wal-Mart, and that she relies on headbands for those bad hair days.

Her husband's presidential campaign was also hoping voters now believe she is patriotic, that she has never secretly denounced "whitey" and her celebratory fist-knock with her husband after he clinched the Democratic nomination was not some secret terrorist handshake.

It is all part of the remaking of the 44-year-old mother of two, a renovation that included a co-host turn on The View, a cover piece in US Weekly, and a speech here yesterday in which she said she will always be a working mom.

There is now less lawyer Michelle and more mom Michelle, a reshaping borne of necessity, a product of the peculiarities of U.S. politics.

Just as her husband had to feebly show his bowling ineptitude in Pennsylvania, Michelle Obama is now being taken down a notch or two, so she not appear too threatening, part of the American demand that their leaders all but shuck their education and worldliness and start acting like someone they would drink with on Saturday night.

It is part of a parallel campaign alien to Canadians, the battle for first lady, this year pitting this product of south side Chicago who sometimes talks a little too straight against Cindy McCain, a beer heiress who sometimes looks a little too perfect.

But more than anything, it appears to be a bid to parry attacks from the U.S. right which, not content to try to demonize the candidate, has caricatured his spouse as a woman who harbours deep resentment against her country, a woman branded by the conservative National Review as "Mrs. Grievance."

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
And thus does the Obama campaign braintrust combat sexism - by dumbing down Michelle Obama from a smart, successful woman to just another soccer mom.

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TLC picked up The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom, a one-hour reality show that takes ordinary stay-at-home mothers and shows them what their lives could have been like had they pursued their careers instead of taking care of the family.

Moms who have always wanted to be chefs, police officers, fashion designers and others will be able to pursue those goals for one week. At the end of the week, the mom can either choose to live the dual life of raising a family and having a career or go back to being a stay-at-home parent.

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Originally posted by hali:
Cripes, all the angry white men are whining about the "angry black woman". How predictable is that!

I used to think the angry white men were worth debating with, but that was 20 years ago! Now they are just boring and embarrassing. However, given how unattractive all that whining is to women, there is some hope that they will just die out without procreating!

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Originally posted by Stargazer:
Soccer moms are stereotyped to be dumb and useless.

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I think the stereotype is working parent, lives in suburbs, run ragged... but women being the ones having the traditional 'relationship responsibilities' they are the ones that go to the games no matter how busy they are.

For what it's worth- that isn't my experience with kids soccer games... but that's the stereotype out there.

Nor do I think Michele Obama is being dumbed down. Call it pandering if you want- but the pandering is the attempt to look more like everyone else. And 'everyone else' does not see themselves as dumb... thats your read.

[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

Obviously, sometimes portrayed that way. You just did it for example.

I have only heard it referred to in a neutral way. Implicit is the outsider looking at 'them', but not with the kind of characterization you used.

Both the perjorative use of soccer mom and of NASCAR dad used here are just the same old stereotype of working class boors that have been around for ages.

The real people that correspond with 'NASCAR dad' are only in some cases hunters and gun people- and increasingly less so.

I was raised in a hunting and gun appreciating culture myself. While I left it behind younger, I'm not unusual.

There's somewhat more correspndence between NASCAR loving and country music, but just as much with hard rock.

From Wikipedia:

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In North American social, cultural and political discourse, NASCAR dad refers broadly to a demographic group of white, usually middle-aged, working-class or lower-middle-class men. The group received this nickname because they are men who are believed to typically enjoy watching NASCAR racing, or comparable high-impact sports or entertainment (football, professional wrestling). The term was often used during the United States presidential election of 2004, particularly in describing the efforts of Democrats to regain the votes of white southern males.

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From an NYTimes article:

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Nascar dad is, apparently, the white, heterosexual embodiment of the swing voter in this next election, and a great deal of time and effort and money are being spent trying to hunt the poor guy down.

He's defined as a blue-collar wage earner (rural? urban? suburban? just bourbon?) disaffected with politics and parties and willing to throw a vote to the candidate who speaks to his needs. Jobs, education, health care and so forth. Which way he feels on which issues, though, remains a mystery.

He may have a Confederate flag stuck to the bumper of his pickup truck - unless he's driving his wife's Subaru, in which case the bumper reads "Mary Kay" or "Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How." He's out there somewhere, though, wandering the highways, and the candidates are determined to find him.

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Nascar dad wants to know that all his hard work, all his effortful virtue and his diligent vigilance, all his ancient bravery and his bone-deep devotion, all his canny intelligence and his remarkable ingenuity, all his abiding love of country, and all the struggle in his living and his dying, is in service of something much greater than himself.

All that, and a weekend of topless karaoke at the track. These things are not mutually exclusive. As I said, Nascar dad is a mighty complicated man. Look far enough past the "bikini inspector" hats and the rainbow suspenders, the clichés and the rhetoric and the race to catalog the constituency, and maybe you'll catch a glimpse of him. He's right there, in the grandstands at Daytona, one huge hand over his heart for the anthem and standing razor straight.

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