If any other network news outlet had captioned a segment about Michelle Obama, wife of Senator and Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama, with the phrase “Obama’s Baby Mama” a bitch would probably have been able to rustle up a solid WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!??!
However, we’re talking about FOX…the same network that still employs Bill O’Reilly after years of him assaulting reason and after his on air verbal exploration over when it would be okay to go forth and lynch Michelle Obama.
Blink.
So, when a fucked up non-news conservative surrogate disguised as a legitimate news outlet spews forth a phrase that is used to refer to single mothers who no longer have a relationship with the father of their child and were never married to that father…and is inarguably not applicable to Michelle Obama who is the MOTHER of two young children and FUCKING MARRIED to Senator Obama…well, its not shocking at all.
It is a continuation of the same bullshit many women of color face. One of the reasons I settled on the blog title AngryBlackBitch was my wish to address the damage done through that stereotype. Black female anger is easily dismissed because we’re considered irrational raving hysterical (Gawd, I hate that word) loud, incoherent wild women who go off at the drop of a dime. Anger is simply unacceptable coming from black women and too many of my sisters have learned to school their emotions for fear of that label. In truth, I have received more complaints about my blog title from women of color than any other group. And I tell them what I’m tell y’all – the rot of the problem is that people assume my voice, assume that my anger is sourced in some overly sensitive chip on shoulder bullshit and assume that black and anger have no bitness being in the same place.
The Baby Mama stereotype is just as fucked up. Black women are either invisible (see political coverage of 2008 primary season in which black voters and women voters where rarely black women voters) or some ig’nant stereotype. Michelle Obama can’t possibly be the married partner of a black man with two young children! That doesn’t exist…right? Oh no…no, no, no…she must be made to fit into a stereotype!
Ho…baby mama…uppity Negro…welfare queen…servant…sassy sidekick…predatory lesbian…sex fiend…long suffering nanny…passive evangelical…raving militant…angry black bitch…victim?
Pull the lever and watch the options spin…round and round and round…until, yes! Baby Mama will do nicely...manages to address that myth of black marriage and that other myth of black parenthood and the myth of black monogamy…and the myth that any black woman could ever be treated with one ounce of respect by a system that sees the most efficient way to campaign against a political candidate who is a person of color being to cast him as a terrorist, his wife as a whore and his children as the unfortunate bastards born into a culture seduced by violence, addicted to sex and comprised of slovenly waste.
Post racial, my angry black ass…
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26 comments:
even tho i too understand that this was on FOX news, i was offended to my core. i felt it as a personal attack on all black women's visibility as good parents, good partners, good citizens. of course, it was also a back-handed slap across barack's character too.
then i had to laugh a bit cos there's also the new republican tv ad about barack being a former "street organizer." so, basically, we are about to elect a gang banger and his baby mama welfare queen to the highest office in the land! personally, i can't wait to pull that lever ;)
of course, i realize this is nothing and i gotta pace myself cos things are gonna get down right fugly over the next 5 months.
y'all sending your checks to barack and co yet? as much as i hate the role and volume of money in our political system, this is no time to let our principles undermine the practicalities of the situation... beating mccain (& we we MUST do that) is gonna cost us in a myriad of ways, not least of all financially.
Just read your post.
Sigh.
Blink.
Love it.
(just oozed onto the floor into flustered puddle at mental image of Michelle as predatory lesbian... Oh, my stars and garters! If only!)
Ahem. Might one add to the list of Fox News eggregiousness? Mrs. Obama was educated at Princeton (cum laude), graduated Harvard Law, worked as associate at a large Chicago Law Firm specializing in Intellectual Proprty Law, served as Assistant to the Mayor in Chicago, and is on leave from her current position as Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals.
To sum up, connections to not one but THREE ivy-league schools, mayoral staff at one of the world's premier metropolitan areas, and legal counsel. Oh, and athletic, too. And smokin' hot.
Yup, that's quite the Baby Mama.
Who knew Fox had such a street lexicon as to use hip and happnin' slang? Too bad they got it not just overwhelmingly but insulting wrong.
As you said: What the fuck?
What a lovely way to TRY to discredit and minimize the work of this woman.
Fortunately, Faux News, you made your motives crystal clear.
An accomplished, intelligent woman of color is not seen (in some quarters) as an asset but as a threat. Now, why would that be? A threat to what, exactly? Would it be to the lazy and undeservedly privileged Old Boys in the all-white Old Boys Club?
They're not taking pot shots at her because she's outspoken or "militant", whatever that even means. They're taking pot shots at her because she's competition. She makes them look bad. She's better than they are in every arena she's chosen to enter.
But they have the microphones and the audience, their own enthralled choir of scared and sad little souls who gladly sell out their own futures, their own children's futures, to the cynical and bankrupt party of the established rich; and why? Because doing so requires no thought, no effort and no risk of shaking their own marginal status quo.
Okay, rant over. Happy Friday all!
Yep, Fox is once again just plain ugly! They reference for the white folks to ignorant to do anything but accept what they hear.
I like your title of blog, it shows reality and is in line with what u say..so it represents u well!
I actually think Fox "News" is going to be the best thing that ever happened to Obama's campaign.
First the terrorist fist jab, now this Baby Mama fiasco - these kind of cartoonish attacks are only going to galvanize support for Barack Obama.
Up to this point, I've been ambivalent about the Illinois Senator. But after seeing Murdoch's "thinktank" literally grasping at straws to try to discredit him, I find I'm all like: "Fuck 'em up Obama!"
I think a lot of people are going to have the same reaction as Fox "News" spirals downward into a caricature of itself.
You say it best, Shark Fu.
No one who wants credible news goes to FoX for it. They have known for being the ball headed stepchild of the industry and its well deserved. What news director in their right mind would approve that super in a newscast. NONE... so it was done just to get the ratings up that have been falling for years. Now they have people talking about their programming again. Its all a ploy... this is summer sweeps time I from this they will get the numbers that they need to stay relevant... watch.... when september sweeps come around another stupid antic to keep them relevant will come up. They have been doing this for years.
You know about
Michelle Obama Watch?
It's like Media Matters for all things Michelle Obama.
OF COURSE, it's a diminishment of the Black woman. And patently racist.
You might also enjoy the discussion at http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=870
I still can't get over the ridiculously blatant racism just in the screencap, let alone the discussion
I love the title of you blog because I believe that not only are black women angry it is a righteous anger. We have occupied the bottom tier of the racial and social hierarchy of North America since being dragged here in chains. This attempt to dismiss us as ball busting screws belies the reality of our lived experiences and history.
As for you commentary on Michelle Obama I can only say that I bow to a bitches eloquence.
Pam, in my quest for news to add to SMI's site, I found something which made my skin crawl and stomach turn. Some nutcase white power group is distributing a picture of Michelle Obama....who by the way is a very attractive woman and obviously a very cool one as well....tied to a tree and being whipped. Have also read on a couple of sites about a mural in Atlanta of the Senator which has been defaced.
Our media is, for the most part screwed and screwing us. What scares me is that so many Americans take what FOX says as gospal. Jeeze kiddo, have they even told the truth?
What a fantastic post, and what a shame that you even had to write it.
First of all, Laura Bush and Cindy McCain could never have her dignity stripped from her in the way that Michelle Obama has, being called "Obama's Baby Mama."
A Fox News commentator would never dream of running a caption under Laura Bush saying "White Trash", or under Cindy McCain saying "Stepford Wife", both of which have class and arguably majority ethnic connotations. But, even without the heavy burden of overt racism, these would never even been considered as captions for these women because it is horribly insulting, as is the term "Baby Mama."
This is just one example of how Michelle Obama has been demonized xenophobically by Fox News. Barack and Michelle Obama's "daps" on stage when he came out as the presumptive Democratic nominee where characterized as "terrorist fist jabs" by a commentator on Fox.
But, I can read a hundred blog entries on Fox News. I feel so sorry when you have to defend yourself as an angry black woman who is allowed to be angry about racist and sexist things! I used to interact with a wonderful person online in similar discussions, and it pained me how her simplest statements about racism would always be characterized as rage by some white people she was arguing with, no matter how much she bent over backwards to be calm or how hysterically hostile the white person got. I tried and still try to be a good ally in such situations...sigh. Blink.
Sorry about the prolific reply. I was inspired.
I love the term baby mama. Our people coined it, and in the 'hoods and our music, our young people so often say it with love and respect, just like the word nigga, as in, I love my niggas and my baby mama. Ain't a god-damned thing wrong with this or speaking in our own language.
That being said, I'm infuriated that a racist bitch with a media job poisoned one of our fucking words for all the reasons you named. I'm also outraged by the hate behind another one claiming our fist-bumping is a terrorist act. Damn.
Whites have a long history of stripping us of our language, religion, and culture. This is just a new twist on it. As for the racists at FoxNews and elsewhere, F 'em.
Michelle Obama reminds me of my freshman roommate. Cool, gorgeous, brilliant, and oh-so-collected. I'd love to see her in the White House.
Rileysdtr said: not one but THREE ivy-league schools
Princeton, Harvard... What's the third?
Thank you for expanding our general "WTF" thoughts to your eloquent post.
I do believe I will need a jaw sling this election season - it's wearisome stooping over to retrieve the poor thing.
NancyP
Everything you say is right, but as soon as Obama responds to this crap, he's going to be painted as an angry black man. I'd imagine the Fox Caption then to be something like: "Obama responds- Yo! Back off, whiteys!"
So, he has to stay above the fray and, whenever possible, the rest of us have to mock and deride these pathetic, desperate people.
Even the airheads on Fox know that Barack and Michelle are married and that both were educated at Ivy League schools. And although racism runs rampant on "the fair and balanced" news network, I'm guessing that this was a pathetic attempt at being hip and happening while, as usual, Fox's personnel had no idea of what they were talking about.
I'm pretty sure the Senator went to Columbia undergrad...
Thing is, Michelle Obama is the epitome of the self-made, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type that these wingnuts claim represents the American ideal. She grew up working class on Chicago's South Side (not exactly the Elysian Fields, folks). She got an Ivy League education.
And they STILL pretend she's one of those ghetto types they claim is poisoning America in some strange way. What was she supposed to do--move to Cabrini Green and start popping out babies like a welfare queen? I'm really confused here.
I have you on blogroll now, rather than a link, so I get to see when you post. But I missed this yesterday.
Wow.
I mean like, wow. Holy mother of God.
The thing is... 1.) the WHOLE WORLD is watching this, watching us... have these people no shame? It just illustrates the arrogance of racism. 2.) the Gollums are slithering out from under the rocks they've been hiding under for the past few decades... like the nasty little critters they are, they can't survive in bright sunlight. May the sun burn them all.
All I know is that when I saw that Fox Noise tape the other day..I wanted to pummel someone with my trusty baseball bat.
Preferably someone at Fox Noise..
Got it, Shark-Fu. I tend to think of Senator Obama's being a powder-blue pussy-cat as a feather in his cap, rather than an Ivy League link for Michelle Obama.
-jsb16, CC'93
Third ivy-league school would be the University of Chicago; she worked for... the provost's office? Student affairs? Something like that, and then UC Hospital systems, where she is currently on leave.
rant on IseultTheIdle!
right on ABB...
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