Class vs Crass
Sunday Open Thread: January 2nd, 2010
What’s on your minds this Sunday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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Class vs. Crass: The next round of Class vs. Crass that we’re working on focuses on 19th Century First Ladies: Sarah Childress Polk, Margaret Mackall Smith Taylor, Abigail Powers Fillmore, Jane Means Appleton Pierce, Harriet Lane, and Mary Todd Lincoln.
Do you know any interesting stories about these women that illustrate virtuous, commendable, patriotic, or heroic behavior on their parts?
What are some examples of Michelle Antoinette Obama’s bad behavior that form natural contrasts to the way her predecessors conducted themselves in life?
There is, bar none, nothing else we do here at HB that makes the Left howl as much as Class vs. Crass. Daily Kos and Democratic Underground absolutely hate these episodes.
What’s most interesting, and amusing, is that Class vs. Crass simply highlights an actual historical fact about a former First Lady…side-by-side with an actual historic fact about Michelle Antoinette Obama. There is no opinion offered. There is no satire. There are no jokes. It’s just Fact vs. Fact.
Psychologically, it’s intriguing this upsets the Left as much as it does…because drawing attention to the bad behavior Michelle Antoinette engages in is forbidden, apparently. We are all supposed to ignore the bad things the Obamas do — presumably because they are black and anyone who criticizes them is, thus, RAAACIST! That’s absurd, because we have 200+ years of history as evidence that before the Obamas moved to Washington people somehow managed to conduct themselves in a classy, patriotic, America-loving, not-all-about-themselves way. History didn’t begin on January 20th, 2009, no matter how much the revisionists on the Left would have liked it too.
If you have any ideas for future episodes — particularly for the next few First Ladies on the to-do list — please either add them here, or email them to us at HillBuzz@gmail.com.
Thanks!
Class vs. Class: Elizabeth Monroe vs. Michelle Obama — caring about others in need
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First Lady Elizabeth Monroe risked her own personal safety to rescue the Marquise Marie Adrienne, wife of General LaFayatte, during the height of the French Revolution. She did her part to care about and help a friend of America in need.
First Spouse Michelle Antoinette Obama had the resources and free time to locate and assist Barack Obama’s many poor, imperiled Kenyan relatives, ranging from his Aunt Zeituni (who lived in a housing project in Boston) to his brother George (living in a tin shanty in Kenya) and grandmother Sarah (who, at 88, had no running water or electricity in her small hut)…but she never stepped in to care about or help any of these people.
Class vs. Crass.
For more episodes of Michelle Obama’s bad behavior relative to those who’ve lived in the White House before her, click here.
Class vs. Crass Challenge: The Obama Hawaiian Vacation
Here’s a challenge for you…one that I will enjoy doing myself in the next few days.
Just like the Obama Christmas ornaments from 2009, featuring Mao Zedong, Obama’s face on Rushmore, and drag queen Hedda Lettuce, gave us a few Class vs. Crass episodes and the ability to compare past presidents at Christmas to the antics of the Obamas…the lavish, traveling court, depression be damned vacation the Obamas are on in Hawaii is ripe fodder for at least a half dozen Class vs. Crass installments.
Here’s just some of the expenses the Obamas incurred in Hawaii.
(1) Can you find more crass things they did while on the islands?
(2) Can you suggest examples of other presidents/first ladies being a contrast to the Obamas?
(3) What are good examples of first ladies being frugal?
(4) What are good examples of first families acknowledging the times they lived in and showing restraint?
(5) What are good examples of presidents being humble and respectful of others and knowing what is gauge and too showy for the moment?
(6) What are good examples of presidents taking a vacation that does not disrupt others or spend lavishly?
Feel free to look anywhere in history, but since this Hawaii trip involves jet travel and all the expenses of the modern presidency, maybe the most applicable presidencies would be from the Roosevelts forward. I will let it be more nebulous and let you decide which Roosevelts I’m talking about.
Ideas appreciated.
Class vs. Crass: Dolley Madison vs. Michelle Antoinette Obama
In the small photo above, the woman dressed in gold is a Dolley Madison impersonator, entertaining then-First Lady Laura Bush at an event marking the release of the Dolley Madison First Spouse gold coin, the companion coin to President Madison’s dollar coin.
At some point in the future, should the presidential coin series continue, Michelle Antoinette Obama will be entitled to a coin of her own as well.
It’s interesting to think about what a Michelle Antoinette Obama impersonator would look like, what gender that person would be, and how s/he would behave in the role.
Which of Michelle’s trademark “fashions” would the impersonator wear and which of Michelle’s memorable quotes would s/he deliver up on the stage, while impersonating her?
Class vs. Crass: Martha Washington Jefferson Randolph vs. Michelle Antoinette Obama
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Martha Washington Jefferson Randolph was the historic and unprecedented first non-spouse First Lady of the United States, serving in the role for her widower father, Thomas Jefferson. Mrs. Jefferson Randolph was named after both Martha Washington, the “Mother of the Country” and her own mother, Martha Jefferson. When she gave birth to her son, the first child born in the White House, Mrs. Jefferson Randolph named him James Madison Randolph, after the ‘Father of the Constitution”, James Madison.
As First Spouse, Michelle Antoinette Obama accepted the gift of a Portuguese water dog from the Kennedy family. It was not only the closest a Kennedy will ever get to living in the White House again, but a puppy closely related to Ted Kennedy’s own dog, Splash…whose name is a cruel Kennedy inside-joke allusion to the 1969 drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in the Chappaquiddick Tidal Canal.
The Obamas named their dog “Bo”, after Obama’s own initials.
It’s also a common term for “body odor”.
More Class vs. Crass here.
Tuesday Open Thread: December 28th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Tuesday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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RESEARCH: The Obamas are off on yet another extravagant vacation in Hawaii. Hawaii is the most obese state in the Union. Michelle Antoinette Obama is supposedly on a “crusade against other people’s obesity”. What is she doing while in Hawaii to get Hawaiians to break their pattern and change their obese ways?
Can anyone find good shots of Michelle Antoinette eating all the rich (and delicious) Hawaiian foods?
Always fun to catch Democrats in visible hypocrisy.
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RESEARCH: We’ve decided to make a strong press for the Class vs. Crass series through January and February, doing an episode a day in order of the First Ladies of the United States, with detours into First Gentlemen of various states and foreign countries, and First Spouses in fiction as well. Every US First Lady will get an episode, highlighting something she is known for in history that Michelle Antoinette Obama should be aware of, and maybe pattern some of her own behavior after.
We’ve got First Ladies cued up through Mrs. John Q. Adams, and are working on the next round of entries…so if you have any good stories about the following women you think would make great “Class vs. Crass” episodes, please chime in below.
It’s even better if you can think of something Michelle Antoinette did that forms a natural bookend to the other First Lady’s story.
The spirit of these is the old “Goofus & Gallant” panels in Highlights for Children magazine, where Gallant displayed acceptable encouraged behavior on the part of a little boy, while Goofus showed children the bad things a kid shouldn’t do.
The Left routinely howls about “Class vs. Crass”…but every panel is factually correct, with little opinion tossed in, and is instead just a clear and obvious contrast of behavior between Michelle Antoinette and the women who have served in her position before her.
The howling being done should be directed at Michelle, because it’s her bad behavior that is on display, should people take the time to put it in the historical perspective that “Class vs. Crass” does.
Do you know any good stories for:
(1) Rachel Donelson Jackson
(2) Hannah Hoes Van Buren
(3) Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison
(4) Letitia Christian Tyler
(5) Julia Gardiner Tyler
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Class vs. Crass: Abigail Adams vs. Michelle Obama
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During the Revolutionary War, future First Lady Abigail Adams melted down her own silver to make bullets so the Continental Army could fight the British, their Hessians, and (presumably), their reinforcement werewolves.
With two wars raging during her husband’s presidency in 2009, Michelle Antoinette Obama wore fleur-de-lis capped regal Bochic diamond and amber baubles…a year after complaining the Bush tax rebate of $600 couldn’t “even buy earrings”.
More Class vs. Class here.
