Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Saturday, August 14, 2010 11:21:37 AM
Reading about the adventures of the Obamas, not to mention their words and histories, I have reached the conclusion that they are a pair of essentially shallow people whose worlds begin with “I” and end with “me.”
The idea of Michelle Obama vacationing with her forty closest friends amazes me. This woman is phenomenal. I can’t conceive of having forty closest friends.
To me, a close friend has always been a person I could talk with about things that were troubling me that I didn’t want to be public or that were too controversial in the situation we were in to express them openly. I have never in my life had more than one or two such people at a time, usually men but occasionally women. In college Don Zytowski and Charley Moench filled that roll. In combat, Jim Gay was the one person I talked to freely, in complete trust of good advice and privacy. In Canada, it was Frank Chubb. In Springfield it became Susan who served as my teaching assistant in graduate classes for six years. Currently, Joyce fills that role for both Sheila and I – which makes me a bit jealous as I have known Joyce longer but Sheila and Joyce have become more intimate.
Now we all live hundreds of miles apart, except for Joyce, but I believe that if life circumstances permitted and we met again, I would still have the same friendship and freedom of thought and talk with any of them. But to have forty at once? Is she that trusting? What does she do? She can’t have them sit in a circle while she confides her private ideas and troubles, there are too many people for a circle unless she has a microphone. Perhaps address them in a classroom? How does she listen to their replies, their suggestions and consolations, by numbers? I can see her standing in front of this class of forty saying, “I am married to a cold jerk, but I can’t think what to do about it except to take vacations by myself. I enjoy his prestige and money, which overflows to me and don’t want to lose it. What should I do?” and then going up and down by row numbers to conceal that she has forgotten the names of these close friends.
To be a friend, persons must have the ability to be concerned for others than themselves. I don’t believe the Obamas, either Barrack or Michelle, have that ability. And concerning the “forty close friends,” if the Obamas were to lose their positions, would those forty, one and all, ask “Obama who?” if you mentioned their names?
Perhaps I’m wrong, however, about all of my complaints about the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and the millions in expensive, tax-payer funded, trips around the world accompanied by a multitude of (probably) fair weather friends. It may be a swan song, a last hoorah. Perhaps Michelle realizes that her husband’s band of appointees, his czars and his policies are destroying any chance of his having a second term, so she is just enjoying it while she has it.
However, Obama still has a chance. If Michelle can’t count on his policies justifying a second term in office, she can always hope the Republican establishment will come to his rescue. The Republican Party has friends also. They could nominate one of the Old Guard, such as John McCain or Mitt Romney, who are supported by their “friends” in the liberal media while fighting for the nomination and then deserted when running for President. So perhaps she should be a bit more cautious in her extravagances.