Book Review: What If Michelle Obama & Mary Todd Lincoln Were Reversed In Time?
Oh The Times They Have A'Changed!
Can you imagine it: Mary Todd Lincoln first lady in 2009? And Michelle Obama First Lady in 1860?
Yes, Mary Todd Lincoln --she would be a lot like our present day First Lady--extremely well educated, politically savvy, a staunch stand by and behind your man. a socio-politically engaged woman with great intellectual and life scope, a devoted mom, a passionate sexual and life partner, a fashionista, and a serious contender in her own right.
Michelle Obama--well, she would have been a slave as were her ancestors. Her life scope would have been nil. Her education non-existent. Her work in the rice paddies. Her life expectancy short and her children many. Her great great grandfather, Jim Robinson, was a slave on Friendfield Plantation in South Carolina and likely she would have been as well. The Cohen branch of her ancestry were "Black Cohens" owned by Sephardic Jews. The Robinson's sought education and after the Civil War each succeeding generation was better and better educated--culminating with Michelle and her brother Craig having advanced ivy degrees--hers Princeton and Harvard Law.
A Different View Of Mary
Mary Todd Lincoln, who Anna Quindlen calls The Other Lincoln, in her Newsweek Article of Mar 2, 2009, is now considered a tragic figure.
A woman constricted, constrained, ridiculed and ultimately consigned to the looney bin by her son, for being too out spoken, too strong, too frustrated by her life limitations, too passionate, too smart, too educated, too expressive, too saddened by the deaths of her sons, beloved husband, mother and father and brothers. Too outre, too too and too too much.
Would we admire her now?
Would she be running for president--she with 12 years of education and her husband Abe with less than one? I don't know. We've come a long way baby...but we have a long way to go to really accept woman and power in the same sentence. I do think, I hope, in 2009, we would see her totally differently and she would not be tagged crazy (or fashion obsessed ), as Martha Mitchell was during the Nixon era. And Martha, as we all know was RIGHT!!Without her speaking truth to power, there would have been no Watergate and all the scum scoundrels, thieves, liars and criminals would have gone unnoticed. But like Mary (dead at 63), Martha died young at 57-- scorned and unmourned.
Michelle Negotiates a New Era
Book Review: "Michelle"
Liza Mundy's 2008 biography of Michelle Obama called, no suprise, simply, Michelle, paints a picture of a very strong, brillant, steady woman.
Family grounded and surrounded, great leadership, All American African American woman who is a no BS person, and who has done a pretty good job of gaining a bigger view of life in a few short months.
From her Chicago neighborhood roots to the White House and beyond--hugging the Queen, sweet and a protocol faux pas--Michelle will never be The Other Obama. At least not as an object of ridicule.
She is way too savvy and ...the times have a'changed--thankfully.
Michelle And Barack--A GQ Couple
Looking back over the last hundred and sixty years to the pre-civil war era, clothing of any kind beyond rags would have not been possible for Michelle and dress has been a distinct marker of achievement--especially in the Black community--precisely because of the field hand and mammy images that are still all too familiar. And Michelle is more the generation of Sex and the City, with its emphasis on style, sex and shoes and getting married, than on the earlier boomer generation with its emphasis on breaking barriers for women and minorities and getting ahead professionally. most of the Sex and the City "gals" have professions, but lack love. Michelle has benefited from the battles that Secratary of State Clinton's generation had fought and won: Title IX and Title VII, Roe V Wade. Simple but far reaching changes like eracing 1950s and 60s standard newspaper sex differentiated classified want ads that consigned women to domestic, clerical, factory, nursing or teaching work.
With these social changes to back her, her family and community to support her, and her brillance and education to shine, it's no wonder she could become a prominent hospital administrator. And more power to her!!
It's easy to dismiss her by judging her as a mommy, self-effacing fashionista, and judging her as shallow.
That would be a mistake. She has depths of knowlegeble anger that rise out of her slave ancestry, her Chicago Black community background--that was a segregated one--de facto if not by intent--and her sense that minorities and women still get short shrift in today's America. Maybe it's not a woman crazy making society like Mary Todd Lincoln and Martha Mitchell's were, but there is still a lot of change to be made.

Ok, we've been really serious here on vaboomer for a looooooooooooong time. It's that winter doldrums thing. Do you remember Howdy Doody? Were you a fan? I tried. I wanted to be. I pretended to be. I was not.
When President Obama appointed Dr. Stephen Chu, Nobel Prize winner and Baby Boomer, as 12th holder of the Head of the Department of Energy, 
I drive across the Bay Bridge and stare at Angel Island all the time, and quite honestly I had been unable to appreciate its symbolic nature until Sunday night. The Angel Island Immigration Station on what is now Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay served as the processing center for most of the 56,113 Chinese immigrants who are recorded as immigrating or returning from China;upwards of 30 percent more who showed up were returned to China. 


