We Could Have Been A Contender! The Manhood of Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama as a child.

We Could Have Been a Contender!

(Thank you, Marlon Brando):

 The “Manhood” of Michelle Obama

It has been many things to see the fascination numerous white men have with the question of whether or not Michelle Obama is a man. In black rural culture, growing up, I experienced many women, including my mother, who might have been “mistaken” for men. After all, there they were, tilling fields, milking cows, repairing shacks.  Then, come Sunday, they ditched the overalls, bathed, spruced up their hair, put on lipstick, and splashed on perfume. Becoming “woman” in the magical sense.

I admired my mother for this transformation. Liked seeing my father helpless before a change that, as children, we enjoyed even more; witnessing it through his lovestruck eyes.

It is perhaps envy that causes some white men to focus on Michelle Obama’s gender.  And reminds me of something Abraham Lincoln supposedly said about Harriet Tubman: that, though a woman, she was “most of a man” that he had ever seen. She was the only woman who’d led troops in battle,in America, after all.

Woman contains multitudes: we people the earth. But a more relevant question is, what is a man, after all: that critics of Michelle Obama would be interested in having her be one?

It was the comedian Joan Rivers who insinuated publicly that Michelle Obama was a man, and now we must wonder: was she put up to this?  Was this a rumor deliberately started, for political reasons?  What did she get out of this apparent slander?  What could Michelle Obama’s gender mean to her? Individuals have been known to change genders, after all. Choice must be applauded, I believe, in any case.

In fact, my own thinking about Michelle Obama is that I don’t resonate with some of her efforts: supporting Kamala Harris, for President, for instance, or wearing super long eyelashes; but realize my druthers, for anyone to steer this blighted USA sinking ship, are beside the point.  What I do think is that Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, (whose “skeletons” I also don’t presume to know, or care to be informed about) would make excellent co-leaders of our crashing republic.  Or they might have, before it began to crash so badly.

They are well known, highly intelligent, well- traveled, and well-read, and known also to be able to talk to anybody, as adults. I occasionally have amused myself imagining Oprah talking to Putin, who is very intelligent and thoughtful, along with whatever else- in terms of personality – he has been labeled. Or Michelle, talking to Zelensky and looking skeptical and unimpressed. Perhaps pressing him to divulge more about what she had heard about the traffic in drugs.

Just imagine.  For one thing, with these two, the United States would not likely be drowning in debt.  So much debt we, the citizens, will never be able to pay what is owed. I can imagine them with their mostly all-women cabinet, having it out with the few war hawkish men:  You want to do what? Spend all this money on weapons when all these children need food and shoes?   You want to invade who? When every road and bridge in this nation is falling apart.  You want to close museums that try to teach our ignorant country who its people actually are?  You don’t want to feed folks who are one step away from being homeless and hungry on the street?  Oh no, we not having that.

Ah, to be led by conscious women!  Not doomed to sit back as every dream for a prosperous, if still far from happy, republic, crumbles into dust.

Maybe the mostly white men who are fascinated by the thought that Michelle Obama is a man realize they will never be her equal.  Maybe what they’re really feeling is the need to bring her down a peg.  Bring her down to their level, so they do not have to feel small as they envision her possibly laudatory– in the white house or anyplace else – nation-steering accomplishments.

In any case, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said (another soul I would have enjoyed watching as president of the country), the saddest words in human language are: “too late.” As, alas, the world watches the USA falling on the same sword(s) – violence, hatred, greed -with which it was built.

A strong woman
Makes many less strong men
Feel positively weak.
There they stand
All their privileges
Showing –
And what does she have,
Besides her muscles,
A brain, a womb,
A body that can create
And carry
A nation.
There she might
Be: Immune
Apparently
To all
Obstacles.
In spite of
Every ignorance:
Still she rising.
Say her name:
Sister President.

 ~aw

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