The Raised Fist of The Revolutionary-In-Chief

Obama's cleverly uses Michelle's aggression to act like the "good guy." Yet, he is following in his politics the exact same dismantling of white society that Michelle is blatantly advocating. His expression above is a benevolent cringing at the loud vocals probably emitting from Michelle. Yet, she clearly behaves this way because he never tells her to stop. He wants her to behave like this. Their private conversations must be full of raised fists.

I saw this image of the Obamas and their raised fists while searching images on my Michelle Obama "fashion" posts, but I didn't want to detract too much attention away from Michelle's aggressive personality as seen through her clothes.

This is what I wrote about her:

Perhaps her real persona is the aggressive militaristic, black power one, where she is following her smart husband's intentions, which he is reticent to disclose to us.

In an email exchange with Jeanette Victoria, this is what I said about the Obamas:

I can actually see her turning ugly. Is that why Obama is so nice to here - kissing her in public, and all those intimate dances during their parties? And he also needs her irrational (black power) anger, since he's not going there in the same way. He's smartly sticking to "politics."

And in an email to Laura Wood of The Thinking Housewife I wrote:

By the way, Jeanette's Star Wars analogy with Michelle's entrance sparked my follow up post on Michelle. And there is much there besides a pictorial one (e.g. Obama's underlying aggression, and Michelle as his female Captain).

The email conversation with Jeanette turned to evil characters in current films (I had done a blog post on a film referencing Little Red Riding Hood and which turned into some kind of were-wolf rapist story.

Jeanette writes:

Check out Lost Girl it's a Canadian show.

I replied:

I missed that! Actually, I don't have the cable channel Showcase.

So this is one of those girly, super-heroine, "mysterious" beings, who just wants "The Truth." And Good for the world! I wonder when the wolf (the bad white male) will show up. Of course if he shows up as a black male, she would forgive him, and even hook up with him, as Larry Auster keeps showing us.

Laura has this image up in a post which she titles The Revolution Lives.

James N., a reader of her site writes:

They [the Republicans] are constantly stuck down in the weeds arguing details, details about which Obama cares not at all. Obama is a visionary, he has his eyes on the prize (the destruction of America), and for him all the twists and turn of the political process are simply means to an end.

James N. is being sarcastic when he calls Obama "a visionary." But I think Obama takes his role of changing America, and he surely calls himself "A Revolutionary."

My Friend Muni

When I used to teach English as a Second Language, I had a friend called Muni, or at least she wanted to befriend me. For some reason, I was wary of her. I found her zealous attempts to reform the ESL program to be too aggressive. And she wasn't as good as she thought she was; I covered a few classes for her and saw her teaching method (I would insist that she give me her lesson plan since I was't going to improvise).

She was a singer, and performed Indian songs with her husband . "We are artists," she told me. Her program always included and "some western songs to make the audience happy" she said. She had musical talent, but her voice was too weak for performance. She invited me to a few of her concerts, including one Eid performance. She was Muslim.

Those days, I was just beginning to understand the slow incursion of Islam into Canadian society. One Ethiopian Muslim, who also worked in my building (he "counselled" "new comers"), once sat me down and lectured me on how the Ethiopian Amhara (the group I come from) mistreated other ethnic groups, including Muslims. I knew his version of Ethiopia's past was wrong, but listened anyway. I didn't have the language or enough knowledge to argue with his adamant lecturing. But I think he lectured me so that I would be a mouthpiece and relate his views to my family, rather than any strong urge to "convert" me. He never wanted an Amhara mingling with his Somali/Oromo tribe.

Canada was also just beginning to embrace multiculturalism with a vengeance, which in my naive way I rejected, and Muslims were going through all kinds of petitions, political and otherwise, it include Muslim holidays in the official calendar. But, it was more insidious, since they were also working on eliminating Christian references, including the infamous "War on Christmas."

Muni always wore long skirts and loose blouses, with flat shoes. I thought it was some musician/artist thing. It looked gauche, like someone going for some look, but ended up looking a little odd. But she never dressed in these "western" clothes for her concerts, rather she wore glittering Indian saris. Her husband, with whom she performed, wore Nehru style shirts to these performances. I think her everyday clothes were her attempt at covering her body in accordance with Muslim dress codes. For her performances, she went back to her Indian (she was Bangladeshi) roots, and wore the beautiful saris. I think her audience expected this of her, despite their Muslim background. Sometimes (very, very few times), culture trumps religion.

They had two children: a son and a daughter.The son was about sixteen when I knew them, and the daughter about twenty three. This daughter always wore super-mini skirts. I could never understand why Muni would let her wear such clothes. "I don't want her to leave us" she said once, without my asking her. The daughter married a Muslim man, and I don't know what happened to her or her appearance after that, although I'm sure it has changed.

Muslim's seem uncharacteristically lenient toward their daughters until they get them married off. The husband is always a Muslim, or a Muslim convert. Then, the duties of a married Muslim woman has to take over, however modern she may seem (like Muni) if she want a harmonious family life. Honor killings are not necessarily for western-fashion attired unmarried girls, but for those who abandon their families for a non-Muslim man, or by conversion to Christianity.

Muni invited me to her home a couple of times. It was a little sparse and conventional for "artists" but I noticed that there were several Islamic paraphernalia, including a koran prominently on a table. After a while, I stopped accepting her invitations (she once started a "friendly" conversation about the Amhara, which I realized was a jab at my Christian background). But that wasn't the real reason I detached myself. I realized that she will always be a Muslim, and that she was reaching out to friendly-looking and friendly-seeming people to inject her Muslim culture, and who will be some kind of ambassadors to relay that image into the larger society.

I don't know what has become of Muni, and her family, but her efforts have not been in vain (not with me, but with Canadians in general). Mosques dot the landscape, Muslim holidays are openly celebrated, hijabed women are on the streets, and any "racist" comments towards Muslims can bring down the iron fist of the Human Rights Commission.

When will the rest of Canada learn?

Deconstructing and Reconstructing The First Lady of Power

In my last couple of posts (here and here), I wrote about the militaristic appearance of Michelle Obama in one of the events for her husband's inauguration. The first post was her entering Capitol Hill for the swearing-in ceremony wearing a Thom Browne coat.

A reader, who saw my post at The Thinking Housewife, emailed me to say she looked like something from Star Wars.

I put the Capitol Hill entry photo together with Darth Vader's in a following post, to the approval of the Star Wars afficionada: "Oh my the visual is absolutely perfect!!"

At The Thinking Housewife, Perfesser Plum writes:

I’ve detected a typo in your heading [Michelle Obama: Militant and Girlish]. I’m sure you meant to type,

“Michelle Obama: Militant and Goulish.”

She looks like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix, only more masculine.

Well, above is Michelle with the great company of Darth Vader and Neo.

The Neo reference might be the most pertinent.

MORPHEUS: Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream, Neo? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?[Source]

We could ask the First Lady the same question, who could pass it on to the President.

It is odd that it is so easy to find other "personas" for Michelle Obama. As I wrote in my previous post on her: "We would never have imagined Jill Biden, Laura Bush, Jackie Kennedy, or even the formidable Barbara Bush as Darth Vader or Boris Karloff."

I wonder why that is? All I can conclude is that she is in a place and role so alien to her, that she has to keep reinventing herself to fit the role she thinks she should have. She seems to narrow it down to an ultra-feminine, girlish appearance, or an over-charged militaristic one. Perhaps her real persona is the aggressive militaristic, black power one, where she is following her smart husband's intentions, which he is reticent to disclose to us.

She Looks Like Something From Star Wars

Jeanette Victoria sent me an email on my post First Lady of Power (FLOP?) with this comment:

You know she looks like something from Star Wars.

To which I replied:

Very Funny!

She sends in later:

LOL I also read "jack boots by designer Reed Krakoff" as Boris Karloff LOL [She] does look like some futurist scarey nightmare.

We would never have imagined Jill Biden, Laura Bush, Jackie Kennedy, or even the formidable Barbara Bush as Darth Vader or Boris Karloff.

The Racist, Immigrant-Hating, Mayor of Toronto Keeps His Job

Mayor Ford of Toronto got into a lot of trouble for daring to say that non-white immigrants were not assimilating into Canadian culture. He said this after a bout of shootings by blacks. In a moment of un-censored bluntness, he said that these immigrant criminals should be deported back to their countries of origin.

He was also outspoken about the huge homosexual bully activists when he refused to attend (lead) the "gay pride" parade last year, which I wrote about here.

He then went into financial scrutiny for embezzlement charges, and if found guilty would have been removed from office.

He has been cleared of these charges, and will remain in office.

I hope he continues with his feisty, and honest, leadership, to prevent Toronto's further take-over by aliens.

First Lady of Power (FLOP?)

Michelle Obama's sartorial decisions for the various presidential functions are being discussed all over the media, so I will also pitch in. Most critics are looking at the cost of her outfits, but I will look at their design.

It isn't the first time I've critiqued Michelle's outfits. I've always found her dress decisions to be fascinating. She has a whole army of designers and stylists to help her, yet she always manages to look off.

So here's my brief take on the clothes she wore to the most important days of her husband's life (I think this second term is even more important than the first, since Obama has made it clear that he intends to finish off what he started during his first term).


Michelle wore designer Thom Browne's (not spelled Tom Brown, God forbid the conventionality) what looks like a military coat for the Monday of the inauguration events, including the visit to church and while walking a couple of stretches of the procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

She "accessorized" the coat with purple gloves and a fashionable reference to jack boots by designer Reed Krakoff, who had created an interesting blouse for Anne Romney, which I wrote about here. Krakoff also designed the "shrunken sweater" and the pattern-less dress Michelle wore at the official swearing in, which I write about below. Is jackboots how Krakoff sees Michelle, along with a juvenile shrunken sweater? It is interesting that these designers want a powerful, militaristic Michelle, yet also want her to look innocuously feminine (almost like a small girl), as though to sartorially dampen the former with the latter. And Michelle obliges.

Here's what Krakoff gushes about her:

It was such a pleasure to work with someone so iconic. She really epitomizes the Reed Krakoff woman, a woman of incredible strength and modernity and a woman who knows her own sense of style. That's the most gratifying part of it. She's the ultimate person to dress.

Thom Browne's ensemble includes the Michelle "touch" with that studded belt. I'm not sure how Michelle got to Browne. He's a morbid, "avant-garde" type of designer. One of his runway shows involved models climbing out of coffins with gauze wrapped around their heads. She has worn his clothes twice before.

Browne says he designed the coat/dress inaugural ensemble based on a silk jacquard tie design.


He says in an interview:

She has a really strong sensibility and style of her own. And she likes well-tailored clothes so the inspiration was doing something that looked tailored and structured and fitted through the body and somewhat A-line for the skirt and the dress ... something that's as strong as she is as a person and as an individual

So, I wasn't far off in surmising that Browne was giving Michelle a masculine, power look.


Yet, the "reverse" patterned dress beneath the coat (the squares are white) makes it look lighter and more whimsical. It is more like a frock rather than a dress. The black squares give the coat a heavy and stern look. Her top is her familiar shrunken sweater. Once again, these designers vacillate between an aggressive, dominant Michelle, and a subdued, girlified one.


J. Crew's designer says about the "already sold out" belt:

The embellished belt the First Lady wore over her Thom Browne coat wasn't a belt. "[It] was actually a sash—she fashioned it into a belt," Lyons explains. "We won't rerun that. She did her own thing to that, and out of respect, we'll let her have that moment."

It was hard to imagine that a seasoned designer would produce such an ugly item. J. Crew's designer Lyons explains that she was only partially responsible for it. I'm sure it is against the advice of her stylists that Michelle decided to stud-up this belt.

Michelle herself never seems to know if she wants to be a power woman or a debutante. Her long (new, as everyone reminds us) bangs say "small girl" but her very heavy make-up, probably with false eyelashes, almost says bordello woman.


Below are Cathy Waterman earrings Michelle wore with her coat/dress outfit. She wore a more subdued pair of diamond studs for the church service, along with grey heels, but changed all this to for her harsher look for her walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn't find a better image, nor a copy of the earrings at Waterman's site. It is meant to go with the Thom Browne outfit. It matches, of course, but compare that to the lighter, more visible (but not overwhelming) pair that Jill Biden wore (which I've posted below).


Below is a close-up of her stylishly gloved hands holding the bibles (plural) for Obama's swearing in.


The studded, military-style belt becomes the background to the swearing in. And true to the strange, alien, nature of the ceremony, Obama had two bibles at the Monday event. Martin Luther King's was there (it was Martin Luther King Day that Monday, after all). But, its real purpose was underline Obama's adamant "integration" of blacks, and the signs of his administration to come. The Lincoln Bible was also a nod to blacks.

Jill Biden's coat, which she wore at the same event, although a plain grey, has a feminine touch with the bow. It is made from silk and wool, so has a subtle sheer. Her designer is Lela Rose, who isn't exceptional (she's no Dior), but she somehow managed to put together this elegant piece for Mrs. (Dr.) Biden.


The dress under the coat is also by Lela Rose. It is not a complete match (or a "reverse" match like Michelle Obama's coat-dress ensemble), but works well together with the silver/grey coat.


Below is Jill Biden's mature "bangs" and subdued makeup. I am also struck by Jill's amiable, almost humble expression, compared to the hard, over-confidence Michelle portrays.


And the white sapphire and mother-of-pearl earrings she wore were designed by Kara Ross, which Ross describes as "maze button drop earrings," and which fit proportionally, with the overall outfit.


The Obama family was in the Blue Room of the White House for the official swearing in. Michelle wore a blue dress. For the Blue Room? But the color might be the only thing worthy of the room, and even that is too dark against the turquoise blue of the room. It isn't blue, but a black and blue undecipherable pattern. Again, she opted for a frock-like dress for this formal room and formal occasion. The designer is Reed Krakoff, who is "thrilled" that she chose his design. He also provided her with the shrunken, cropped sweater, which Krakoff calls a "bolero," which is now becoming her signature.


The Obama children showed up in birthday party frocks to the official swearing in, looking uncomfortable under the watchful portraits behind them. Young Sasha seems to follow her mother's fashion "sense" with that gladiator belt she's strapped around her light and summery dress. Malia, as I've noticed before, seems to be rebelling against something (her outspoken mother?) with the odd mini-dress. By late adolescence, young women usually want to look pretty, but perhaps not in our era.


The red gown Michelle wore to the inaugural ball is by Jason Wu. It is similar to Wu's sack-like dress he designed for her for the last inaugural ball in 2008, and has the gladiator cut she has worn in other occasions that shows off her powerful upper-arm muscles. Wu must be learning fast, to keep his post as court designer, unlike J. Crew's team who had to relinquish their final stamp on their design for their inability to read the First Lady's desires.

Foul Films and Exhausted Actors

I wrote recently about the Foul Films that make up our era's movies. I reviewed Anna Karenina with Keira Knightley, and discussed why I would not watch Django Unchained.

One of the actors in Django Unchained is Leonardo DiCaprio. I think he's a talented actor, and has managed to show good performances in a number of films in the past ten years, including The Aviator, Revolutionary Road, The Departed and Catch Me if You Can. I think his break out role was in Titanic, in 1997.

Recently, though, he's gone into the dark side. He acted in a couple of movies bordering on the horror genre, Inception and Shutter Island (I review them both here, under the blog title Zombie Zeitgeist). They are both so insidiously evil, that I kept having recurring nightmares, in day light (one of the films deals with disintegrating buildings). I was temporarily rendered paranoid.

During an interview after the Golden Globes, he says that he's taking a break from filmmaking. He looked tired and weak. The reason he gave for his break was that he felt that he'd been going non-stop for a number of years. But that should be par for the course for actors.

I think the real reason is that Django exhausted him, with its evil and violent theme. His role in the film was as Calvin Candy "A ruthless plantation owner."

Here is an interview he did for the film's promotion:

This was my first attempt at playing a character that I had this much disdain for. It was an incredibly uncomfortable environment to be in... I've seen racism growing up but the degree I had to treat other people in this film was disturbing. It was a very uncomfortable situation... One of the pivotal moments for me and this character, was this initial readthrough, and I brought up, 'Do we need to push it this far? Does it need to be this violent?'... And [the actors and Quentin] said, 'If you sugar-coat this people are going to resent the hell out of you.' By holding the character back you're going to do an injustice to the film. That was the thing that ignited me into going where I did with the character.