Finally, some good reviews. A sampling of the instant reactions to Michelle Obama’s speech (and Barack Obama’s appearance on a giant TV screen) in blogland:
-The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein loved Mrs. Obama’s “beautifully delivered, and smartly crafted, speech.” He writes, “She’s also coming off as wholesome and, frankly, familiar.” But he’s less sure about “Giant Screen Obama”: “I can’t decide if the faux-intimacy of Daddy tele-parenting in the middle of the convention was a bit too precious,” Klein writes, later adding, “On the other hand, I’m a cynical, coastal elite type and could just be insufficiently appreciative of camp.”
-Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review did, too: “Michelle and the girls were a homerun for Dems tonight,” she writes at The Corner. “It’s no small thing when both sides can talk American exceptionalism. It’s a start.”
-The New Republic’s Katherine Marsh probably didn’t, however. “I miss the old Michelle, and I think a lot of other women do, too,” Marsh writes. “Not the scripted Stepford wife fist-bumping Elisabeth Hasselbeck, but the sassy better half who reminded us that while Barack was the answer, he was also stinky in the morning and forgot to put the butter away. She both affirmed his promise and humanized him.” Marsh continues:
You could actually imagine their relationship was a real thing–not a symbiotic power alliance, but a union of two different people with different goals who just happen, when they’re not bickering about the butter, to find each other pretty cool. This Michelle was an asset to the campaign, a highly accomplished woman outside the sphere of motherhood as well as in it, a necessary bit of fire to Obama’s dispassionate ice, and valuable proof that Obama isn’t the type of guy inclined to surround himself–like our current president–with yes-men or -women. If Joe Biden can be forgiven his sins and welcomed onto the stage beside the African American nominee he once called clean and articulate, then surely Michelle Obama can finally be freed from the clutches of US Weekly and Joy Behar and allowed to give a speech that truly reflects who she is.
-Neither did The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle. “Michelle Obama introduced herself as a sister, a wife, a mother, and a daughter–which are all incredibly important identities,” he writes at The Plank, his magazine’s staff blog. “But those identities don’t reveal her full person–the Princeton and Harvard Law grad, the corporate attorney, the hospital executive–which were parts of her life that she barely mentioned.” Zengerle later adds, “It almost makes you long for the days when politicians’ wives were seen but not heard. After all, if they’re not permitted to really say anything, what’s the point of having them speak?”
-Andrew Sullivan, however, is no longer cranky: “One of the best, most moving, intimate, rousing, humble, and beautiful speeches I’ve heard from a convention platform. Maybe she should be running for president.”
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