Don’t Make Michelle Over: We Like Her Like That

By Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds
REYNOLDS News Service

Don’t Make Michelle Over:
We Like Her Like That

The next national pastime by pundits and well-placed politicians will be The Makeover of presumptive First Lady Michelle Obama.

Recently the ignorant conservatives interrupted my idyllic daydream of seeing this brilliant, elegantly clad African-American woman presiding over state dinners and influencing important policy matters, along with the Obama children hosting the annual Easter egg hunts on the White House lawn.
What interrupted my revelries was the crass Fox News calling Michelle Obama, “Obama’s baby Mama,” a derogatory term for an unwed mother. What gall!
The conservatives spin lies about Mrs. Obama but hide the truth about Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican challenger, John McCain. She is an heiress whose wealth estimated at $100m – comes from her late father’s beer distribution company. During the senator’s first run for president in 2000 it was reported that Mrs. McCain had been addicted to painkillers and had stolen from her own charity’s medicine cabinets to feed her drug habit.
Then, the well-meaning handlers around her responding to polls that Cindy McCain is more likeable have set out to soften Michelle Obama’s image, make her appear less “angry,” and more approachable. Hopefully her recent appearance on The View where she tackled the pressing issues of why she wears panty hose and eats bacon smooched up her “likeability” enough so she won’t have to talk about that minutiae again.
My fear is that too much tampering with or too many fingerprints probing over her will smudge up a person who is loved exactly the way she is. Why try to turn a Sojourner Truth into a Stepford wife?
One way to fix the so-called Michelle problem is to fight lies with truth. Much is made out of a sound bite where in response to her husband’s historic campaign for president she said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” This in the hands of conservative twists became proof that she was unpatriotic.
First, of all as Whoppi Goldberg so artfully pointed out on The View, the operative word is REALLY, referring to a degree of pride. For example to be happy is wonderful, to be REALLY happy is pure joy, a step above.
Yet, if any of us have always been proud of our country we need psychiatric evaluation. Have we always been proud of a country that once enslaved and lynched blacks all within the protection of law? Are we proud of the nation’s almost total destruction of native American populations, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the present oil war being waged in Iraq on the false pretense of Weapons of Mass Destruction?
No matter how the right and the left try to poke, prod and fix Michelle Obama, I see much in her background to believe that she will make waves one way or another to help the world’s left behind, just as she did at her six-figure position as a vice president at a white-led hospital in Chicago.
As the New York Times reported, when it was proposed that a certain vaccine to prevent cervical cancer should be tested on black teenage girls, Mrs. Obama stopped it. The clinical trial rightly raised the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease.
Those kinds of bold acts where in the backrooms Mrs.Obama put her reputation and job on the line to fight for the powerless are what makes her a credible force and is what the world needs now—unchecked and undiluted.
Many would be more comfortable with the role of the First Lady as all fluff and puff, more decorative and ornamental than substantive. Historically when a First Lady did take on an issue, except for First Lady Hillary Clinton, it was usually far from the line of political fire. For example, Barbara Bush, wife of President George Bush, championed the cause of literacy. President Lyndon Johnson's wife, Lady Bird, took on highway beautification.
Already there is a script being written for Mrs. Obama to continue in the mold of Jackie Kennedy who reigned over Camelot. Today, however, at a time when thousands of people are losing their homes through foreclosures, can’t afford gas to get to work, if they are still lucky enough to have a job, a Camelot-like lushness of life at the top does not seem appropriate.
Certainly, Mrs. Obama will chart her own course in history, but the mantle of Eleanor Roosevelt is worth considering. As First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt broke many traditions. She was the first to give a press conference, the first to testify before Congress, the first to write a newspaper column, the first to become a political figure in her own right and was one of the most ardent champions of civil rights long before it was popular, a stance that resulted in the KKK putting a $25,000 bounty on her head. After leaving the White House, Roosevelt became chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and was voted the most popular American in magazine polls in the 1950s.
That’s the kind of Michelle Obama the world awaits. Bold. Brave. Beautiful. That is who I believe she is and that is who I believe neither those who hate her or love her won’t change.

Column: Church Fights

If Jesus Christ would show up in some of our churches, would He shed tears and walk out the door?
Once upon a time, church sanctuaries were treated as hallowed ground and the ordained clergy representing God and the people of God were viewed as the best examples of godly living.
Today, a demonic spirit of sexual perversion, prosperity blindness and power-tripping is creating a sense of shame and cynicism among rank and file Christians that is actually driving some from the pews.
For example weeks after Atlanta police and witnesses report how Bishop Thomas Weeks savagely chocked, kicked in the stomach and stomped his televangelist wife, Juanita Bynum in a hotel parking lot, the bishop is still in his pulpit at Global Destiny church.
As sad as this situation is, it provides a golden opportunity for preachers to deal with domestic violence in their own congregations. In America, every three minutes a woman is beaten, every five minutes a woman is raped and every ten minutes a child is molested.
These facts should provide much-needed real-life substance for preachers to rock the house with sermons against female-abuse, wife-beating and rape. But if pastors are beating their wives, having sex and babies out of wedlock in their own churches how can an atmosphere of respect for the Biblical mandates against adultery and violence against women be preached. Instead offending pastors and preachers hide behind sermons casting influential women as Jezebels and texts calling on women to be submissive—even if their spouses are skirt-chasing lunatics and fools.
The bishop acting like the wife-bashing Ike Turner or Mike Tyson is being widely discussed in beauty shops. In fact, the new name for domestic violence is “doing the Bishop Weeks,” as if it is a boxing match like Muhammad Ali’s Thriller in Manila.
Weeks, of course, is not the only spiritual leader scandalizing his office through violence. Click on the Internet’s You Tube and witness the brawl outside the St. James AME church in St. Paul, Minn. In this episode, church leaders angered over “the lack of people skills and mismanagement of church funds” locked the Rev. Hubert Armstrong from church properties. A confrontation ensued where a middle-aged female trustee smacked Armstrong and the portly pastor punched her with a solid right jab.
Other instances on You Tube show children fighting in the sanctuaries as dispassionate adults look on and a priest angrily throwing holy water on a woman. These sordid scenes give the impression that bar-room or playground behavior is acceptable for churches.
It’s not only the violence on the part of certain spiritual leaders but also sexually explicit gutter-type language that is creeping into sermons at the excuse of “keeping it real,” and examples of immoral conduct by pastors that are also causing grave concern.
Recently in a large Pentecostal church in Washington DC, a visiting preacher shocked many when he unashamedly used the offensive, vulgar “p” word during his sermon when describing a relationship with his wife. In Baltimore, a huge bill-board touting empowerment shows off a young AME preacher and his wife. But the talk on the East Coast and on Internet sites is about his impregnating yet another woman at his church.
Not only do these instances of preachers acting badly offend principles of holiness and respect for Bible-based living, they create bad examples for other preachers who can point to those offenders as their role-models, who are not taken to task for their outrageous behavior.
In addition, a can of worms has been opened by well-respected pastors Dennis and Christine Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Anacostia, MD deciding to perform same-sex union ceremonies and preaching that “homosexuality is not a sin,” despite the many scriptural references to the contrary.
One parishioner, Martha Battle, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, that she didn’t mind Covenant's outreach to gays at first, because "everybody needs to be saved." But now, "straight people are leaving and gay people are coming in," said Battle, who left the church with her 13-year-old grandson after the Wileys began performing same-sex union ceremonies. "They're taking over. I'm sick to my stomach over this mess. It's not right. Why should we have to leave and let them come in and take over the church?”
The Bible I read declares both adultery and homosexuality as sins. But now, since some preachers are saying homosexuality is not a sin some parishioners are concluding that neither are adultery and “shacking,” and are using this re-writing of Scripture as the basis for returning to their old sinful lifestyles.
In a nutshell, certain offensives conduct shows that some pastors need prayer, deliverance and spiritual counseling even more so than their parishioners. All pastors, of course, are not in error, but those that are may one day see that not only are parishioners leaving the church, but God, himself.
Dr. Reynolds is an adjunct professor at the Howard University School of Divinity, Howard, author of several books, including “Out of Hell & Living Well: Healing From the Inside Out,” and is the religion editor for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Diary of a Glad Black Woman/nov.1/07

This is the first day that I tried to do a blog. They say it is easy. It is not. It made me use some words that I think are shameful. Anyway, while I am at it I watched the debates in Philadelphia. I think the Democrats were stupid for piling on Hillary. They don't seem to understand they are running against Republicans and destroying the strongest candidate will only help them implode. I am too worn out from this ordeal of setting up this blog to say more but I have just begun.