Emily Badger is a reporter for Wonkblog covering urban policy. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities. Yesterday, the following article, written by her, was published by The Washington Post…

Of course, any time the president or first lady gives a commencement speech, their words are carefully chosen for mass consumption, vetted for a world when anything said to a small crowd on a college campus is now heard on all of cable TV. Butthe speech Michelle Obama gave Saturday to graduates at Tuskegee University in Alabama, a historically black college famous for training the military’s first black pilots in an era of official segregation, sounded more intimate than that.

The text reads like the kind of private talk the first black first lady would give a largely black audience about a shared burden beyond the frame of reference for many of the rest of us. “The road ahead is not going to be easy,” she told them. “It never is, especially for folks like you and me.”

Within that intimacy, she gave a thoughtful window into what it’s like to be a black American today:

So there will be times, just like for those Airmen, when you feel like folks look right past you, or they see just a fraction of who you really are.

The world won’t always see you in those caps and gowns.  They won’t know how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed to make it to this day — the countless hours you spent studying to get this diploma, the multiple jobs you worked to pay for school, the times you had to drive home and take care of your grandma, the evenings you gave up to volunteer at a food bank or organize a campus fundraiser.  They don’t know that part of you.

Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world.  And my husband and I know how frustrating that experience can be.  We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives — the folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety; the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores; the people at formal events who assumed we were the “help” — and those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country.

And I know that these little indignities are obviously nothing compared to what folks across the country are dealing with every single day — those nagging worries that you’re going to get stopped or pulled over for absolutely no reason; the fear that your job application will be overlooked because of the way your name sounds; the agony of sending your kids to schools that may no longer be separate, but are far from equal; the realization that no matter how far you rise in life, how hard you work to be a good person, a good parent, a good citizen — for some folks, it will never be enough.

Obama here gives a hint of how she’s felt about her own critics. But she’s also talking about a more pervasive kind of alienation that’s integral to our understanding of what’s happening with race relations in America today. This is the alienation that comes from people seeing “just a fraction of who you really are.” Some empathy for that feeling — or recognition of the power of it in frustrated black communities — seems like part of what we’re missing today.

She goes on:

And all of that is going to be a heavy burden to carry.  It can feel isolating.  It can make you feel like your life somehow doesn’t matter — that you’re like the invisible man that Tuskegee grad Ralph Ellison wrote about all those years ago.  And as we’ve seen over the past few years, those feelings are real.  They’re rooted in decades of structural challenges that have made too many folks feel frustrated and invisible.  And those feelings are playing out in communities like Baltimore and Ferguson and so many others across this country.

Yesterday, during his Syndicated Radio program, which is heard daily by over 20,000,000 people, Rush Limbaugh said,

Michelle Obama is on a roll.  She is playing the race card, she’s doubling down on it, and the reason I didn’t start with this in the first hour, I’ll be real honest with you, is it depresses me.  To think of the opportunity that this couple had.  Look at the hope that was invested in them by virtue of their election.  Look at how many well-intentioned, otherwise fine citizens, look at how many white people voted for this couple, desperately hoping that doing so would help us to get past all of this that has created this racial divide in this country.

I think the essence of hope and change, I think the hope was not so much hope for the country’s future economically, hope for people’s personal economic success.  I think the hope was that if this country made the statement, a majority white country electing an African-American president, that that alone would serve a significant role, play a significant role and cause there to be massive progress toward eliminating, or not eliminating, but reducing the racial strife in this country, and the exact opposite has happened.

Rush is right.

Most of the other First Ladies in my 56 years have brought a certain degree of class and decorum to their unelected position as “FLOTUS”.

Hillary Clinton being a notable exception.

Where that woman spits, grass never grows again.

But, I digress…

Michelle Robinson Obama is the most useless, racially divisive, and downright hateful excuse for a First Lady that this country has ever seen.

Bess Truman was Mother Teresa compared with the woman whom I affectionately refer to as “Mooch”…

Her expensive tastes, which include Wagyu Beef and Lobster, her penchant for taking the most expensive vacations ever imagined by man (with larger entourages than an NBA Player), along with her attempts at telling Americans what we HAVE to feed our children and grandchildren, and how we should be raising them, have not exactly endeared herself to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Quite frankly, all of us out here in the Heartland, think she stinks on ice.

For Michelle Obama to drop her carefully concealed mask of racial intolerance this late in the game, with still time left in her husband’s presidency, shows how little regard she has, not only for the decorum of her position, but, for the well-being of America and her citizens, both black and white.

She’s classless.

That being said, here is a little ditty I wrote a while back, in “honor” of the most beloved mate of a national leader since Eva Braun:

50 Ways to Get Your Mooch On (to the tune of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon)

A young lady came up to

The First Lady

She said, “Like you I want to

get everything free”

‘Chelle said, “You’ve come to the right

person, baby”

I’ll teach you fifty ways

To get your “mooch” on

She said it’s easy if you put

your mind to it

By gaming the system 

you can get a lot of sh#t.

In Presidential Politics,

Taxpayers’ money you will get

And, if you’re a Democrat

if you’re caught, they will acquit

There are Fifty ways to get your ‘mooch’ on

[CHORUS:]

Go vay-cay in Spain, Jane

Get you some pearls, girl

Chow down on Wagyu,Sue

Pay attention to me

Just listen to ‘Chelle, Nell

You don’t need a brain cell

Marry The Prez, honey

And get it for free

She said I hope my rap

Is getting through to you

I am laying it out very plainly

These things that you should do

The girl said,” I am diggin’ this,

But, would please tell me some more 50 Ways”?

‘Chelle said. “Please take everything I’m telling you

and place it in your heart

Marrying a politician is

a great place to start”

And, then ‘Chelle left her

And she caught on to the game

‘Chelle did have 50 ways to get her “mooch” on

50 Ways to get her “mooch” on

CHORUS:

Go vay-cay in Spain, Jane

Get you some pearls, girl

Chow down on Wagyu,Sue

Pay attention to me

Just listen to ‘Chelle, Nell

You don’t need a brain cell

Marry The Prez, honey

And get it for free.

It is a shame that we can’t impeach the President’s Spouse.

Until He Comes,

KJ