Posted on 02/22/2008 6:34:40 AM PST by jdm
I have received a lot of e-mail regarding Princeton's apparent decision to embargo Michelle Obama's college thesis. A few purported quotes have begun floating through the ether, which seems surprising if the Obamas have conspired to keep the paper buried at Princeton. The messages all seem to believe that the thesis contains something explosive, especially in terms of racial politics.
Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't. Why would anyone be surprised if it did? To paraphrase one of the great lines from South Park, there's a time and a place for radical thought, and it's called college. Mrs. Obama wrote the paper 20 years ago, while living in the cocoon of academia. I doubt that it reflects her current state of mind.
It's not quite as bad as going back to Barack's kindergarten essays, but it's just about as irrelevant. Most importantly, Michelle Obama isn't the candidate. Her speeches on behalf of her husband now are relevant and fair game for criticism, but Mrs. Obama didn't write her college thesis as an argument for her future husband's election. When people dissected Hillary Clinton's thesis, it at least had some limited relevancy because of her own candidacy -- and even then reflected the state of mind of a woman in her early 20s, and not the state of mind of the same woman over 30 years later.
So far, Michelle Obama has given critics plenty of source material in the present campaign. Better to focus on that than to go on a silly spelunking tour of the college papers of someone who isn't running for office.
I’ll bet the New York Times isn’t interested in what she wrote - well unless it makes her look great. Not that they’re biased or anything...
LOL!!!!! Given her "this is the 1st time I've been proud of America" line, I'm sure her paper TOTALLY reflects her current state of mind.
What is the matter with Morrissey? The Obama’s go to a church that has given Luis Farakhan an award . . . nothing has been repudiated and if she wrote some racially hateful stuff . . . we should know it.
Need a freedom of information type lawsuit to get this thing opened up.
Shades of Clintonian tactics.
I think we can figure out the gist of it.
Hillary digs up her opponents kindergarten writings, but keeps what she wrote in college under wraps. No one notices, or cares. Go figure.
I would probably call the “self” that I was in college a “liberal” - narcissistic, hedonist, envious of the wealth of those that had already paid their dues in life.
I thought abortion was great because I wanted the “out” for responsibility for my behavioral choices.
However, as opposed to the liberals in our country, I grew up, matured, became less self centered, and became a hardcore conservative.
This raises red flags. Where are you Sandy Berger now that we need you?
I am going to immediately contact my alma mater to ensure that my undergrad honors thesis is locked down. My views back then on the philosophy of science, if discovered today, would be absolutely earth shaking.
I wouldn’t want to be judged on the philosophy papers I wrote in college.
Atleast they were neatly typed. ;)
Well, yeah, no doubt.
Being young and foolish, and thinking you have the solutions to all the world’s problems is part of the arrogance of youth.
Liberals are still arrogant adolescents.
Conservatives aren’t.
Fair enough, however both she and her husband should be allowed to either support and reject views and arguments she placed before the public all those years ago.
If she has grown beyond the narrow views of relative youth and the insular embrace of academia, then she should be allowed to demonstrate her present maturity. If not, then we deserve to know.
I’d agree that the thesis itself doesn’t matter much — if there’s anything outlandish Michelle Obama can just disown it by saying she was a college student not yet in contact with the real world, and that’s not what she believes now.
What is a problem, though, is this attempt to suppress it. That says something about her and the Obama campaign right now. (Princeton will take the fall for it, but the Obamas could have it out in an instant if there wasn’t something in there they were scared of.)
It’s not a big issue, but it definitely stinks.
Her thesis got out. It was a stupid list of stuff about Saul Alinsky. But she wrote so poorly, it had no real point. So there's not much juicy stuff there.
That Princeton wants to hide the thesis may or may not be related to the current political 2008 campaign...Their reasoning may be to hide far larger sins of their own faculty/administration.
she’s just another example of what American colleges & universities have been producing through their ani-American, antiwar, anti-military Commie indoctrination over the past 40 years...garbage in, garbage out!
Semper Fi,
Kelly
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