Troll bait.

Headline from The Daily Telegraph (UK) yesterday:

Michelle Obama attacked over patriotism gaffe

Lead paragraphs:

Barack Obama’s wife Michelle has been accused of being unpatriotic after she said that her husband’s White House campaign had made her “really proud” of her country for the first time.

Speaking at a rally in Milwaukee, she said: “Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

Mrs Obama, a 44-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer with two children, has been an effective advocate for her husband on the campaign trail, but has a reputation for speaking her mind and has occasionally raised eyebrows.  This time conservatives seized on the remarks and the internet was ablaze with comments criticising her loyalty to the United States and lack of gratitude for the opportunities it had provided her.

Some said she would lose her husband their votes in his bid to become the first African American US president.

Rest of the hit piece article here.

I love that Fox New-ish “some say” device, don’t you?  Of course, the “some” referred to here are people who would have absolutely, positively no intention of ever, ever, EV-ER voting for Barack Obama or anyone remotely like him in this or any other lifetime. 

And just what “gaffe” did she commit, exactly?  Speaking your mind is now a “gaffe“?

I guess so, if you manage to cheese off the Far Right when you say something they don’t like.

Once again, there is no story here.  This is not a big deal.  You know why?  Because Michelle Obama, just like me and you and even Rush Limbaugh, all have the right to say whatever we want on this subject.  Why should Ms. Obama or anyone else now have to spin this so as to dig her out of some hole that the right-wing Bootlicking Corporate Media types have tried to shove her into?  Maybe, just maybe, this IS the first time she’s been “proud of [her] country”  Maybe, just maybe, she has the RIGHT to express that as an honest opinion.  Dont’ like it?  Tough.  That’s the beauty of that annoying First Amendment for you.

So people are all automatically supposed to, in the world according to crypto-fascists like Sean Hannity or Larry Elder, be knee-jerk, jingoistic ultra-nationalists?  I have news for you: believe it not, Conservative America, not every American’s heart goes all pitter-pat at the sound of the first few notes of the National Anthem.  Not everybody sings along at the ball park.  Not everybody recites the Pledge of Allegiance, either, even when everyone else around them is automatonically following the herd and chiming in. 

I don’t.

Yes, there actually have been a few times where I’ve felt something akin to a sense of  “national pride.”  I think I felt it when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, even though I was only eleven years old at the time (maybe that explains it).  I know I felt it when the U.S. men’s Olympic ice hockey team beat the Soviets and then won the gold medal at Lake Placid.  I felt it when the U.S. women’s national team won the Women’s World Cup of soccer in 1999.  I felt it when I saw how much money and aid was donated by everyday Americans and by American charities to the victims of the Asian tsunami a while back.

Lately, though, I have felt more shame, anger, frustration, and embarrassment than “pride.”  And I feel that those feelings are perfectly justified.  And that I am entitled not only to feel them, but to express them.

Think Katrina.   Think Abu Ghraib.  “Proud” of those?

Me, neither.

And pride, quite frankly, is a sin.  One I try hard to avoid.  (Yes, silly goose that I am, I actually do believe in sin.)

So, if I am less than “prideful” on the subject of America, I guess they’ll have to come for me, too.

See, I have the right to say that.  Out loud.  Whether other folks like it or not.

And THAT’S something I am proud of.