Jodi Kantor: Corie, I never called the first lady an “angry black woman.” Not in those words, and not by implication. The book shows her as an impassioned and supportive if sometimes critical spouse, loving mom, and most of all, as a successful professional trying to figure out the very confusing role of first lady. To me, that’s the most fascinating storyline in the book– watching Michelle Obama figure out this role for herself.
Yesterday on Facebook, Jodi Kantor, the author of The Obamas, did a chat through the New York Times FB page. Before moderators got fully engaged the nastiness coming from Obama supporters was off the charts, most of which teed off on the “angry black woman” charge. Once the moderators showed up things calmed down, with the most offensive comments taken down.
It should go without saying that I identified with the attacks on Kantor from Obama die hards, which I’ve also received going back to 2007, but which escalated when my book The Hillary Effect was published. Obviously, with Kantor’s connections to the traditional media and publishing worlds, as well as her reach, her experience is no doubt much more acute.
What we’re talking about here is a back and forth between an author and the subject of her book. Like anyone doing a book on such an electric subject as the Obamas, or Hillary Rodham Clinton, to get it published is an ordeal in itself. The fact checking and scrutiny is overwhelming at times. Quite candidly, publishing The Hillary Effect and getting it just right was a bear, but once I did and found the right team it was worth it. That I take on the media, which is deserved but not appreciated, is an additional challenge for my team. Kantor’s job to get it right, fair and true had to be intense.
Twice in the FB chat, Kantor addressed the “angry black woman” characterization, which she was charged with making.
Jodi Kantor: Bene, just to be clear, “The Obamas” does not say that Mrs. Obama is an angry black woman, in those words or by implication. (Nor does it say that she and Rahm Emanuel clashed directly.) For five years, I’ve been working on portraying her in an accurate, human, well-rounded way. Check out the work and decide for yourself: http://jodikantor.net/articles/
The “angry black woman” characterization actually came from First Lady Michelle Obama herself in an interview with Gayle King, who’s now part of a brand new CBS morning show. It was obviously meant as a preemptive strike to shape the narrative about Kantor’s book, implying it’s unfair, even factually inaccurate, which goes directly at the author’s credibility.
From Lynn Sweet, of the Chicago Sun-Times today:
“That’s been an image that people have tried to paint of me since, you know, the day Barack announced, that I’m some angry black woman,” she told CBS News in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
To deal with it, “I just try to be me. And my hope is that, over time, people get to know me, and they get to judge me for me.”
As Kantor said yesterday, she tapped “200 ppl, including 33 White House aides, and the White House cooperated with the book,” but after Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Man things got a lot more difficult. It’s easy to say that the secretive nature of the Obamas will only get moreso, with the ring around them tightening after her book.
I’ve come to the defense of First Lady Michelle Obama many times. That she went to a friendly journalistic source like Gayle King for this interview isn’t surprising at all. Her defensiveness however and choosing to invoke the “angry black woman” charge against author Jodi Kantor is worth noting, especially since the author denies the characterization completely. That Kantor also offers an archive to prove her goal is fairness is something to which I can also relate. Unfortunately, in the Obama era, blaming the messenger for telling even a true, fair and accurate story is not appreciated by subjects, especially when it’s the Obamas. They’re just not used to the unvarnished treatment.
I jumped in at one point when the talk turned to first ladies, with Kantor, whom I do not know, addressed one of my comments:
Taylor Marsh: Your comment about first ladies, that there is “condescension towards first ladies out there,” is a very important subject. Nancy Reagan, as well as Hillary Clinton, were formidable women with deep impact in their husband’s presidencies. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone as deeply intelligent and strong as Mrs. Obama would run into some friction with the men’s club inside the White House.
Taylor: I think you are on to something. No man gets elected to the presidency without a really canny, determined, effective spouse. And then the first couple gets to the White House, and the new first lady gets recast as a helpmeet, and we know what happens to first ladies who are deemed meddlers— unelected figures who hold unearned powers. One of the most fascinating things in my reporting was watching Mrs. Obama, who is a very frank and strongminded person, wrangle with this. Or even think about the decisions she has to make in terms of how and when to give feedback to her husband. The president, any president, is criticized constantly, daily. So if you’re the first lady, do you really want him to come home to more criticism? But on the other hand, if you think he’s making a mistake, you have a moral and spousal imperative to stop him, because the stakes are so, so high. If you read my book, please keep that difficult choice in mind throughout, and think through how you would handle it.
It’s easy to understand why Mrs. Obama is sensitive to the “angry black woman” tag when it’s actually made. But sometimes being too defensive about an author telling a story based on interviews, as Kantor has done, reveals something else entirely.
The good news for Jodi Kantor is that Mrs. Obama helped her sell even more books than she would have if the First Lady hadn’t called her friend Gayle King and gone on CBS to complain.
“Don’t think of a pink elephant.”
“I am not a crook.”
“That’s been an image that people have tried to paint of me since, you know, the day Barack announced, that I’m some angry black woman,”
She probably isn’t, that’s why she’s been able to accomplish what she has. However, she shouldn’t have said it, because no one else had, well no one reputable anyway.
First Ladies are off-limits and now you have gone too far.. Apparently your concept of the Hillary effect and and wailing against the glass ceiling holding back strong women applies only to elite snobbish liberal white women who graduate from Vasser or Smith.
“First Ladies are off-limits”
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Laura Bush were available for comment.
PWT…Neither was Hillary regarding when she was first lady….riiiiiight….
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BTW when are you going to give up this charade that it took you years to become dissapointed in President Obama. In March 2008 you joined the amen chorus on Fox News in excoriating then Senator Obama, Here’s what you wrote in 2008 on the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/obama-grandmother-typical_b_92601.html
You aren’t even a Democrat. In 2001 you appeared in the media advocating for the confirmation of John Ashcroft as Bush’s Attorney General, Not surprising since your brother was a Republican Ass’t DA appointed by John Ashcroft. Explain that to your followers.
TM NOTE: This commenter is now in moderation. Racist charges in any comment are not tolerated.
RAJensen. I DID NOT know of any of this you mentioned. It explains a lot now that I know she accused Obama of being racist. Attacking Michelle Obama for going to King. If that had HRC would she have accused her of complaining and “called her friend Gayle King and gone on CBS to complain”? I think not. When HRC went on Today and attacked a vast right wing conspiracy there was nothing wrong with that just as there’s nothing with Obama going on CBS.
And secretive nature of the Obamas. Every White House couple is secretive! What are you talking about?! ”But sometimes being too defensive about an author telling a story based on interviews, as Kantor has done, reveals something else entirely.” What does it reveal? Kantor tried to get in her head as authors always do, Obama disagreed with it. Every first couple combats things like this. And just because there’s something in a book doesn’t mean anything. As Marsh said last week about Bob Woodward. What is wrong with you?
This isn’t objective analysis, this is you being bitter and maybe a tad bit racist, judging from the new info, because HRC lost.RAJensen,
Wow! I didn’t know Taylor ever said those things…thanks for posting it. I am kind of shocked after reading that back info. However, I think Taylor is entitled to her opinion no matter if they can be sort of bias. It seems she is a hard core Clinton support but not to the point of being a puma. Though I have read were she has posted articles that have been positive about Mr. Obama and Mrs. Obama, in the past.
I can understand why Michelle is using the “angry black woman” phrase here probably because it has been a problem. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever saw Michelle was her making a comment about Hillary and saying something like if you can’t keep your own house you shouldn’t be in the White House. It came off as an extremely angry statement. Many times during the primary she came off as angry. Apparently Axelrod and some others on the campaign realized this was a problem because there seemed to be a concerted effort to change her public persona. She no longer comes off as angry but maybe she is still sensitive to the way she came off in the beginning. She did a lot that was not helpful to herself and this is yet another example of that.
‘Michelle Obama is anti feminist so why would they defend her though I’m sure some have’
Where do you get this from? You say this as fact, so can you give some examples of her ‘anti-feminism’?
I don’t see where Michelle Obama is accusing Ms. Kantor of calling her ‘an angry Black Woman’ – she simply compares the portrayed image in the book with a familiar one she heard during the 2008 campaign. Of course she is going to defend herself ! just like then, she is not comfortable with having that image out there – I don’t blame her. I read the book and though its certainly far from a ‘tell-all’ it does imply that Michelle Obama has a chip on her shoulder, especially regarding politics and those players surrounding her husband. But then again, what First Lady doesn’t feel that way?
Ms. Kantor’s continual analysis (which is what the book contains) of what the Obama’s are thinking or why is hardly based on any recent discussions with them or any facts at all. Nothing new here at all.
Well, one of the first things she said after the 2008 election was that she was going to model herself after Laura Bush. So unless you think Laura Bush is a feminist…
She also said she would model her role after Eleanor Roosevelt too? Did you ingore that and only focused on the part about Laura Bush …Really, I wish other women would stop having some sort of checklist for what counts as who can be a feminist.
gef49 13 January 2012 at 12:29 am
Ms. Kantor’s continual analysis (which is what the book contains) of what the Obama’s are thinking or why is hardly based on any recent discussions with them or any facts at all.
AGAIN, the Obamas refused to be interviewed by Kantor even though she’s interviewed them for a NY Times magazine piece before.
It’s scurrilous for you to posit that Kantor doesn’t provide “any facts at all.” This is typical blame the messenger tactic that is meant to strike at the credibility of the author who has obviously done countless interviews and meticulously tried to capture what’s going on inside the Obama White House between the Obamas. (I haven’t finished the entire book yet, but I can certainly state emphatically that this much is true.)
Why people have such an investment in protecting an image of White House occupants is part of the rot at the core of our politics. I understand it, because I used to do it too, but having recovered from fan politics I know it when I see it and find it reprehensible when it’s used against chroniclers of our time, the authors and writers, who dare to take on the powers in politics. (Yes that is a self-serving sentence, because I’m now one of those authors.)
I tend to agree with you on this one, Taylor. I saw Soledad O’Brien “interviewing” (if that’s what you want to call it) Jodi Kantor on CNN this morning and she was hammering Ms. Kantor, trying to discredit her. Ms. O’Brien certainly didn’t come across as curious and impartial, that’s for sure. She kept emphasizing that Kantor didn’t interview the Obamas in person. Well, very often authors don’t interview the subjects themselves but their information is taken from a gathering of interviews from sources who know or have knowledge of the subjects of the book. It’s up to the reader to decide as long as the book is written with fair intentions and research and isn’t a hit piece with an agenda.
BTW when are you going to give up this charade that it took you years to become dissapointed in President Obama.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was NEVER “disappointed” in Pres. Obama. In fact, besides Lynn Sweet, I was one of the few people talking to people in Chicago trying to find out more about him. This started in 2007.
As for first ladies being off limits, that’s funny.
The facts about my brother are in my fricking bio. Explain what? I’ve actually written about my brother working for John Ashcroft at length, which could have been found by anyone wanting facts by searching my archive.
Our politics are worlds apart, but knock yourself out big guy.
Here’s his interview on CNN, after Sen. Orin Hatch asked for him to give an affidavit on Ashcroft.
I said John Ashcroft should be confirmed because George W. Bush won & the president gets the A.G. he chooses. Not exactly a glowing endorsement. But I never advocated on TV for Mr. Ashcroft.
I haven’t read Kantor’s book, of course, but I read the excerpt that was in the NYT online the other day. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I found myself wishing that the Michelle Obama who was described in that story had been the Obama who was elected President. So I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.
This reminds me a little of the episode about the New Yorker cover back during the 2008 election. It was clearly meant to satirize the silly crap that people on the American Right were saying about the Obamas, but the Obama camp took great offense to it.
On the rare occasions when people who make that kind of statement pause to take a breath, I ask them just who else they object to in the President’s team who weren’t elected, because, let’s face it, most of them are unelected. When you elect a President, you elect all those people.
I have yet to hear an intelligent response, and doubt I ever will.
Yes, to answer one obvious response, I do sometimes suspect that the people who feel this way somehow imagine that the First Lady just every once in a while takes a break from clipping coupons and looking for the perfect soufflé recipe to give the President advice that he simply must obey. And yes, that probably says more about their lives than it does the First Family’s.
Okay, I think after reading comments about Mrs. Obama from many discussion boards, their is a great divide between WHITE feminists and MINORITY women.
For example, White women may look and see the first lady being upset over being called angry black woman…as frivolous. Why?! Simple because they don’t understand to minority women its the lowest of the low to be considered…and very insulting.
Take Taylor blog post, she suggest that Mrs. Obama made things worse by speaking out against the stereotype. And thus, help the author sale more books. WRONG!!!
Minority women are sick and tired of being put into these dumb boxes. I doubt Mrs. Obama gives a damn if the author of this crappy books sells millions. Many minority women are proud of the fact she is speaking out against it. Its not like any main stream feminists have stood out to defend her all these years, like they did Hillary.
For example, White women may look and see the first lady being upset over being called angry black woman
Facts matter.
Mrs. Obama was not called an “angry black woman.” If she had been there would have rightly been an uproar, regardless of race.
The First Lady was defensive about a book that she and others felt was critical. Both she and Pres. Obama had an opportunity to go on the record for the book and they refused.
Michelle Obama is anti-feminist so why would they defend her though I’m sure some have. They have defended a lot of Obama’s anti-feminist stuff.
How is she anti-feminist?…what makes a feminist anyway?
I watched Piers Morgan interview Jodi Kantor tonight and she didn’t seem to me to be expressing any particular agenda. I think she tried to write a fairly honest book that the White House felt wasn’t very flattering. Maybe her perspective was “off” – or maybe it was accurate. There have always been books written about Presidents and First Ladies, some more flattering than others, some with an agenda and others without. It kind of goes with the territory. No White House is perfect or runs smoothly all the time – they all have their own unique inner workings/dynamics and secrets.
She never looks like she’s a happy woman to me, even when she is smiling.