China Doll

It's always impressive the lengths the Radical Far Right will go out of their desperation for hating Barack Obama.  One can only imagine the torment it takes to twist the most benign observation of just about anything and turn it into a rant against That One.

Yesterday, a Washington Post story here told a sweet take -- not even about the President of the United States himself, but how on his current trip to China, the Chinese people have been swept away by MichalleLove.  How pictures and stories about Michelle Obama with her two daughters and and mothers during the visit have received over one billion hits.  The story even included a sweet picture of the First Lady and her daughters having a lovely time on the Great Wall of China. 

The exciting thing about reading such a benign article, one that you'd think most Americans would find endearing about how the United States is perceived by the most populous nation on earth, all because of a mom and her kids, is to try to figure out how the Far Right would try to make this about something else, something insidious.

The very first Reader Comment that I saw at the time read --

"If this author would take any time to do some research she would know that the Chinese are pretty upset at the Obamas, which likely accounts for all the web interest.

"My wife is Chinese. She cares very little about US politics but she converses frequently with her customers who live all over China. They are genuinely upset at Michelle's spending almost $2,000 per night per room at the most expensive hotel in Beijing and learning of all of her expensive vacations. They understand that the US taxpayers pay for all of this and don't understand why she lives lavishly while many average citizens in the US are struggling lately.

"My wife rarely talks about politics or the Obamas, but she truly struggled to understand Michelle Obama's spending. She said before she just didn't care about her. Now she doesn't like her at all. She said this is what she is hearing from so many of her customers over the last several days."

Touche.  Well-played, sir.

Mind you, when I initially read this, I started to think of all the refutations, but then sanity returned and I realized that this was nothing but trolling by someone whose wife was likely not Chinese, maybe didn't even have a wife, so there was no business customers "she" dealt with.  And happily, the comments from others which followed said largely the same thing.

Because after all, it's a well-understood concept that people really, really hate it when tourists spend too much money in their country when on a vacation.  And when you hate-hate-hate someone SO much, that just drives up your interest to obsessively check out a billion-hits about that person and her children, on vacation, just to keep fueling that intense hatred of an entire nation.

Not that this was a vacation, of course, but a diplomatic mission, invited by the Chinese -- really, you could read about it, it was in all the papers -- but why quibble about reality, since all the rest is made up.  And all those Chinese people, who apparently have suddenly become so rude towards guests to their country, are blaming the horribly problematic hotel accommodations on the wife, since it's well-known that in China it's traditionally the wife who makes all the decisions, Then again, I'm sure that the $2,000 a night figure has nothing to do with reality either.  Though $2,000 a night in a five-star Chinese hotel for a family of five and all the extra security doesn't sound all that terrible when you factor all the in-room movies that the kids are renting, the cost of the mini-bar  (not for the kids, just to clarify), and Wi-Fi back to the U.S. charged by the hour.

But, hey, when all is said and done, it's so deeply comforting to know that mythical business customers in a mythical land called China are so -- soooo -- concerned about how much is spent on a presidential visit not out of their own personal standards, but for altruistic reasons, purely because "average citizens in the US are struggling lately."  Not just merely struggling, mind you, but struggling "lately."  This concern is all the more impressive when you consider that the average annual household income in China was $10,220, compared with $84,300 in the U.S.  But those numbers come from Forbes, so when it comes to finance what do they know?  Then again, that article is from four years ago, so it's not actually "lately" -- though given that Chinese culture goes back 5,000 years, a century to them is probably "lately."  For all I know, they might be concerned that the U.S. still has slaves.

Besides which...oh, never mind.  We get it.  You hate Barack Obama.  You hate everything about Barack Obama. If Barack Obama figured out a way to get every America a million dollars each, you'd find a way to hate it that it was Communistic spreading the wealth and designed to make Americans soft.  We get it.  And you hate his wife and kids and mother-in-law because they're his wife, kids and mother-in-law, and it's not because they're all black or because you're told to hate him and them all, you just do.  And we get it.  It's because he's That One.

And so, we end up getting User Comments like this one and several others that followed.  One would think that an article praising how loved a woman who represents the U.S. is would be a good thing.  But sometimes I guess black is white. 

Ah, yes, I know.  If only.  If only black was white.  But alas, black is black.  Well, that's the way it goes, and so it's why we need User Comments like these.

Well done.  But be careful -- if you do that much twisting, you can throw out your back.  Of course, if you've signed up for Obamacare, you're set.