RUTHFULLY YOURS

Michelle Obama laid into Donald Trump for his lewd locker room remarks about women as follows: “I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way I could not have predicted” — whereupon the White House warned Trump to not retaliate against the First Lady.

“And the White House on Thursday advised that Trump continue to steer clear of the president’s wife, suggesting that an unprecedented attack on the first lady is a surefire way for the GOP nominee’s standing to plummet further.”

Well, Eric Schultz (and presumably Barack Obama), here is what you can do with your warning. Donald Trump’s statements, which were probably empty boasts in contrast to Bill Clinton’s well-known behavior, were indeed lewd and unacceptable. While two wrongs do not make a right, Michelle and Barack Obama have openly promoted rap artists who glorify misogyny, sexual objectification of women, and even date rape. That’s right; I am indeed calling out our country’s sorry excuse for a First Lady for her and her husband’s deplorable legitimization of the most despicable misogynistic language on earth.

In April 2016, the Obamas invited numerous rap artists to the White House to discuss Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative while recognizing them for their “artistic” contributions to minority communities. The rappers whom the Obamas promoted with these invitations include:

• Rick Ross’s,  “U.O.N.E.O.” glorifies date rape with the lyrics, “Put molly all in her champagne/ She ain’t even know it / I took her home and I enjoyed that/ She ain’t even know it.” While Ross denies that this was his intended meaning, “molly” is slang for Ecstasy, a well-known date rape drug, and the context of “molly” in his lyrics shows clearly that a man put it into a woman’s drink without her knowledge or consent so he could have sex with her. Ross’ “Same Hoes” is meanwhile not about agricultural implements as shown by its lyrics, which consist primarily of the F word, a variant of the N word, and “hoes.”
• Common, whose “Go!” includes, “And a ooh baby she liked it raw and like rain when she came it poured” along with a variant of the N word and even more sexually explicit lyrics.
• Jay Z, who proclaims, “I’ve got 99 problems and a b***h ain’t one.”
• Michelle Obama called out Trump’s remarks with the words, “What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act?” Nicki Minaj, another rapper whom she and her husband brought to the White House, answers that question in “Hey Mama,” “Make sure mama crawls on her knees keep him pleased rub him down be a lady and a freak” and also “Yes I do the cooking/ Yes I do the cleaning/ Yes I keep the nana real sweet for your eating/ Yes you be the (boss) yes I be respecting.” It doesn’t take a feminist to dismiss these words as belonging in a fundamentalist “Islamic” country, assuming that they ever belonged anywhere at all.
• Lifezette.com adds, “And of course, who could forget about the Obamas’ cozy relationship with Jay Z and Beyoncé, who have been guests of the president and first lady on multiple occasions?” Jay Z joined Beyoncé in “Drunk in Love”. The lyrics include, “Slid the panties right to the side/ Ain`t got the time to take drawers off” and “We sex again in the morning, your breasteses [sic] is my breakfast.”
• Beyoncé’s “Partition” includes far cruder and more explicit language, whose sole redeeming virtue is to remind everybody that Hillary’s husband actually did what Donald Trump talked about. “He popped all my buttons and he ripped my blouse/
  He monica-lewinski’d all on my gown,” to which she adds, “Hand prints and good grips all on my ass.” Beyoncé is certainly No Angel as shown by this line: “First, both of my legs go back on your head/ And whatever you want, yeah baby I’ll bet it comes true.”

The phrase, “Right message, wrong messenger” applies perfectly here. While Donald Trump’s previous statements were crude, coarse, and lewd, nobody who promotes and mainstreams misogyny, subservience of women, and date rape has the moral standing to condemn them. Michelle Obama’s words also come across as an obviously partisan attack noting her total silence on Bill Clinton’s misogyny and sexual exploitation of women, as well as Hillary Clinton’s complicity in the same.

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.