February 22, 2008

Michelle Obama's thesis unblocked

UPDATE: For a full discussion of the future First Lady's Princeton thesis, see Chapter 10 ("Mrs. All That") of my new book on Obama. You can, for a limited time, read it online for free here (1.8 meg PDF file).

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The Obama camp has now released Michelle Obama's senior thesis at Princeton. So far, I've read the Dedication and the first couple of pages of the Introduction, and that's plenty. You've got to be impressed with how ruthless Senator Obama is -- he'll humiliate his poor wife by releasing her semi-literate college graduation maunderings just so he can say, "Let's move on."

DEDICATION

To Mom, Dad, Craig [her brother], and all of my special friends:

Thank-you for loving me and always making me feel good about myself.

And here's part of her creatively punctuated Introduction:

"The purpose of this study is to examine various attitudes of Black Princeton alumni in their present state and as they are perceived by the alumni to have changed over time. ...

"These experiences have made it apparent to me that the path I have chosen to follow by attending Princeton will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant. This realization has presently, made my goals to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable."

Well, thank-you. You have presently, made my day; never having a better one.

(I originally figured this 1985 thesis was created on a typewriter, which would have made it harder to fix typos, but the columns are justified, so it was done on some sort of word processor. Still, Princeton grads are supposed to know that there is no hyphen in "thank you" ...)

So, it looks like Barack has had his vengeance on Michelle for calling him "stinky" and "snore-y."

Okay, it's schoolgirlish in style, especially compared to her husband's sonorous mature prose, but she was only 21 when she wrote it. The important thing, though, is that the artlessness of her writing allows the meaning to shine through more obviously than in Dreams From My Father -- but it's the same Story of Race and Inheritance.

And she sure has some self-esteem issues, doesn't she? I think that's part of her appeal to the Oprah audience: her inflated but fragile ego. Oprah's fans can identify with Mrs. Obama. People were always telling them that they weren't smart enough either; and, yet, here they are, sitting around watching daytime TV. Who's laughing now?

For some reason, Mrs. Obama's psyche always reminds me of Steve Martin's climactic speech in "Three Amigos:"

"In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be *the actual* El Guapo!"

Keep in mind that Mrs. Obama not only got into Princeton, but then got into Harvard Law School, graduated, and even passed the Illinois bar exam. So, maybe, prose just isn't her strong suit.

A reader comments:

The Illinois Supreme Court website says Michelle Obama was admitted to the bar on May 12, 1989 and voluntarily went inactive in 1993.

Barak Obama was admitted December 17, 1991 and went inactive this year.

A reader who is an attorney in Illinois explains:

The May admission to the bar is for those who took the Winter (March I think) bar exam. Most take the July bar exam, and I think were admitted in October, so I don't understand Obama's date of admission. Not everyone who graduates in May takes the July exam, but in Mrs. Obama's case she was already at Sidley and Austin, so I'd guess her main job would've been studying for the bar exam. So, the guess would be she didn't pass the July exam and did pass the winter exam, what with over half a year of studying for it. Now, many folks who attend schools like Harvard aren't really taught the things that are on bar exams, if only because many of their profs don't want to teach it (too boring).

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

94 comments:

m said...

Thank-you Steve for your excellent work.

Anonymous said...

Wow, and this illiterate made it into Harvard Law School? That's just sick and outrageous.

Hopefully, a lot of people, including the talk radio hacks, will jump on this. But I doubt it. Issues of comparative black intelligence are just too touchy. Maybe they always will be.

Also, our culture is probably not literate enough for many people to care. I frequently notice public figures misusing and mispronouncing words.

Anyway, I could write better than this when I was twelve. She seems to have graduated from Princeton and went on to Harvard Law without having grasped the basics of punctuation. Not only is "Thank-you" a howler, but what about the semicolon before "never becoming" that should be a comma. And the comma after "presently" which makes no sense and shouldn't be there at all?

Anonymous said...

this does not make princeton look-good.

Anonymous said...

A shrewd move by Obama.

It makes his wife look like a dope for the few who care, but no one will mention this fact in polite public company.

Instead the uncritical MSM Obamanics will just note the fact that the mere lifting of the veil proves there is nothing to see (without actually reading or commenting on the actual paper).

What is in the paper?

Anonymous said...

I thought the comma after "presently" was kind of cute. Read it out loud and pause there for a moment. It's a drunken English barrister effect.

Anonymous said...

Oh, come on, you guys. She seems to have commanded a good vocabulary. Princeton wasn't going to teach her standard English punctuation (in the mid-1980's) if she hadn't learned it in high school (especially because she was black, so her work was exempt from all criticism by TA's or professors).

As for the unsophisticated quality of her ideas, well, she was a Sociology and [race] Studies major.

Obviously her HLS admission was pure AA, but I don't think her thesis looks so bad.

Anonymous said...

"Uh, to be nitpicky, I don't think there's normally a hyphen in "Thank-you," is there?"

She also misuses a semi-colon, in a place where a comma would have been correct. The desire to shoe-horn semi-colons where they don't belong is often a sign of intellectual insecurity.

- Fred

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't she have given this to an editor for a quick scrub of the puctuation? Put a crowbar in your wallet people. Seriously, buy the skills you lack and can't be bothered to learn, that's what adults do.

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, The Illinois Supreme Court website says Michelle Obama was admitted to the bar on May 12, 1989 and voluntarily went inactive in 1993.

Barak Obama was admitted December 17, 1991 and went inactive this year.

Neither has any disiplinary complaints.

Anonymous said...

I read the first 25 pages at politico.com...

My Struggle would be a catchier title for this work. I'm only half-joking.

It reads like an emotional personal diary entry gussied up as "thesis".

This is a totally race-obsessed individual. She and Obama must have been two peas in a pod back in the day. It is no surprise that they ended up at the African identity church.

I don't need to finish parts 2-4. Right now I am wondering if we, as a nation, are actually going to walk down the aisle with the Obamas? Are we really that broken inside?

After living through Clinton and Bush Jr., I guess that's a stupid question.

Anonymous said...

"The purpose of this study is examine various attitudes of Black Princeton alumni in their present state and as they are perceived by the alumni to have changed over time. ...

Not only is the punctuation awful (and since when is "black" capitalized in formal writing?), but this is incredibly dry and redundant material even for an academic paper. Admittedly, my own writing is terrible and I might occasionally pen something this bad in an impromptu blog comment. For anything involving editing, though, even a simple blog post, I would have to immediately rewrite it.

Michelle could have saved some words and said more by writing something along these lines:

"This study will examine past and present attitudes of black Princeton alumni concerning..."

Anonymous said...

Thank-you Steve; for your kind work. And also for understanding that Michelle. Obama. Is laboring under the oppressive White power structure that gave her a free, ride at Princeton. How horrible.

On a serious note, comedy writers are always looking for an edge. Portraying Obama's wife as both entitled and stupid is easy and one of them will do it. Because it will get laughs.

Look for the un-PC morning shows to do it first, they live and die by Arbitrons. And have a lot more influence than serious media. Howard Stern will run with this, so will Carolla and local guys like KROQ.

After that expect Jimmy Kimmel to run with it. He's got the least ratings, has less to lose, and needs to do something to get buzz etc. People don't come on his show anyway so no change there.

After Kimmel, expect Conan O'Brien to copy him. Because that's what O'Brien mostly does. Leno will bring up the careful finger in the wind rear. Letterman of course will never run with that bit.

But it will start with Morning Drive-time radio because those guys burn through TONS of material and have to be funny to their mostly male audience going to work every day. And that audience will be happy to laugh at Michelle Obama.

Anonymous said...

Steve
In the past, you have noted that it is difficult for you to find people willing to pay you to express your ideas. Don't worry, those troubles will end this fall election cycle. You WILL be hearing from some 527s this fall. May I suggest a name - Human Biodiversity Advocates for the Truth.

Anonymous said...

How do you get away with writing on the attitudes of blacks as a big-time college thesis. Was "what I did on my summer vacation" already taken?

As for her alienation, do black folks need Alienation Studies instead of black studies? Seriously, one has the feeling blacks have no idea that alienation is a big part of the human condition.

Do they know how many white people consider themselves alienated from the power structure at school or work? Maybe, blacks think this "not belonging" is only in blacks? A novel idea might be for them to read a few novels by white follks.

king S.

Anonymous said...

There's no winning with you, apparently. Either the Obamas are deliberately blocking the release of the thesis or, once released, it is evidence that Obama is willing to humiliate his wife just to make the issue go away. It's like you're disappointed that the thesis was unblocked...

Anonymous said...

She did pass the bar. The Illinois bar website lists her as admitted but inactive (and Barack ditto).

Did any of you read undergraduate papers in the 1980's? I did. Michelle's is not especially awful for a young lady with her background.

(Yes, it needs editing. Yes, she should have asked someone to edit it. But recall: she had social problems. She wasn't going to ask any white students to edit it and the other AA students were likely no more competent than she was. As for her professors, do you really think any of them would have been insouciant (suicidal?) enough to criticize the work of a black student with a chip on her shoulder?)

Dennis Mangan said...

I second danindc's remark.

Steve Sailer said...

"The Illinois Supreme Court website says Michelle Obama was admitted to the bar on May 12, 1989 and ... Barak Obama was admitted December 17, 1991."

So, assuming she graduated from Harvard Law School in June 1988 and he graduated in June 1991, then does that mean he passed the Illinois bar exam on his first try and Michelle passed on her second?

Any lawyers here?

Anonymous said...

Lots of comments on the writing style and its relative lack of sophistication, but why isn't anyone more explicitly noting the incredibly simplistic nature of the investigation itself? This is nothing but a survey that I'd expect out of a first year community college student. There is absolutely no inferential statistics at all, nor any attempt to test her various hypotheses using them. Didn't they require Sociology majors to take Stats at Princeton?

Anonymous said...

Her writing is terrible. She has considerable reason to be insecure. She didn't belong at Princeton. She certainly didn't belong at Harvard Law. I wouldn't say her intellectual shortcomings should disqualify her from being First Lady, but her hatred of America, that's a different story.

On an another note, I haven't seen you ever mention LA mayor Villaraigosa's education before. He attended literally one of the worst law schools in the entire country, People's College of Law, which is not accredited by the ABA or the state of California. He failed the bar exam four times before giving up. The future looks bright, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Freshman Dan Quayle would have written better than this.

Anonymous said...

"People were always telling them that they weren't smart enough either; and, yet, here they are, sitting around watching daytime TV. Who's laughing now?"

Me, Steve! lols. I think that's what the kids are saying these days.

Anonymous said...

There's no winning with you, apparently. Either the Obamas are deliberately blocking the release of the thesis

I got the impression Steve was implying that liberal supporters of the Obamas at Princeton were blocking the release, not the Obamas themselves.

Anonymous said...

"Do they know how many white people consider themselves alienated from the power structure at school or work?"

Maybe black students should be assigned to listen to Subdivisions, by Rush.

- Fred

J said...

To the last Anonymous:

Her writing is not terrible. As Steve's research on American education has shown, her writing may be among the top of her class of AA educated girls. If you need AAs in Harvard, then she is one deserving to be there.

I can feel empathy with her, a clean, good and decent girl in the academia, becoming aware that she was the object of special protection and promoted because she was black. Obviously AAs were deemed to require softer treatment because their intellectual weakness or some other mysterious but pitiable condition. It is almost inevitable that she has acquired a deep hatred of Princeton, Harvard and what you call America. You cannot blame her, blame yourself (as a nation) for putting her in that impossible situation.

Anonymous said...

---I got the impression Steve was implying that liberal supporters of the Obamas at Princeton were blocking the release, not the Obamas themselves---

There's still no winning with Steve--he was complaining that Princeton was deliberately blocking the thesis but now that it's been released he attacks Obama for that release as "humiliating his wife." Steve got digs in by complaining that Princeton was blocking the thesis, and he still gets digs in for the thesis being released. It's the classical double bind.

Anonymous said...

She probably thought she was writing a thank-you (!) note. Good think she didn't think of it as an "ac-knowledge-ment" note.

As for her mumbo jumbo, I believe you can't pass your sociology classes without writing stuff like that, so maybe it was "social pressure" that made her do it. Perhaps she didn't inhale.

I myself am not too good with spelling and punctuation (at least not the first time around I jot an idea down), but the comma here...

"This realization has presently, made my goals..."

also doesn't belong. Just as the later semicolon

"...periphery of society; never becoming..."

should IMHO be just a comma. (Or "never becoming" should be "I will never become.")

But these are silly little bits of irrelevance compared to the subject matter of her "thesis." Now I, as someone who never wrote a thesis in this sense (although I write two theses per week when it comes to speculating on social phenomena :D), really don't get this: what is the place of the "feelings" or "sentiments" of a researcher, or what she might become in the future, in a thesis? Assuming a thesis is not a memoir or an autobiography?


JD

Anonymous said...

That's just sick and outrageous.

If that's how you feel now, wait until you have to try to explain to your child why he wasn't admitted to his first choice school(s), while Blacks and Hispanics with SAT scores 300 points lower were.

It really fosters racial harmony and good will, yes it does.

Bruce Charlton said...

While it is good that the thesis is now in the public domain - it is a serious mistake to read too much into something like this.

In particular it means absolutely nothing to critique this specific thesis unless in the context of an adequate random sample of students from the same course in that era, and with knowledge of the marks achieved for each piece.

If Princeton is being evaluated, then a random sample of equivalent theses in the same discipline from other colleges would need to be used as a comparator.

And after all the primary purpose of a thesis is to pass the exam. It is not a vehicle for personal expression, and such personal expression as a thesis contains is typically highly constrained by the standard discourse of the academic discipline.

Except in extreme examples, it is not objective for people who know nothing of a discipline or the standard and range of student work in that college, discipline and era, or the comparative marks awarded - to pronounce on what a specific thesis tells us about the standard of a student or college.

Anonymous said...

You cannot blame her, blame yourself (as a nation) for putting her in that impossible situation.

We have to blame ourselves for tolerating such dismally inept ruling elites and their foolish and destructive policies. I get a very slight bit of satisfaction from my last vote for POTUS-which was for Pat Buchanan in 2000.

Anonymous said...

"Her writing is not terrible. As Steve's research on American education has shown, her writing may be among the top of her class of AA educated girls. If you need AAs in Harvard, then she is one deserving to be there."

It's not terrible in an absolute sense (for instance, her writing ability is probably better than most). Judged by the appropriate standard, as a student at one of the finest undergraduate schools in the world, it IS terrible.

With respect to your sentiments on Michelle representing the cream of the AA crop, that just strikes me as wrong. Most AA admits to very prestigious schools are highly intelligent individuals who could do just fine at lower ranked institutions. AA admits are usually mismatched enough so that they find it difficult to really excel but that doesn't mean the average black Princeton grad cannot construct reasonably error free prose.

Anonymous said...

anon sed:

"Steve got digs in by complaining that Princeton was blocking the thesis, and he still gets digs in for the thesis being released. It's the classical double bind."

Cut the guy some slack! He's seriously one of the best journalists out there but get's little traction apart from the obvious "racist" rags such as VDare and AMCON.

Do you enjoy reading the NYT as you do iSteve? That shows you what fun he is. Imagine he could write this way in the NYT. What a gas that would be, and maybe we would have more honest discussions about really important things like race. So I really have no problem with Steve cashing in both ways. A man gotta have a good day every now and then.

Anonymous said...


If that's how you feel now, wait until you have to try to explain to your child why he wasn't admitted to his first choice school(s), while Blacks and Hispanics with SAT scores 300 points lower were.


For the greater good of the sun people, some of us have to make sacrifices.

Anonymous said...

I think you folks are being a little tough on her as afar as the grammar goes. I'm a sloppy writer too. The thing to look at are her ideas.

In this case, they're crap. Sometimes I think blacks are the least perceptive people in the world? They're also very easy to influence about their own "oppression."

Wait a minute, so are Obama's white followers.

Anonymous said...

"This realization has presently, made my goals..."

If she insists on a single comma:

"Presently, this realization has made my goals...."

But two commas wouldn't be amiss :

"This realization has, presently, made my goals..."

Or, as other posters have mentioned, no commas would be equally acceptable.

J said...

This realization has presently, made my goals to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable.She left Harvard Law without having grasped the basics of punctuation, but with a clear political program. Good school, that Harvard.

Unknown said...

There isn't a chance that anyone other than (maybe) Stern or Imus is going to touch this material.

First, in America joking about poor spelling is elitist and geeky. Most American AM radio consumers can't spell their way out of a 100 word essay.

Second, Obamania is a religious experience. The Hopes And Dreams of a Generation Rest on Obama's Broad Shoulders. No one wants to attack his First Prophet, Michelle.

Third, she is black. Ask yourself, how many Saturday Night Live shows ridiculed Al or Jesse for being dumb? Stern and Imus, yeah, but not Hollywood or Rockefeller Plaza. Spoofing black folks speech patterns (e.g. "I'se gwine to town") is off limits. Spelling too.

Anonymous said...

Michelle graduated with a degree in Race Entitlement Studies. She is attempting even now to put her education to good use. She is a role model, to so many other young girls who are searching for the path.

Michelle should not let her lack of writing skills stop her from performing her mission. That's what people who actually went to school are for. Use them, Michelle.

Anonymous said...

A couple of comments.

* The writing isn't great, and it's something of a snooze to scan all 64 pages of double-spaced text. Still, if Michelle Robinson's thesis doesn't measure up to the Princeton average, neither do another 49.9% of them. I doubt hers is notably worse as far as grammar, sentence structure, and the like.

* Robinson composed a questionnaire, mailed it to black Princeton alums, then tabulated the responses and wrote about them. Sampling methods on Page 25 (in Politico's Part 2):

"The sample of 400 Black Princeton alumni was obtained from the Alumni Records Office... [whose staff] assisted the study by selecting every fourth name on a mailing list of approximately 1200 names until 400 names were collected."

Sic.

"The total number of returned questionnaires was 89."

* The collation of the 89 responses runs 20 pages, from Page 65 (Part 3) to Part 4 pg. 16. As Anonymous noted in a prior comment, Robinson employed no statistics at all in the thesis. Surely that is an unusual feature for a Princeton social sciences thesis! Isn't evaluating significance rather the point of these exercises? Why did Robinson get a pass? Was her advisor, Prof. Walter Wallace, innumerate himself?

* It would be useful to know what Mrs. Obama thinks today of what she wrote back then.

"Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the Black community I was somehow obligated to this community and would utilze all of my present and future resources to benefit this community first and foremost... [To] Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Back first and a student second.

"These experiences have made it apparent to me that the path I have chosen to follow by attending Princeton will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant. This realization has presently, made my goals to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable." (Page 2 (Part 1 PDF p. 9)).

Does Mrs. Obama see herself as a Uniter, or as an advocate of Blacks-first-and-foremost?

Anonymous said...

Forgive me green mamba, a minor quibble about the use of hopefully. With that word your sentence means, "A lot of people, including the talk radio hacks, will jump on this, full of hope."

Or so I think. I am no grammarian, just someone trying to get my kids to stop starting every sentence with "hopefully" and saying "like" every other word.

If were going to correct Mrs. O, we should get it right ourselves.

Anonymous said...

I've seen worse from professors. However; I was under, the impression that the blacks admitted to Harvard Law School were the cream of the crop.

Anonymous said...

Is the term "quota queen" in common parlance? I used it last night at dinner, and no one knew what I was talking about, but it seems to me to have some potential.

Anonymous said...

Green Mamba should have put it bluntly: Michelle O ("The Story of O"?) is a thief. There are only a finite number of slots available at Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, etc., and she stole one. That's all there is to the story.

But let's not overlook George Bush. He is a staunch supporter of affirmative action. He showed this as governor when he got the law passed - sometimes known as the Top Ten Percent Law - that circumvented the Hopwood decision. And he showed it again with the Gratz decision.

We don't need an empty black suit in the Oval Office.

We already have a brown one in there.

Anonymous said...

Steve --

A lawyer's date of admission to the bar depends on when he (1) completed his lengthy bar application and (2) was sworn in by the court. This usually occurs at a big ceremony, which are held on pre-determined dates.

Michelle Obama certainly could have passed the bar on her first try, but then delayed (for many possible reasons) in submitting her completed application for admission to the bar, and/or also delayed signing up for one of the swearing-in ceremonies.

In other words, there are many reasons why she may have been admitted "late"; despite passing the bar on her first try.

Thank-you.

Anonymous said...

Lucianne Goldberg scrubs her threads after about 72 hours, so this will be gone come Sunday or maybe Monday morning, but there is one of the longest and most virulent threads over there that I have ever seen:

Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide
lucianne.com

People are really, really steamed about this woman and her attitude.

Anonymous said...

vicuna: Yes, it needs editing. Yes, she should have asked someone to edit it.

Uhh, but then it wouldn't be her own work anymore.

Isn't that what they call plagiarism?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: There is absolutely no inferential statistics at all, nor any attempt to test her various hypotheses using them.

You're kidding, right?

What were you, an Engineering major?

This is the nexus of Sociobabble and Race Harlotry we're talking about here.

"Inferential Statistics"?

Dude, you're making me chuckle.

Anonymous said...

J.: I can feel empathy with her... It is almost inevitable that she has acquired a deep hatred of Princeton, Harvard and what you call America. You cannot blame her, blame yourself (as a nation) for putting her in that impossible situation.

First off, I do have a great deal of sympathy for her.

But, on the other hand, she chose her path, and, at this point, she and I are now enemies.

Look, Clarence Thomas came out of Holy Cross & Yale with his soul intact [or, at the very least, he was able to put his soul back together eventually].

Dittoes Thomas Sowell at Howard, Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago.

Or Walter Williams at UCLA.

Or Shelby Steele. Or Ward Connerly.

Point being that people can choose to rise above their circumstances.

But they have to have the strength of character to make the choice to do so.

And it looks like Barry & Michelle did not.

So don't go blaming me for their lack of character.

PS: Her writing is terrible, but that's okay. When you get right down to it, most people are illiterate anyway.

Anonymous said...

J said:

"I can feel empathy with her, a clean, good and decent girl in the academia, becoming aware that she was the object of special protection and promoted because she was black."

Yeah, I have the Michelle Obama problem, too. I am white, professional but not rich, and my daughter is black (12, 145 IQ) but can pass.

If I cultivate a sense of black racial entitlement and resentment in her, She can doubtless hammer it home in her application and get a full boat scholarship to an Ivy League school.

On the other hand, if she doesn't develop the Obamaish "rap" of sullen racial resentment and alienation, her college application will present her as just another smart, well adjusted white kid with upper middle class parents.

A few of the rich black kids she knows are going to school on this
already, but their parents were AA and they know the rap by heart.

Anonymous said...

Uhmmm,"rebelyell"? Sorry,but its spelled "disciplinary". No biggie,just sayin'... Presently,thank-you. Michelle

Tom Merle said...

Now let's move on to Mrs. McCain's accomplishments. And then there was Mrs Heinz, and Bumper or Thumper or whatever her name is. And Mrs. Bush, Mrs. Reagan, Mrs. Ford, Jackie Kennedy. Scholars all. Mrs. Carter--sweet but no shining light.

MO was not writing a PhD dissertation but a college paper saying "goodbye to all that". If you were in here shoes, given the environment of the time, wouldn't you have something larger than a sliver on your shoulder. She's not the one running for President, or is she seeking a job as a journalist/editor, but for First Wife who's not supposed to be a butinsky. As a wife of a leader, assuming she gets over the racial self consiousness, she'll be a cut above most. She certainly does well on her feet.

So, yes, let's hear about Mrs. McCain....

Anonymous said...

Wow.

There are now 850 comments at Little Green Footballs:

Michelle Obama's Victocratic Thesis
littlegreenfootballs.com

This thing has really struck a nerve.

Anonymous said...

I think this does confirm that she has a chip on her shoulder. It also confirms she was probably less qualified than her peers. That said, I've read many white and Asian students' who have written this badly or worse. I went to University of Chicago. Granted, the admission standards were lower than Princeton's, but average was 1350 or so on the old SATs. Let's say she had a 1200 SAT and bad HS instruction; this is about what you'd expect.

I also know that sociology tends to attract lesser students and sociological academic writing is filled with bad writing, jargon, and she would not have stood out from the crowd from what I can see in her abilities, choice of subject matter for her thesis, or relative ignorance of high level statistical concepts. Regression analysis of any kind has only come in vogue among social scientists in the 90s. Prior to that it was simple geographic comparisons and longitudinal studies. When economists got in the game, folks like John Lott, the bar was set much higher.

So I don't this proves she's a complete idiot. It only proves what we already knew: she was probably smart, but still 1SD or more lower than her Princeton peers; the combination of self consciousness, occasional rudeness by snobby whites, and the prodding of her Marxist professors made her resentful and angry instead of merely insecure; she accomplished a lot in life, but she'd always have to wonder where she'd be if she weren't black, so she has a lot of insecurity and projects this at anger at the whites who have done her favors that confirmed their superiority to her.

I feel a bit sorry for her. She's annoying, but she wouldn't be in this sorry condition but for well-meaning but misguided affirmative action.

Truth said...

"It is almost inevitable that she has acquired a deep hatred of Princeton, Harvard and what you call America."

Since when does mild dissatisfaction equal hatred? If this were true everyone would hate his wife. No, hatred is not expressed in a 21 year old writing a senior thesis implying that not everything was perfect with her educational experience. Hatred is expressed in what Kamierczak did in shooting up his campus two weeks ago.

"ow, and this illiterate made it into Harvard Law School?"

That's funny, I always thought "illiterate" implied that one could not read or write. If an illiterate were to find a way to earn two Ivy league degrees and pass the bar, I would vote for HER for president.

"Anyway, I could write better than this when I was twelve"

Well then apparently you chose the wrong person to marry because she may be living in the white house next year, whereas you will be trolling chartrooms with a silly moniker.

I have to admit, as a 'black' man, I find it highly amusing that there have been 4 threads and over 200 responses on something the possible president's WIFE wrote 20 years ago. I was not aware she was running for office.

Steve, how much research did you do into Laura Bush's senior thesis 8 years ago.

Truth said...

Oh, wait a minute, Laura Bush got her masters in a highly demanding, math/science intensive major: Library Studies! Before the internet was invented. Two years in learning how to to use an index card file.

Anonymous said...

Hal, Kevin and Bean on KROQ in LA have a regular segment called "Tawanda" or something like that where Ralph Garmen imitates some illiterate old black woman and "reviews" various celebrity idiocies. They also have an "Afro line" where listeners call in with comments played on the air.

Anti-PC is the easiest way for Drive-time radio to get noticed. Competition being tougher it's a way to get noticed. Sarah Silverman makes her living saying un-PC things in a little girly voice.

Tom Merle, most successful candidates for President have safe boring wives. Because voters get nervous when a wife is to "out there" and figure she's the most important advisor to the President. Hillary Clinton is probably the exception. Few voters want a "Queen Bee" unaccountable running things in the Oval Office.

Michelle Obama is a liability because of that. Mrs. McCain is boring and safe and therefore not a liability.

Anonymous said...

This is hilarious.

Michelle Obama said she was a legal scholar?

She should have turned down a good paying job? LOL Your a working class girl from the Southside and someone offers you 6 figures in the late 80's...uhm...what would you do..."oh I don't deserve this position because I failed the bar once (if she did)"??

Yeah George W. Bush deserved to go to Harvard Business School with his "C" average and Kerry deserved to go to Law School with is "C" average right?

Did that upset you? Did you feel cheated?

Truth is Michelle Obama is the wife of the candidate. She is not running for anything. She doesn't want to be co-president like Hillary did.

What is Cindy McCain's education level?

"Cindy Lou Hensley grew up in affluent circumstances[4] in Phoenix, Arizona,[1] the daughter and only child[5] of James and Marguerite Hensley,[6] who founded Hensley & Company in 1955.[3] She attended Madison Meadows Elementary and was a rodeo queen in 1968.[7] She went to Central High School[5] in Phoenix. She graduated from the latter in 1972,[8] having been a cheerleader there.[9]

Hensley received her undergraduate degree in education[10] and a masters in special education from the University of Southern California.[11]S"

She grew up rich and that is the best she could do?

Yep...typical blond. Gonna post about that Sigma?

I also would like to see an article on the Affirmative Action George W. Bush and John Kerry got, because they definitely got some from someone. Michelle Obama's grades (at Princeton) according to her professor were quite good.

If you bothered to read the Newsweek article on her and not the Steve Sailer guessing game.

Michelle got into Princeton, not due to racial AA but due to being a legacy candidate due to her brother...

"Michelle recalls things differently. A campaign spokeswoman says she had an edge getting into Princeton not because of affirmative action, but because her older brother was there as a scholar athlete. She was a "legacy," just like any other applicant with family ties to Princeton. Her aides say Michelle earned her way into Harvard on merit by distinguishing herself at Princeton."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112849/output/print

Anonymous said...

Perhaps O released it to contrast himself with the secretive Clintons who are reluctant to release all manner of things.

Mansizedtarget.com said...

This idea she got in because of legacy and not affirmative action is moronic. Legacy admissions are not air tight, as one would expect the IQs of kids and parents are not too far off, but even so the leg up is minimal. George W, remember that idiot, still had a 1250 plus SAT, which is much higher than most people at places like USC, Tulane, etc.

I worked on the Gratz/Grutter Michigan affirmative action cases. They masked their earlier blatant quotas two-tiered system with a point system. Legacy was like one point. Minority five. Being a friggin' olympic athlete from a great school and great grades was of lower value than being black. The disparity of GPA was 2.5 black 3.5 white. Think about that. It's a totally different league. More important, race and legacy worked in concert; it wasn't either/or. They both added to likelihood of admission. A black legacy at Princeton; she might've been the dumbest person there.

Anonymous said...

"Let's say she had a 1200 SAT and bad HS instruction; this is about what you'd expect."

I doubt she had a 1200 SAT on the old, harder test that they used back then. Unless she has high math skills, she would have had to get at least 600 on the verbal section to get a 1200. She doesn't write like someone who scored that high on verbal. She probably had an SAT of between 1000-1100, though the average Princeton score back then was probably lower than it is now.

- Fred

Anonymous said...

I also have neither time nor inclination to read the whole thing, but I skimmed a significant portion of it, and these punctuation mistakes seem to actually rather few and far between. The thesis does not read like the work of a super-genius, but it hardly reads like the work of an "illiterate." It will be almost surely not be fodder for morning drive DJs, most of whom would have no idea how to use a semicolon properly if their lives depended on it, and who therefore will be unable to spot the scattered and relatively small mistakes in this thesis. Stern (although I despise him), O'Brien, and some others in the comedy field probably do have fairly high IQs, possibly ones high enough to notice these mistakes, but they're going to get comedy mileage out of misplaced commas.

I have definitely seen many a well-educated white person (including Steve himself, no doubt in posts written hastily and poorly proofread) make grammatical and punctuation mistakes equivalent to or greater than the ones the future Mrs. Obama made in this thesis. The one truly egregious error in the thesis is that she uses "thank-you" twice (the second time is when thanking her advisor), so somehow she must really believe that that is the correct form.

Anonymous said...

I'm a great admirer of Steve's but this was one of his weaker blog posts. In internet-speak, pointing out Ms Obama's misspelling of "thank you" constitutes what some call a "spelling flame". Spelling flames are considered lame by most netizens. Of course good spelling and grammar should always be encouraged, but basic readability is an acceptable minimum standard, and I don't see much evidence that Ms. Obama failed to meet that standard. Better questions are whether her data crunching was done correctly and whether her models have any validity, and the most important question is (assuming she is trying to quantify injustice): are the things she sees as injustices really injustices, or are we taking about opportunistic ideas of justice that have their genesis in someone's narcissistic rage...

Quoting from the link I just provided:
According to Kohut[1], rages are a result of the shame at being faced with failure. Narcissistic rage is the uncontrollable and unexpected anger that occurs due to a narcissistic injury. Narcissistic injury is a threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or worth. Rage comes in many forms, but all pertain to the same important thing, revenge.

One caveat is that some religious thinkers believe that all anger is fundamentally narcissistic rage.

Anonymous said...

Truth: Hatred is expressed in what Kamierczak did in shooting up his campus two weeks ago.

Speaking of Islam:

School shooter studied Hamas, says friend
'He would especially enjoy practicing his Arabic on me'
worldnetdaily.com

Anonymous said...

I was an engineering grad student at Princeton about 15 years ago and TA'd a science core class for lib-arts majors. One of the things that really struck me was the overall lack of intellectual curiosity and sophistication of about 1/3 to 1/2 of the 40 or so students I taught. This was Princeton, after all.

A lot of them (mostly rich, spoiled whites, probably many legacies) just weren't practiced or talented writers (I had done a lot of writing, so it was obvious to me). They were a lot more interested in getting drunk 3-4 times a week than in anything scholarly.

I'm sure when it came time to finish up the Senior Thesis, these kids did what they had to do to get their sheepskin so they could move on to their destinies in I-banking, but not much more.

Don't get me wrong, I can't imagine much worse than an Obama presidency, and his wife will only make it more intolerable. But to pick on her hyphen misuse and semicolon placement is reaching, especially when there is so much relevant criticism due the content of the thesis itself. I'm absolutely sure a substantial portion of here white colleagues weren't producing anything better.

Anonymous said...

"I have definitely seen many a well-educated white person (including Steve himself, no doubt in posts written hastily and poorly proofread) make grammatical and punctuation mistakes equivalent to or greater than the ones the future Mrs. Obama made in this thesis. The one truly egregious error in the thesis is that she uses "thank-you" twice (the second time is when thanking her advisor), so somehow she must really believe that that is the correct form."

Fair points. After reading a bit more of the thesis, I realize that it isn't quite as "terrible" as I intially surmised. Though the "thank-you" is just strange, and the whole thing is rather undeveloped for a senior thesis. If she were white and her writing was this poor people would assume she was just unsually bad at writing though still quite intelligent. But because she is an obvious AA admit, gaffe prone, and has commented that her test scores were not particularly good, the bad writing seems to have confirmed her lack of intelligence rather than being something people dismiss as idiosyncratic.

Of course it shouldnt' really matter if she's a good writer. Of more concern is the subject matter (e.g. she says that the black community will always be her foremost concern). Obama supporters will say this shouldn't matter because she isn't running for president. But it does tell us something about Obama when he chose a woman this angry and unpatriotic for his wife.

Anonymous said...

"Michelle Obama is a liability because of that. Mrs. McCain is boring and safe and therefore not a liability."

Mrs. McCain was some time ago addicted to prescription pain medicine and was stealing from a charity she ran to supply herself. Safe and boring, perhaps, but she's got some baggage too.

Anonymous said...

You guys are just sad. Anyone who has met or worked with her will tell you that she is a brilliant woman.

Anonymous said...

"you guys are just sad". Best comment yet. Surely, a senior thesis says something about a person. When my wife is running for president, people can read my senior thesis about the Austrian business cycle theory. Sure it had some grammatical oddities, but I'm Dutch so it'll be a mitigating factor. But her writing and her subject matter just confirm EVERY suspicion we already had concerning 1)ivy league sociological marxists 2)black women who get into princeton with AA/legacy and 3)the ridiculously vacuous racist stuff that she produced. Man (or woman). Like Steve said, it couldn't have been better.

OBVIOUSLY, Michelle Obama is a prototypical intelligent black woman that is throughly fucked in the head because of the racial thing. I would be too, because race is fucked up. Which is why I read this blog, to deal rationally with the fucked-upness.

Affirmative action while claiming equality combines the worst of both parts: it 1)doesn't openly recognize racial differences but secretly does provide a way out for the guilty whites while 2) by saying it's a cultural thing making the whites happier while they find out they aren't as smart when they are in college anyway and turn very resentful and 3) giving stuff doesn't make one grateful, it creates enemies and 4)it actually fosters racism

and YES society forces me to post anonymously here. I don't want to ruin my career. Thanks left-wing idiots, for encouraging secretive talk about race. Very healthy.

michael farris said...

Does anyone know if the school in question has an editorial office?

At my undergrad university (UF) theses and dissertations had to be submitted to an editorial office that had pretty strict guidelines about grammar, punctuation (and font size, margins etc etc etc). IIRC it was impossible to defend until they okayed it.

On the other hand, a senior thesis is a different kind of critter and usually not regarded as much different from a longer term paper (grammar and punctuation standards for which were already pretty low by the early 80's).

J said...

Michelle Obama is a prototypical intelligent black woman that is throughly fucked in the head because of the racial thing. She and her husband too. And they are about to receive the keys to the White House.

Be afraid. Be Very afraid.

AMac said...

Background question.

At my university, undergraduate theses were submitted only by students seeking an Honors designation from their major department, and/or students who had been approved to take Independent Research, for course credit. Thus, few (perhaps 5%-10%) of graduating seniors had written and submitted a thesis.

Was Robinson's situation similar? Or was everybody in the Class of 1985 expected to submit a thesis as one of the jump-through hoops of the Princeton Experience?

If the latter, she should be cut much more slack. Sure, her essay is dreary, but how many gems could there be among reams of mandated term-paper-plus submissions?

Anonymous said...

I'm a great admirer of Steve's but this was one of his weaker blog posts. In internet-speak, pointing out Ms Obama's misspelling of "thank you" constitutes what some call a "spelling flame". Spelling flames are considered lame by most netizens.

Nonsense. Spelling flames are weak, but that has nothing to do with pointing out grammar and punctuation errors in a student's work; threads are informal and a lot like speaking in terms of the standards of grammar and punctuation, a far cry from a proofread paper. Besides, standard netiquette isn't license to throw grammar to the wind; it's one thing to use 'Net jargon, and quite another to be semi-literate and use netiquette as an excuse.

The idea that netiquette is the standard to be applied at college is absurd. Human nature being what it is, you should change your handle here at Steve's blog for subsequent comments.

And yes, I have a hard time imagining anyone with an IQ over 110-115 makes the sort of mistakes M. Obama did.

Anonymous said...

The issue is how smart or dumb or intellectual or ditsy Michelle Obama is. The issue is that she is an angry racist.

The truth that is hard to fathom is that people with her mentality are not reacting to any injustice done by others. They are perceiving that someone else has something they want. They react to this by first resenting, then demanding, and then acting out in violence to take it. Whatever it is.

If you think this is about white and black, watch "Hotel Rwanda" and "Sometimes in April." You will see the exact same behavior in a country where everyone is dark skinned. But the pattern of have not Hutus (from the same Bantu stock as American blacks) being jealous of the cattle ownership of non-Bantu Tutsis is exactly the same of what has played out in America. The same resentment, the same demagoguery, the same rhetoric, the same rioting plays out in a massive genocide.

The rhetoric that is used doesn't matter. Whites feel worse about slavery (an African institution) than blacks ever did. Again, watch Hotel Rwanda and understand you are seeing the same story, different actors.

Understand that this is never really about black and white, or black and Korean, or black and Asian Indian. It is about Have Nots who have no concept of building collective wealth through individual work and patience and high personal standards. It is about a vengeful jealousy simply because someone else has something desirable, anything.

This jealousy can never really be appeased by gifts, charity, welfare states, kind liberal words or what have you. That gravy train of kindness is just a bargaining chip to get more gravy - or else more riots, more violence. I am sorry to see that a man as intelligent as Barry Obama has allied himself with a movement of people with this very destructive mentality.

I hope that if/when he is elected (it is looking more like a probability now), he will at least mediate between the segment of society that is creates wealth and the segment of society that demands wealth.

Anonymous said...

"...as a 'black' man, I find it highly amusing that there have been 4 threads and over 200 responses on something the possible president's WIFE wrote 20 years ago. I was not aware she was running for office."

As a black man, you also seem to have difficulty grasping the Western concept of marriage.

Anonymous said...

At least she wrote it herself. Unlike JFK.

Half Sigma said...

"Her aides say Michelle earned her way into Harvard on merit by distinguishing herself at Princeton."

I'd love to know what she scored on the LSAT.

Anonymous said...

roger: She's no more a thief than the legacy kids, or than white protestants back in the day when they were favored by the schools (mostly at the expense of Jews), or athletes who get let in. People live in and react to the system they get, especially as kids. I have a cousin who got into Harvard partly because of his baseball talent (which strikes me as perhaps even dumber than letting him in for being black). But most ambitious, smart kids will go to Harvard or Princeton if they get in, and they won't worry too much about the ultimate fairness of the whole system.

tom merle: OTOH, Hillary does have a spouse who's managed to accomplish a few things. (It would be kinda nice if she'd accomplished more, though.)

I agree with truth: The possible next first lady's senior thesis must be about the least interesting possible topic for discussion.

Anonymous said...

I was not aware she was running for office.

Not yet!

Anonymous said...

"Understand that this is never really about black and white, ... but about .. individual work and patience and high personal standards."

Sure. Except that there seems to be some correlation between those two factors. IQ and the wealth of nations. White people and asians seem to be better at performing well in a modern economy. We wouldn't last long in the african tribes though. Adaptation. Life is cruel.

Black Sea said...

Michelle Obama is drawing fire these days because her husband is politically untouchable. When a president or presidential candidate is "teflon," opponents start targeting the wife. This is particularly true when the wife just can't keep a low profile herself.

It happened with Clinton (we tend to forget, but Hillary was popular with the general public when Bill was first elected). It happened with Reagan, whose wife was raked over the coals for, among other things, ordering new chinaware for the White House, and consulting an astrologer. It happened with FDR, whose wife's "progressivism" was ridiculed, because ridiculing FDR didn't get his opponents very far.

People lay off Laura Bush because she stays out of the limelight, but more importantly, because her husband can profitably be attacked on his own shortcomings. Similarly, Barbara Bush, Rosalind Carter, and Pat Nixon were rarely criticized. Wives of struggling presidents get high marks just for standing by their man.

This isn't to say that I think much of Michelle Obama's senior thesis. However, it's unsurprising that someone majoring in African American studies and sociology would have reached these conclusions. Would anyone have expected her thesis to reveal that, after four years at Princeton, she'd concluded that rich white kids were really pretty cool and that black people probably exaggerate the extent to which white elites exclude them?

Anyone who's ever sat through an undergrad sociology course knows that her conclusions were practically pre-determined.

Anonymous said...

Was Eddie Murphy’s SNL skit, White Like Eddie, the real inspiration for Mrs. Obama’s senior thesis?

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/84/84iwhitelikeeddie.phtml


White Like Eddie

.....Eddie Murphy
Clerk.....Jim Downey


Eddie Murphy: You know, a lot of people talk about racial prejudice. And some people have gone so far as to say that there are actually two Americas: one black and one white. But talk is cheap. So I decided to look into the problem myself, firsthand. To go underground and actually experience America.. as a white man.

[Murphy enters Make Up Room ]

Eddie Murphy Voiceover: I hired the best make-up people in the business. If I was gonna pass as a white man, everything had to be perfect.

[ make-up is placed on Eddie's face ]

Eddie Murphy: Hmm, I think that's a little light.

Make-up Artist: Okay, let's try this. [ applies fake white moustache on Eddie's lips ]

Eddie Murphy: That's, uh.. I look kind of Harry Reemsish.

Make-up Artist: Mmm, I like it.

Eddie Murphy: I studied for my role very carefully. I watched lots of "Dynasty".

[ show Eddie watching TV ]

Eddie Murphy: See? See how they walk? Their butts are real tight when they walk. They keep their butts tight. I've gotta remember to keep my butt real tight when I walk.

Eddie Murphy Voiceover: And, I read a whole bunch of Hallmark Cards.

[ show Eddie reading greeting cards ]

Eddie Murphy: "For my lovely wife." That's it. That's it. That's it. Go ahead. "You always mean lots more to me than you could ever guess. For you have done so much to fill my life with happiness."

Eddie Murphy Voiceover: Finally, I was ready.

[ Eddie walks onto the street, the perfect portrait of a white man. He enters a convenience store, grabs a newspaper and drops it on the counter. ]

Clerk: What are you doing?

Eddie Murphy: I'm buying this newspaper.

Clerk: That's all right. There's nobody around. Go ahead, take it. Take it. [ Eddie gives him a quizzical look ] Go ahead, take it. Yeah. Take it. Take it.

[ Eddie takes the newspaper, and cautiously exits ]

Eddie Murphy Voiceover: Slowly, I began to realize that when white people are alone, they give things to each other for free.
[ cut to Eddie catching a bus. He sits down between two white women. ]

Eddie Murphy Voiceover: There was only one other black man on the bus. He got off on 45th Street. [ the busdriver looks around the bus carefully, then sets a party in motion, complete with music and cigarette girls ] The problem was much more serious than I'd ever imagined.

[ cut to Eddie at a bank, talking to a black Loan Officer ]

Loan Officer: Now, let me get this straight, Mr., ..uh.. Mr. White. You'd like to borrow $50,000 from our bank, but you have no collateral, you have no credit. You don't even have any I.D. Is that correct?

Eddie Murphy: That's right.

Loan Officer: Mr. White, I'm sorry. This is not a charity. This is a business..

White Loan Officer: Uh, Harry, why don't you, uh, take your break now? I'll take care of.. uh.. Mr. White.

Loan Officer: Well.. okay. Thanks, Bob. [ exits ]

White Loan Officer: [ laughs, then sits ] That was a close one, wasn't it?

Eddie Murphy: It certainly was.

White Loan Officer: We don't have to bother with these formalities, do we, Mr. White? Huh?

Eddie Murphy: What a silly Negro!

White Loan Officer: Just take what you want, Mr. White. Pay us back anytime. Or don't. We don't care.

Eddie Murphy: Tell me, do you know of any other banks like this in this area?

[ cut to Eddie back at the Make-up Room ]

Eddie Murphy: So, what did I learn from all of this? Well, I learned that we still have a very long way to go in this country before all men are truly equal. But I'll tell you something. [ pan to reveal Eddie's black buddies applying white make-up to their faces ] I've got a lot of friends, and we've got a lot of makeup. So, the next time you're huggin' up with some really super, groovy white guy, or you met a really great, super keen white chick, don't be too sure. They might be black.

[ fade to black ]

Anonymous said...

This reflects worse on Princeton than it does on M. Obama. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, I am HYP the great and powerful!" This is it? The highest pinnacle of meritocracy? The philosopher-kings who rule us write like this? I'm very disappointed.

Anonymous said...

I want to second the opinion that Mrs. Obama's grammar issues are no worse that what I've experienced.

I was a teaching assistant at a private university in Boston back in the Eighties, and I was shocked at the lack of writing skills exhibited by the students in a gut journalism course. My prof actually gave back the first set of papers I scored, telling me to curve them. He made clear that I could NOT give these grades at this school!

Anonymous said...

I am a TA at a top, non-Ivy League university. The mechanics of Michelle's paper are comparable to many I've read from my undergraduates.

Anonymous said...

Dude - great column! Your maturity level is way above MO's. Can't wait to do keg stands with you on *your* 21st birthday!!

~C
Princeton class of '89

Anonymous said...

All you people reading into her writing being "semi-literate" are honestly ridiculous.
I agree that that universities allow students to indulge themselves too much in subject matter that will seem a bit too frivolous 10 years after they write it. It's an impressionable age where a lot of young people are chosing their battles. It's not exactly shocking for her to have found this intriguing. I'm sure she formed a lot of opinions from this period of her life, and modified others, all of which she now takes for granted as the foundation of her adult outlook on life. The fact that most of you can't understand this, let alone relate on some level, is to your detriment, not hers.

Anonymous said...

Michele Obama is not running for president; her husband is. Did anyone critiize the way either of the Bush wives wrote, spoke (or more importantly)thought in the White House? What about the other naive presidential wives? Bet they could not write their way out of a bucket. Ivy League institutions do not produce perfect people because they do not have perfect professors. Thank-you. I rather like it. As a matter of style, it is cute.

Unknown said...

Those of you who are criticizing her for her grammar mistakes and then calling her stupid are coming off as incredibly ignorant. Making grammatical mistakes has nothing to do with intelligence. As for those grammar mistakes, I would have to agree that her errors are nothing out of the ordinary.

As for her attending such a prestigious school, that is a whole different matter. I met a guy who got into and attended Princeton. He was amazed by the number of students who got in primarily on their good graces. But, as he explained, once you are in, the school does virtually everything they can to make sure you succeed, including providing individual tutors as needed. Remember, these schools have an extremely high reputation. Keeping their graduation rate high is part of that. As others have already said, blame the institution, not the product.

test_acct said...

We took a tour of Yale last year with my daughter - a graduating senior. Honor roll every semester, college while still a high school student, ROTC, multiple musical instruments, national ranked musician, captain of sports team ..... ( she got almost a full ride somewhere else :) )

Did you know that the top 2000 people who apply to Yale had perfect grades their entire high school careers. Perfect SATs too.

So you think that somehow you didn't get in to a prestigious university because you were 50 points under "perfect SAT" score ?

You're right. They have no shortage of people who _are_ perfect. White, Asian, Black. They all get 1600s or 2400s

That 1560 of yours ... it needed to be another 40 points higher.

Please don't overestimate your skills. They are not as high as you think.

Anonymous said...

OK Really? Do a few minor misuses of punctuation really negate the quality of a thesis. How about you find some points to argue against... O wait, you wouldn't be able to

Anonymous said...

She was an undergrad, what's the big deal? I look back at papers I've written up through my doctorate and wonder, "How the hell did I miss that," or "Was I drunk when I wrote that?"

I'm about as anti-Obama as they come, but leave her academics alone. Anyone who graduates college is already head and shoulders above much of the population.

Anonymous said...

All you racist whites will ultimately have to answer for your hideous mannerisms and attitudes.

Anonymous said...

after reading this ridiculously long thread of bullshit, it has become ever more apparent to me: caucasians are fucking idiots. i dont recall any other presidents wives academic records being scrutinized in this manner. you all speak about it as if you are speaking about her having an elicit connection to the taliban. of course, this confirms your "racial superiority." but then again, in your eyes, just waking up every day confirms your superiority. apparently, you losers have nothing important to talk about. if you all were secure about being racially and intellectually superior, you would not have to dissect every miniscule thing about others to constantly remind yourselves of "the truth." this steve sailer loser should really find something constructive to do with his time. oh wait, maybe stroking the egos of white losers is his job! please. the mere fact that whites would rather blame president obama for this bullshit we find ourselves in now rather than that fuckin idiot george bush explains it all. whites live in their own irrational world. you rationalize, make excuses for, and see things in a way that is beneficial, not truthful, to your race. you all lie to yourselves and expect others to believe it just because you said it. but those of us who are spiritually awakened can see through the bullshit wool you try to pull over our eyes. michelle obama's thesis has nothing to do with the united states' current state of affairs. however, i see that its very presence has provided a boost to the self-esteem of white idiots needing to reaffirm their racial superiority. i hope this has helped tremendously. the internet is a cyber backwoods meeting place for simple-minded, wanna-be smart-assed, dumb-assed, racist, low self-esteemed-but-swear-you-are-superior-to, white cowards who would never have the balls to breathe this stupid, mindless, thoughtless, idiotic, waste-of-keystrokes and brainpower assed shit in the public. because truthfully, this subject is not even worth being discussed, as are a plethora of topics brought up about president obama. shit you all should be discussing, you dont. so until you all discuss important topics, such as, "how wall street giants, george bush, and other greedy muthafuckas, are responsible for the current ecomony, and not president obama," all of you fucking idiots can kick rocks.

Anonymous said...

really? do you ppl have nothing more important to talk about? apparently not. this entire blog is only serving to boost the obvious insecurities the "superior" whites have concerning their superiority! are you really superior if you must constantly and relentlessly remind yourselves of "the truth?" are you really superior if you must stoop this low to "prove" it? this proves nothing. the paper is no different from others written by students at the level at the same school. unless a person is an english major, grammar is not taught past a certain point in the educational career. get over yourselves. talk about how george bush lied in order to start the war in iraq. talk about how he ignored the advice of a council in washington that saddam hussein was not behind 9/11.