November 20, 2013

First Lady can't stop talking about her test scores

Continuing a pattern that's at least a half-dozen years old, from today's Washington Post:
Michelle Obama’s extended interview with rapper Bow Wow and singer Keshia Chante, which aired Tuesday night on Black Entertainment Television, yielded a few new details about the first lady’s teenage years. ...

3. Obama wanted to be a pediatrician, but she wasn’t that great at math and science. “So I switched to law, because my mother told me I like to argue a lot.” ...
5. Asked to look at old photos and reflect on what she would say to her younger self, she replied: “I was thinking maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m not bright enough. Maybe there are kids that are working harder than me. I was always worrying about disappointing someone or failing. And the thing that I would tell that girl is don’t worry about failure, because failure is the key to success. And you are smart enough to sit at any table and compete and to have your voice heard.”

There is a lot of conspiracy theorizing about why the President has never "released" his test scores, although I'm not aware than anybody has ever directly asked him what he scored. (When he was finally asked about his college GPA in 2011, he answered immediately.) One possible explanation for Mr. Obama's reticence about his LSAT score is that if he mentioned it, Mrs. Obama would never forgive him.

One irony about Mrs. Obama is that her main accomplishments in life are so traditionally feminine: she married well, bore her husband two fine children, and has never, as far as I can tell, been the subject of the slightest hint of scandal about her fidelity. Her expensive education primarily succeeded in bestowing upon her the highest MRS degree in the land: First Lady.

On the other hand, her response to all this good fortune is intermittently graceless, as if she sees herself as competing with her husband. Most notably, her initial response to his 2008 election was to plan to publicly separate from him: to have Barack go live stag in the White House while she stayed behind in Chicago with the girls for their 2009 spring semester at school.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.miami.com/039the-hunger-games-catching-fire039-pg-13-article

Bunger Games

Robert Holmgren said...

Based on the evidence not smart enough to be a lawyer either.

Black Death said...

Michelle Obama received about $317,000 as vice president for community and external relations at the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2005 after her husband was elected to the US Senate in 2004. B ut that's OK - she was highly qualified - she was an associate at Sidley Austin, assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago’s City Hall and executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies. It's the Chicago way!

Pat Boyle said...

Hillary you know was a Merit semifinalist.

Albertosaurus

Harry Baldwin said...

Have you ever known people who were insecure about their intelligence, always talking about how low their test scores were, etc., and you were surprised because they obviously were very intelligent?

Me neither.

Baloo said...

It made for a nice graphic.

Whiskey said...

When a woman talks down her husband and does not want to live with him? He's not getting it done in the ... satisfaction dept. More fuel on the speculation of which way Obama ... swings his golf club.

countenance said...

Why won't Obama release his college transcripts?

I think his grades are pretty good, but the fluffy duff basket weaving course titles he got the good grades in would be an embarrassment to him.

Another reason I don't think he'll release them is the reason why he didn't release his birth certificate until Trump forced his hand -- He's floating distractions to keep people from noticing real issues. Though with immigration and ObamaDontCare hot, that's not the case anymore.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It takes about 700 SATV to succeed as well as Barack did at HLS.

If he had and SAT total of greater than 1200 as an affirmative-action kid out of Punahou, he wouldn't have gone to Occi.

Therefore, his math SAT's were about 500.

The supporting evidence is that his academic career took off as soon as required math course and tests were out of the way.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yes, Hillary was a merit scholar. While she and Bill and Gore all likely did better on their verbal scores, their math scores were likely at least decent. Unlike Kerry or Obama or Biden.

Robert What? said...

Correction: Obama did not release his birth certificate. He released a doctored copy of someone's birth certificate.

Anonymous said...

The reason Obama waited so long to release his birth certificate was that the birthers were helping him instead of hurting him.

Most undecided voters believed he was born in the US, and the more obnoxious the birthers got, the more likely the undecideds were to vote for Obama.

Anonymous said...

"Yes, Hillary was a merit scholar."

She's not in the NMS directory, nor is Bill, Barack, Michelle, Chuck Schumer, or Timothy Geithner.

The Dark Hours said...

There is a lot of conspiracy theorizing about why the President has never "released" his test scores, although I'm not aware than anybody has ever directly asked him what he scored. (When he was finally asked about his college GPA in 2011, he answered immediately.) One possible explanation for Mr. Obama's reticence about his LSAT score is that if he mentioned it, Mrs. Obama would never forgive him.

No president has voluntarily released their test scores so why should Obama be any different? And no prominent person has ever challenged him to (nor should they); the closest was trump inquiring about his college transcript, but even trump didn't ask for his test scores.

Obama is probably extremely bright (IQ 140) to be the first black president.

But Obama releasing his birth certificate seemed like a ploy to shut trump up before his questions about obama's college transcripts gained traction so perhaps he does have something to hide, especially since obama's on record admitting he benefited academically from affirmative action.

Michelle is probably at least IQ 120 but is probably insecure because her white classmates and professors at harvard can be pretty condescending to blacks.

Truth said...

"More fuel on the speculation of which way Obama ... swings his golf club."

No, more fuel on the speculation that you're an moron; not that it isn't already a four-alarm fire.

Anonymous said...

Go stag? Barry Obama's observed behaviors during his high school years are far far more likely to be manifestations of firm homosexual disposition than of merely a slowly ripening "stag".
In the climate of those times, he manifested very little of what characterized heterosexual males. When he gets off script-- a mike falls over, etc.--his reflexive reactions are 99% girlie boy. It is not too unlikely that the First Lady would find life in Chicago as erotically no different from what many people suspect her sex life "with" the President to be.

Anonymous said...

As far as the faithfulness of Michelle---there is some sense to the notion that a guy marries a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad. The girl that (did she?) married "dad" was not unlikely basically lesbian. There is scant indication she had any really enduring emotional attachment with either Obama Sr. or Soretto. Her fixation upon interracial sex in a movie she saw at age 15 and viewed over and over and over---is very often part of a female homosexual emergence. She had no observable emotional/visual/body language yoking to any males in high school, and thus her outsider friends in high school were astonished when she showed up pregnant and "engaged" (It is not clear she was ever married to Obama Kenyan) The Soretto attachment didn't last much beyond her first pregnancy with him. The indications of homosex orientation by both Stanlee/ Stanley/ Ann Dunham and Barry Obama are fairly robust.

Art Deco said...

Mrs. Obama graduated from Princeton University and the Harvard Law School. She may have received special dispensations to be admitted, but her performance was adequate to complete her degree. She was admitted to the bar at the age of 25 and was a working and licensed attorney when her husband (3 years her senior) arrived there as a summer clerk. He general intelligence is more than satisfactory. This continuous resort to discussion of people's endowments is tiresome.

What is evident is that she had deficient interest in actually practicing law. That, conjoined to opportunities here there an the next place to land handsomely compensated administrative jobs with nebulous duties, made her 20 year long career in salaried employment largely a waste. That derives from a character defect, not an intellectual defect.

Art Deco said...

That she was planning to live apart from him for six months does indicate she has only scant interest in day to day attention from him (which is not so odd among people in middle age).

Anonymous said...

"Obama is probably extremely bright (IQ 140) to be the first black president."

Bosh. If Obama's IQ is north of 120 I'd be amazed. His entire approach to life, including his college "revolutionary" phase, bears the hallmarks of the mid-wit intelligence who incorrectly imagines himself the smartest guy in any room. Bear in mind that 120 puts him close to 3-sigma range for the black population from which he managed to distinguish himself.

Gringo said...

AVI:
"Yes, Hillary was a merit scholar."

Anonymous/Sin Nombre @11/20/13, 8:01 PM
She's not in the NMS directory, nor is Bill, Barack, Michelle, Chuck Schumer, or Timothy Geithner.

Hillary could have been a Merit Semi Finalist or Finalist without having been a Merit Scholar.

Had Barack Obama been either a Merit Semifinalist, Finalist, Letter of Commendation winner, or winner of the Affirmative Action Merit Program [National Achievement Scholarship Program], I imagine we would have been told about it. Ditto for Michelle Obama.

Bottledwater said...

I'm sure lots of people with genius IQ's never were national merit anything.