If you make money, you can't be helping people--Michelle Obama
Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 12:04AM 
From a David Brooks NYT column about the malaise of self-doubt afflicting the country:
The shift away from commercial values has been expressed well by Michelle Obama in a series of speeches. “Don’t go into corporate America,” she told a group of women in Ohio. “You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. ... Make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry.” As talented people adopt those priorities, America may become more humane, but it will be less prosperous.
The First Lady has a weird way of putting her foot consistently in her mouth along these lines: making big chunks of what I consider to be America proper seem like they should be ashamed of themselves and what they do.
I have nothing against social workers: I've got a beloved brother who's been one all his life and my mom did something similar for many years and so did my spouse Vonne. I think it's a hugely honorable profession.
But I also think that businesspeople "work for the community" too. I believe that the vast majority of the money-making industry is also in the helping industry--to include LAWYERS! (the personal brag that she seems to be making here--as in, thank God I left that money-grubbing profession and became noble!).
I also am the child of two lawyers (Dad, all his adult life, Mom, in her later years), and both of them were very much in the helping profession. The moral arrogance on display here is off-putting in the extreme.
I must say, I find this demonization of American business to be bizarre, and to hear such things coming out of the mouth of the First Lady is truly distressing. For all her alleged brains, I wonder if she has a clue about most of America outside of her relatively narrow experience base (and frankly, that of her husband to boot).
Reader Comments (7)
I second your thoughts.
Where does Ms. Obama think the money to run the government comes from? It comes from profitable businesses that create jobs and wealth. When people get wealthy they most often use that wealth in ways that spread it around to others whose services and goods they purchase. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, just to mention two tycoons, have done more for the people of the world than any 1000 politicians one can name. Encouraging people to go into the "helping professions" assumes there are oodles of helpless people out there. There are some, but churches and charities do a pretty good job of helping. Big government, not so much.
Go into the business of helping yourself by getting an education, working hard, saving, investing, and donating to charity when you can. Just taking care of one's self, family, and friends is a great good for society. Being a professional community organizer, not so much. The neighborhood in South Chi where the POTUS got his start is still pretty much the way he found it, lo those many years ago. Change is effected by perspiration and determination. By hope, not so much.
Tom. Not to condescend...but you and David Brooks both pretending that this is a new development is just absurd. This is exactly who they portrayed themselves to be before the election.
Since this is my first post on Michelle saying things in public and I say "she has a habit" of saying ill-advised things, I don't get your comment. I also see nothing in Brooks' column to suggest your comment either.
So who exactly are you correcting here with the term "absurd"?
It's not bad advice for kids coming out of college. You have a lifetime to make money. When you are young and you don't have children to support, you should think about doing something that isn't driven by financial success. When you do have kids, your priorities can, and should, change. But public service is a wonderful way for a young person to learn. It's also good for capitalism. I think that part of the problem that led to the recent financial disaster was not that there is too much greed on Wall Street - a ridiculous assertion - but that you had too many young people thinking that they could leave business school and that their MBAs entitled them to multi-million dollar bonuses, even though they didn't really know what they were doing. I'd rather have capitalist enterprises run by people with real-life experiences and responsiblities. Greed is not good - it may be necessary, but it is still dangerous. Better to have it managed by mature, responsible peole.
If I'm not mistaken, a prominent expert on national security and globalization whom I admire very much started out working for the government so that he could learn something before turning to the private sector.
When Barrack Obama was elected to the Presidency, Michelle Obama was making $350K a year as "Community affairs" director at the University of Chicago hospital. Sounds suspiciously like a PC sinecure, and the word that comes spontaneously to mind is not "helper" but "parasite". No wonder health care is so expensive in this country, and why the reform was so timid.
For sure this kind of reasoning is disturbing. But what were we to expect coming from their respective backgrounds and truly narrow life experience.
I think we are looking at the pendulum gaining momentum for a republican sweep.
Ok, let's see Michelle Obama (and her husband) give all that money she earned back, either to the government (donations in lieu of higher taxes?) or to worthy charities. One thing you have to say about Bill Gates, he's putting his money where his mouth is.