Byron York apparently thinks Michelle Obama is angry. She’s complaining. She’s whining. She’s ungrateful.
I listened to a very similar talk of Michelle’s on Monday. You’d need to have a peculiarly shaped stick lodged in an unfortunate place to take away the message that she was whining. Passionate? Certainly. Upset at the recent direction of the country? Absolutely, though not more so than any other Democratic candidate. She seemed perplexed that people were calling her and Barack out-of-touch elitists. She talked about growing up on the Southside of Chicago and about the difficulties both she and Barack had overcome. She talked about loving America as a country where they could overcome those disadvantages—but lamented that the opportunity gap seemed to be growing, and the opportunities available to working class families when she was growing up might no longer be available.
But apparently Byron York has decided that he’d rather write about a caricature than about what was actually said. He’s decided that Michelle Obama is an angry black woman who is ungrateful for the opportunities the country has given her—so everything he hears is distorted by that lens. Anything inconsistent with this assumption is filtered out. It’s not exactly journalism—but it appeases the base.