Michelle Obama Is Allowed to Be Disappointed in America

Of all the leaks from Sarah Palin's new book, one caught Richard Cohen's attention: the one where Palin supposedly chides Michelle Obama for a rather infamous remark she made during the 2008 campaign: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Two years later, Palin and "too many others" still fail to understand that "this was not a statement of racism. This was a statement of fact," he writes for the Washington Post.

Our very own government enforced laws that allowed black slaves to be hanged for trivial crimes and whipped for trying to escape, "and yet if African Americans hesitate in embracing the mythical wonderfulness of America, they are accused of racism." Asks Cohen, "Why do politicians such as Palin and commentators such as Glenn Beck insist that African Americans go blank on their own history?" The moral of this story, for Cohen, is less about 2008 and more about 2012: Palin "could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America. She knows more about grizzlies than she does about African Americans—and she clearly has more interest in the former than the latter." (More Michelle Obama stories.)