On the Sept. 5 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, the conservative host was very clearly unimpressed with first lady Michelle Obama's characterization of her husband in the speech she delivered [5] the first night of the Democratic National Convention. He scoffed at her tales of hand-me-down coffee tables and too-small shoes, telling listeners this:
Obama did not grow up in poverty. His grandmother, the typical white woman, worked in a bank. Don't give me this 'down with the struggle' business. He wasn't down. In 2008, the Democrats were wringing their hands because he wasn't authentically black ... He wasn't down with the struggle. He doesn't have slave blood."
We're not sure Mrs. Obama actually said anything about "down with the struggle," but that aside, three things are clear from these remarks: 1) Limbaugh missed the news that researchers have found that President Obama does, in fact, have "slave blood" [6] (from his mother's side of the family); 2) nobody would really care if he didn't (didn't whatever remained of the "not black enough" argument kind of go by the wayside when he won?); and 3) the real "struggle" going on today seems to surround Limbaugh's difficulty processing the overwhelmingly positive reactions [7] to a historic message.
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