"I've been lecturing to people for a long time about how to conduct themselves in life so they don't become a tyrant or a handmaiden to the tyrants, a silent handmaiden to the tyrants, let's say.... Because women are more agreeable, they're more prone to manipulation by psychopaths because their primary ethos is nurturing. For a naive woman, every victim is a baby...."
Now, you may find it odd, but I hear echoes of that as I am listening to Michelle Obama in "You Need to Learn to Say No (Even to an Inauguration)," the new episode of her podcast.
I know, your first inclination may be to mock the "poor me" aspect of this. She doesn't have a thing to wear... to the Inauguration. And not having a thing to wear, for her, means instructing her team of clothing wranglers to avoid readying the appropriate outfit, which they otherwise actively assemble for every possible occasion that might pop up (or "pop off"). She is not like other women. Very funny. But true! So work past that instinct to mock. I want you to think about how she is confessing to the agreeableness vulnerability that Jordan Peterson sees in women.
Michelle says:
"So I'm at this stage in life where I have to define my life on my terms for the first time. So what are those terms? And going to therapy just to work all that out. Like, what happened that 8 years that we were in the, the White House? What did that do to me — internally, my soul?... And going through therapy, you know, is... unlearning some of those messages that I've been tell saying to myself and then trying to actively practice something different to rewire those neurons in my head.... [M]y decision to skip the inauguration... people couldn't believe that I was saying no for any other reason — they had to assume, that my marriage was falling apart. You know, it's like while I'm here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me, and it took everything in my power to not do the thing that was right or that was, was that that was perceived as right but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do. I had to basically trick myself out of it. And it started with not having anything to wear. I mean, I had affirmatively — because I'm always prepared for any funeral, anything I have. I walk around with the right dress, I travel with clothes, just in case something pops off. So I was like, if I'm not going to do this thing, I gotta tell my team: I don't even want to have a dress ready. Because it's so easy to just say, let me do the right thing."
If you catch the echo I heard, you may want to go on to what I believe would be Peterson's question: What babies and pseudo-babies did Michelle Obama attend to before she began trying to rewire those neurons in her head?
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82 comments:
You’re confusing 2 separate things: empathy and obligation, in this case, high-profile public obligation.
She wants to deny the requisite behavioral expectations of public service, but clearly only *after* having enjoyed the perks therein.
A country, a society, abides by a social contract, the *grease* that eases social friction. Granted, we can review and disagree about one’s degree of noblesse oblige, but she’s assuredly not talking about the greater, uniform obligation, she’s selfishly insisting, as so many do, that the rules we live by, the merest hint of selflessness, is beyond her…empathy.
We don’t deserve her. Got it, Michelle.
I think Michelle Obama would frame her decision to not attend the inaugural as combatting excess empathy (though she would be loathe to agree with the likes of Peterson.) But I don't think it's the same.
She did indeed have to put her husband's career needs first for many years, but that was a self-serving approach. Her first six-figure job onward was a result of such calculation.
I don't think this represents the manipulated woman Peterson references.
+1, Laurel
Michelle does not have penis, and she and Barack are not getting a divorce.
She's just a very wealthy woman - and that wealth is a huge mystery... the conspiracy is the ill begotten wealth.
As far as her not wanting to go to the Inauguration - so what?
who cares?
I doubt Michelle has it in her to interview Melania, but it would be interesting. Melania seems like she refused from the beginning to play the FLOTUS that Michelle is now trying to unwire.
Yes- Laurel - that is very true.
This reinforces the impression many people had of Michelle as First Lady: She wants the perks of living (or having lived) in the WH (while jetting off on expensive vacations all the time), without the burdens that go with it, like showing up for funerals and inaugurations, always looking fashionable, etc. I'm sure most First Ladies and other political spouses feel roughly the same way about it, but Michelle wants everyone to know how exhausted she gets even having to decide which ceremonial public appearances she has to show up for and which ones she can shirk off.
Talking about being in therapy raises more marriage red flags. If they weren't having problems before they definitely are now.
“And going through therapy, you know, is... unlearning some of those messages that I've been tell saying to myself and then trying to actively practice something different to rewire those neurons in my head....”
She switched from telling, to saying to myself. Is Michelle the baby?
She needs to go far away and shut up. Nobody cares about her victimhood. Go live your millionaire life in one of your 4 mansions or on Oprahs yacht, where you can bitch about the unpleasantness of the rest of America. GFY. Pathetic excuse from a pathetic ex-1st lady.
"You’re confusing 2 separate things: empathy and obligation..."
I'm not confusing them. I'm connecting them. Think about the desire to fulfill expectations and conventional conceptions. This is the character trait called agreeableness. Women are expected to go along and get along.
I agree that empathy has a real physical, psychological dimension, but much of the empathy performed by women is not a particularly true and impressive empathy, and Peterson portrays it as naive — undeveloped and dangerous, leaving a person open to manipulation.
I still find it utterly bizarre that public figures--or anybody, for that matter--think it smart or useful to bare their souls in such a public way. Since they know they are speaking to an audience, they are automatically sculpting the truth to meet what they think that audience is willing to hear. So even after publication, are we any the wiser about the truth of the person's actual thoughts or experience? It always comes down to show business, not truth telling.
The only things MO wants to "nurture" are her self-regard and her bank account.
"I don't even want to have a dress ready." So it wasn't a matter of "not having anything to wear," but an active refusal to bother.
"Because it's so easy to just say, let me do the right thing." But for self-centered, entitled elite women, it's apparently hard. Who cares about public ritual, honoring one's position, paying respect to the needs of the country and its political system? Triumph of the therapeutic, chapter 999.
So, when will she and Barry return the Netflix $$?
I don't see where Michelle didn't go because she had nothing to wear. She didn't go because she didn't want to go. She made sure her outfit wasn't available in case she lost her nerve. That's much more interesting than not going because she didn't have anything to wear.
1) She has no sense of official duty; she didn't feel like it and that was a good enough reason for her.
2) Like Odysseus lashing himself to the mast so he couldn't give in to the siren song--she didn't trust her personal discipline so she cut off the option.
Too much "I" and "me" in Michelle's remarks. Same thing with her husband's. Those two should never break up.
I do have a little sympathy for her -- it must be hard to be maliciously misgendered all the time -- but the more she talks, the less I like her.
I heard some of Michelle's podcast. In it she said, "I survived the White House."
What a bitch.
She's had everything handed to her because of her race and the guy she married and all she does is complain.
Prof, diagram your second sentence (if you feel like it, of course).
That said, WGAF?
“What did that do to me — internally, my soul?”
Politics ain’t beanbag.
It’s interesting that she’s expressing this in a podcast. Her former role opened the door to this opportunity for her. And she’s using it to bare her soul. It seems like a midlife crisis. I hope she finds peace.
"I still find it utterly bizarre that public figures--or anybody, for that matter--think it smart or useful to bare their souls in such a public way."
Announcing you're in therapy has become a sign of social status. And needing therapy because you gave so much to others for so long? That's major status.
Sorry, third sentence.
Michelle skipped Jimmy Carter’s funeral as well as Trump’s inauguration. What would Michelle think should the former First Ladies after their own therapy sessions make the choice that is right for them and skip her funeral. You just know Michelle would be furious and find it an insulting sign of lack of respect because she is MICHELLE OBAMA, the first Black First Lady.
"She also cried “We don’t articulate, as black women, our pain, because it’s almost like nobody gave us permission to do that,” Michelle Obama said before her brother chimed in."
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/michelle-obama-complains-about-being-black-woman-her/
Like that woman ever needed "permission" for anything. These morons make me sick.
Michelle’s book Becoming sold 17 million copies making it one of the best selling memoirs of all time and making hundreds of millions of dollars for her publishers despite the enormous advance. Maybe part of her decision was based on not wanting to play second fiddle to the main event.
"She's had everything handed to her because of her race and the guy she married and all she does is complain."
True. But maybe that is something to complain about. I am certainly prepared to believe that it is no fun at all to be Michelle Obama.
I feel sorry for her brother Craig. He has to sit and listen to this drivel.
I don't mind that she skips funerals. I foresee that same Maverick behavior from Melania. It's fine. We should all be grateful that Michelle loathes politics and let Obama have all the fun. If she was like Hillary she'd probably have been president in 2020.
Let me just add, this is what Michelle Obama said in answer to the question whether she would consider a run for the Presidency:
“The thought of putting my girls back into that spotlight when they are just now establishing themselves … I think we’ve done enough. Question asked and answered, never gonna happen.”
Some entitlement there but also an admirable sentiment.
She is a multi-millionaire, owns four mansions, gets paid huge sums of money for bitching about how 'tough' her life is and she expects all of us unwashed peons to worship her, apparently. She should just go and enjoy her unearned wealth and stop talking.
Go away Michele. How can we miss you if you won't go away?
Do we really think Michelle wouldn't have had a dress ready to attend Kamala's inauguration? There was going be an inauguration for someone after all. In other words, her entire take is bullshit.
It's a positive that Michelle O is putting herself in front of a microphone and talking about what she actually thinks. I've observed that, eventually, the truth about people emerges when they get the chance to talk about themselves long enough.
I'm sure that movie stars and members of the Royal Family have their problems. One of their problems is that if they complain in public, the public is not apt to extend sympathy.
When visiting the hospice, don't complain about your bunions.
My reading is the same as tim maguire. It's not that she doesn't have clothes but that she told her staff to not prepare so she wouldn't backslide into attending (AS IF!). Angst as performance art. What bullshite.
With regard to Michelle Obama: Can we stop trying to make fetch happen?
Just realized they have not announced who will be in the US delegation for Saturday's funeral at the Vatican Saturday along with POTUS and FLOTUS.
Michelle and Barry are definitely getting a divorce.
I like the way Peterson outlines common sense. Ultimately, it's the father's responsibility to teach their daughters to not be bullied at any level.
Isn’t this offer from Michelle sound familiar? I’m thinking about Dutches Megan Markle’s interview with Oprah.
I caught where you were going on the Michelle comment early on. I saw a post at Instapundit linking to a Townhall piece criticizing Michelle and suggesting her comments about not attending the inauguration and blaming it on not having an outfit was evidence of marital problems. In short, it was a dumb opinion piece.
It was clear Michelle didn’t want to go and didn’t want to be pressured in any way to go. So she made up a barrier to keep people around her from trying to change her mind. She knew they would want to do so, “for appearances”. Screw that. If I was her, I wouldn’t want to go either and don’t care how it appears. I thought she made the right play of it.
"So I'm at this stage in life where I have to define my life on my terms for the first time.”
For most normal people that occurs in the teenage years through the early to mid twenties.
“ Prof, diagram your second sentence (if you feel like it, of course).”
There was a word that was left over from an earlier draft — who’s for who — that, unfortunately, made the sentence hard to read.
Fixed.
Ampersand’s comment above is the observation I think Joe Rogan made about his podcast and why he wanted to interview both Presidential candidates without a short time limit and defined questions.
I disagree with many others here, but I think it stems from my belief that Michelle was a reluctant FLOTUS. People across the spectrum suggest she is as ambitious as Hillary, but I have never seen it from her. She did her obligations as FLOTUS, but she’s not in that role now. I never saw her wanting to parlay that to her own government career. Yeah, she wants attention. Most people do. But I don’t think she wants the spotlight and especially the obligations that come with wanting the spotlight.
She is such a victim. A real victim’s victim.
No fun at all to be Michelle Obama? The commenter may have a point. Wherever Mrs. Obama goes, Michelle is always there already. No fun to have to hang with Michelle.
I don't think the problem withthese gals is too much agreeableness. I think it is more an unwillingness, amounting to an inability, to comprehend that resources are finite. They seem to imagine that there is enough USA for everyone on Earth to have as much as they want. Of course, if that were true, then it would certainly be unnecessary and even cruel to deny anyone his share. Which is exactly the position these women are taking.
Perhaps Jordan & Michelle are the ones trying to manipulate us
“Women are expected to go along and get along”. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! You are clearly not from this century.
I love Peterson's stuff. This is a fascinating discussion. Thanks for surfacing it.
[shrug] It seems to me that women of that generation (the one just before mine, and in some places including mine) may tend to act rather like the civil rights activists of the '50s and '60s - caught in amber. Nothing has changed, in their view, since those days of blood and glory. To acknowledge that the trope of the woman who goes along to get along is just that, a trope, and no longer a reflection of unquestioned reality, would be to have to acknowledge that things are way better now.
We no longer live in 1991, when the toolpusher on the drill rig where I was mudlogging had to come into my logging trailer and, blushing furiously, ask me to wear a tighter bra because I was distracting his guys... and I, blushing furiously right back, assured him that I would.
I am not sure I see her as "confessing to the agreeableness vulnerability that Jordan Peterson sees in women." I see it more as "claiming to have" such a vulnerability. Does it show anywhere besides her not going to an event that she did not want to go to, then asking for sympathy?
“I’ve been lecturing to people for a long time about how to conduct themselves in life”
That’s my problem with Peterson. Too much pontificating with no evidence that he’s divinely inspired. At least Michelle just yammers about herself.
15-20 percent of the global population is estimated to be neurodivergent. Yet more than 60% of them display the cluster B personality disorder traits. Neurodivergent psychopaths are a real thing, they are more common than is being acknowledged by the psychiatric community due to pc matter. Who would want to lose their job after being attacked by the rabid neurodivergent lunatic advocates? The neurodivergent psychopaths blend in well and look like the rest of normal population, but not quite, their eyes are a dead giveaway. If they reach a position of authority, that's not good, you need to get away from them fast. Don't be naive and don't mate with them, men or women. Inside, they are the most pathetic losers, users and abusers, the tyranny is to cover and hide all the black, ugly emptiness they have inside them. Currently we are being forced to have empathy for people who don't have empathy.
I agree 100% with Michelle's position here, as I understand it from the excerpts.* She has been the candidate's wife and then, of all things, the President's wife, and she has had endless requirements of her socially. All the protocols and the even larger surrounding expectations.
Now she is not. She is allowed to have her life. It could be the very last thing she wants to do is to go as an EX-President's wife to social events A, B, and C. Much less X, Y, and Z.
Never seemed like anything to do with her marriage to me. Always a matter of when do I get my life, lived for myself primarily -- and only after that for my husband and daughters. And no one else.
As she says, you reach a point in life where you are asking yourself, why do I have to do this? Would I choose to do it? No, I am sick of this stuff.
*Could not listen to her for an hour and tried the transcript. Strange going and gave up on that after a while, too. Got through the acting school stories and her rejection by Ellington. She's never seemed like a good actress to me, fwiw. But now she has the opportunity, thanks 98% to hubby, to do other things where people do actually want her presence specifically. Or she is creating some things from herself. Life is too short to be only about fulfilling someone else's expectations for you.
It's plainly obvious that Ms Obama is the "skirt" for Mr Obama, at least to Chicagoans who kept close ear to the gossip when he 1st ran for senator. Should say, when path was bulldozed for his sensational run for senate seat. The guy who drove the limo; the guy who sat in back with in the limo. The bathouse boys. The dead church choir singers. The two dead chefs. The multiple discrepancies in his bio.
There's a lot going on there; it's hard for a lady to keep her skirt straight.
I like to remember that Michelle Obama in her first job figured out that indigent emergency room patients kept in her hospital cost a lot, and turfing them out immediately upon stabilization of their medical emergency to a state-run hospital where they might could live or die, even if they died during transport, was a cost saver! Thinking like that, putting the wants of the business ahead of the needs of the patients, is the sort of nurturing person she has always been.
I think there should be a little more sympathy for Michelle. I think she realized too late that Obama loved his ambition more than he loved her. She was an acceptable black woman to marry, but she wasn't what he'd choose if he didn't want a political career.
She’s a bit like Princess Diana, pouting because celebrity didn’t turn out quite like she expected.
Ann Althouse said:
“ I'm not confusing them. I'm connecting them. Think about the desire to fulfill expectations and conventional conceptions. This is the character trait called agreeableness. Women are expected to go along and get along.”
Here, though, you allow her to tag her social obligations - a former First Lady - as your normal woman going about her day, forced to partake or risk being “disagreeable”. These very same social obligations apply to former presidents, too. This isn’t a “woman’s issue”, but she assuredly plays the put-upon anyway.
All she had to do was quietly say “No”. I don’t believe she’s incapable of doing so. That she had to make her plaintive plea (on behalf of black women everywhere) is evidence of narcissism.
I listened to the section quoted ans she never said exactly why she did not attend the inauguration, did she?
And her statement that everybody assumed that it meant marriage problems is hard to relate to what we heard at the time.
Also, Barack, Buddy, if you want to maintain the marriage get her away from that therapist pronto.
She is leading Michelle to the development of an obsession with self that leaves no room for a husband. Of course, there may have a predisposition that makes that an easy lift.
Feminine gender, neo-women, and 1/2 of couplets.
After all of their deceit and sanctimony, zero fucks given.
Everything I've seen from Michelle says high maintenance and stupid.
She's showing empathy for herself as a victim, and there is an internal struggle going on where her manipulative side is trying to get her empathetic side to give in to selfishness and ignore public obligations.
Jamie, if it were today you would just go ahead and distract them, right??? ;-)
Did anyone REALLY care that michelle O didn't show up? Look, she's just a medicore person who married a guy who became POTUS. She didn't have to be there, she didn't show up, and it didn't matter. I say cut her some slack.
A miserable, self-centered, snarling scold playing the victim. Yes. I'm very interested in what you have to say.
I feel sorry for her brother Craig. He has to sit and listen to this drivel.
Yeah. He seemed like a nice guy when watching him coach at Oregon State.
Jamie: Are you saying that now, on that drill rig, there is no such dress code for women anymore?
Where is this drill rig? Are they hiring?
Asking for a friend.
JSM
@Jaimie, if you think that was bad, you should have seen my reaction in the early 80's on an Austin Chalk rig, when the all-female crew showed up for morning tour for the first time (for me). All built like linebackers. Not the best crew, but not bad, and pretty bawdy.
Of course, Michelle Obama is a grown-ass man, and can do whatever she wants. That said, what makes her so frickin special?! All the other crackuh first ladies showed up, why not Miss Thang?!
Not to mention, this is literally why the US government pays the Obamas a pension for the rest of their lives. Because they still have to work occasionally. She needs to do her job that we're still paying for.
I haven't read the other comments yet.
I don't know what you are trying to do here, Althouse.
Michelle comes across here as having absolutely zero empathy or feeling for anyone but herself. Nobody thought she didn't go to the inauguration because her marriage was breaking up. Everybody thought she didn't go because she hates Trump and is an entitled bitch who couldn't be bothered to suck it up and behave like an adult. She ends up looking small, and embarrassing her husband.
I am fairly certain that Peterson would put her at the very low end of the empathy scale.
I went back and read all of the comments. I am no fan of Barack Obama, but it seems to me that Michelle's selfishness lies in not supporting him. He's one of the most influential people in the world, maybe the most well-known, and a former President of the United States of America. And he has to show up, shake hands, and say "sorry, Michelle couldn't make it...she's defining herself."
I have to give him credit--he handled it (publicly) with class. I hope he had a really good time partying without the ball and chain.
I'm in favor of people not attending events they don't want to attend.
I agree that Michele is really saying something worth considering. Of course, I detest her so this is not an agreeable position. But - think. This woman could easily have gotten the Dem Presidential nomination in 2024 both at the start of the primary season and in June when Biden quit out. Why didn't she just go along with what Dem strategists wanted? Now she's giving some insight - she didn't do it because she didn't want to do it. And she's evidently been made to feel bad about The Great Refusal. But she understood what the White House meant, she'd been there. She was not misled by the glamor - she calls it a toxic soup and an environment to which she did not want to expose her daughters. But, should she have sacrificed herself? How was she able to resist being persuaded? Where was her main struggle concentrated? She says her main struggle was in resisting being agreeable. Now I expect to men that sounds "just like a woman." RH Hardin is, doubtless, feasting his eyes on a perfect example of why the 19th amendment should never have been passed. He probably thinks that if a male psychologist says women have trouble being seen as disagreeable bitches, that's professional insight but if a woman who turned down a chance to run for President describes her reasons and discusses the struggle she had carrying out her own wishes, that's just emotionalism.
In relation to Kamala Harris I had two parallel mental tracks: - one disgusted (though very pleased) by her unfitness; the other pitying her for being drawn into a role so far above her capacities that she looked like an idiot every day. Imagine a woman who was unable to say the cruel, disagreeable truth about Joe Biden being persuaded to take on and try to defeat Donald Trump. Why did she agree to do it - I often used to wonder that while searching for another knife to stick in her via a nasty comment. Perhaps Michelle is answering the question: why did Kamala do what Michele refused to do? The answer being proposed is that Kamala was just being what she had been all her life - agreeable. And she ended up, entirely predictably, in a situation personally toxic to her. And now that Kamala has lost, I don't want to have disagreeable thoughts about her being personally wounded though I aimed for that result to the best of my capacity and so did many others.
And with this great example before her, perhaps Michele is warning women that we are no longer protected by exclusion from having to choose. We do have choices and we therefore have to be able to be disagreeable. We don't have to be full-time bitches on the home front but we have at least to be able to endure making political consultants unhappy. Or else swim in a toxic soup of human chatter till we drown. It can happen here.
"Freeman Hunt said...
I'm in favor of people not attending events they don't want to attend."
Sorry, but you can't be a man and think that way. Part of life is just going through one vile task after another. A boring event you do not want to attend is often respite from The daily grind. That's why they say and when I say they I mean almost all of the old guys I ever worked for or with, 99.9% of the job is showing up.
She likes to be the center of attention, and the inauguration of the deplorable Trump made the decision not to go an easy one. I didn't care either way.
I see the resemblance, but Jordan is rumored to use regular size condoms.
Michelle Obama has produced nothing of value that anyone else wants. She has had no real job. She was born into upper middle class wealth and hasn't had a difficult moment in her life. She is a multi-multi millionaire and did this living in mansions and flying around the world at taxpayer expense.
She has been completely robbed of purpose. Her life is bereft of meaning. I am genuinely curious if she was artificially inseminated or if Barry actually managed to consummate the marriage.
Of course she is unhappy and of course she doesn't know why. She isn't very smart and the meaning of life escapes her.
Her podcast is a cry for help. But really why would anyone care about this coddled ungrateful person?
Immediately after Obama left office, David Garrow, a liberal, published the truth about their marriage: Obama dropped his longtime white girlfriend to whom he had proposed several times because he wanted to be a politician, and he had decided he needed a black wife to win races. He had an affair with the white girlfriend after he became serious with Michelle. She wanted to leave him for 10 years but was kept in place by nearly daily dinners with terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who pressured her to stay married to their acolyte, Barack. She was bribed with a mansion and a no-show six-figure "community development" job at a hospital, a job which was invented for her and ended when she left. She lies about all of this in her memoir, naming no names and pretending it was a feminist act to tell the hospital she would set her own hours because she was a mother.
So was she more controlled or more bribed? She certainly was a very expensive first lady. But nobody made her do it. She leveraged her sex and race to take our money while living a lie. She's just lying in a different way with her podcast. It reflects nothing in particular about women versus men. It's just about a rare person who can grow extremely rich by playing the victim and lying.
Here's hoping she stayed home to plan her 2028 run for the Presidency. The primary between her and AOC with Bernie there, trying to stand upright during the debates, and Cory trying to look more manly than them, will be delightful!
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