Michelle Obama's DNC speech made us think about her speech pleading for the 2016 Olympics in Chicago.

As in her speech last night, there's a misplaced emotionality that's too much about her family's personal need for gratification:



Here's the transcript, in the event that you can't put up with 6 minutes of slow sentimentality. This was an argument that we know the IOC rejected, so listening to it now, we hear the inappropriateness (to the decisionmakers' ears) of arguments like this:

Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad's lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis, and others for their brilliance and perfection.

As the first comment at the video notes, Michelle was 20 when Carl Lewis first participated in the Olympics, so that dad's lap business is easily detected bullshit.

Like so many young people, I was inspired. I found myself dreaming that maybe, just maybe, if I worked hard enough, I, too, could achieve something great.

But I never dreamed that the Olympic flame might one day light up lives in my neighborhood.

Dream, of course, was a key word in her husband's presidential campaign. His presidency dream was a dream fulfilled, but she's acting — and I do meaning acting! — as if her family now has a special privilege to identify dreams that they have and expect the world to fulfill them. But why would these IOC bigwigs subordinate themselves within Obama dreams?

But today, I can dream, and I am dreaming of an Olympic and Paralympic Games in Chicago that will light up lives in neighborhoods all across America and all across the world; that will expose all our neighborhoods to new sports and new role models; that will show every child that regardless of wealth, or gender, or race, or physical ability, there is a sport and a place for them, too.

That's why I'm here today. I'm asking you to choose Chicago. I'm asking you to choose America.

She wants them to "light up" her life (along with the lives of all those little people out there in her old neighborhood).  

Choose America? As if America is some sad, tragic little place where poor people await a ray of hope. And she's speaking with kindergarten-teacher earnestness. It didn't work. We know that.

And the speech last night? Why should that work? What was relevant to our decision who should be the head of the Executive Branch of the federal government? Like a skeptical IOC member, I am utterly callous to plaintive pleas about what gratifies the personal desires of the lady and her family. Live-blogging last night, I said "What's the point of all this?" And then, a quarter hour later, "I don't really see the point of it." Whatever she was talking about, it had nothing to do with the decision to be made.

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Speaking of things I didn't see the point of last night, I wrote, at the end of her speech: "And then the music comes up: 'Move your body... move your little hips....' What?!" I thought the lyrics — like the lyrics to "I'm Every Woman" (played earlier in the evening and live-mocked by me) — were too sexual to punctuate the convention message. I'd taken the time to Google the "I'm Every Woman" lyrics to flesh out my intuition. But it was nearly 10:30 (my time) when Michelle finished, and I was too tired to Google what move your body... move your little hips.... was supposed to be about.

It turns out to be a Beyoncé song written in support of Michelle's "Let's Move" program that's supposed to get kids to quit being so inert. Beyoncé is talking to children — hence the "little hips."

I ain't worried, doing me tonight
A little sweat ain't never hurt nobody
Don't just stand there on the wall
Everybody, just move your body

Doing me? Sorry I have such a dirty mind! This is for the children. You know: those little fatties standing on the wall.