James Woods Issues Perfect Reality Check to Michelle Obama for Her 'Forever First Lady' Remarks
Michelle Obama may have plenty of people applauding her decision to dub herself “forever first lady.” James Woods is not one of them.
In a perfect reality check on Wednesday, Woods tweeted that Obama needed to “(p)ump your brakes a tad” when it came to coronating herself the permanent first lady of the nation.
Obama made the remarks during a College Signing Day event for high school seniors earlier in the day at Temple University in Philadelphia, according to the Washington Examiner.
“We need you all to be successful,” Obama said.
She recounted her own journey from Chicago to Princeton and said that doubt was normal.
“We have such high hopes for you. See, I am not one of those doubters. I know that you have everything it takes to succeed,” she said.
“I know you are me, and if I can be standing here as your forever first lady, then you can do anything you put your mind to.”
Obama’s comments attracted both plaudits and scorn on social media. James Woods — rather unsurprisingly — was in the scorn camp.
“With all due respect you aren’t our ‘forever First Lady,'” the conservative actor tweeted.
“No one is, nor should anyone be. Pump your brakes a tad.”
With all due respect you aren’t our “forever First Lady.” No one is, nor should anyone be. Pump your brakes a tad. https://t.co/PhCFe96bAI
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 3, 2018
This isn’t the first instance that the Obamas have seem to have hallucinated that they’re somehow still in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., although it may be the most galling.
To say that you’re “forever first lady” is firstly to insult the current first lady. It’s also to insult everyone that’s been in the unofficial role, as well as anyone who will ever be in the unofficial role, at least as long as Michelle Obama is still alive.
Maybe she’ll even pull a Kim Il Sung — the man who still eternally “rules” North Korea 24 years after relinquishing de facto control of the communist state via the mechanism of death — and be your “eternal first lady.” Given the tenor of this statement and the ease with which it flowed off her tongue, I wouldn’t exactly put it past her.
The fact that Michelle made the remarks with the Trumps in the White House is hardly surprising, given the enmity between the two families — although it does yet again suggest that the Obamas don’t quite understand the reality that they’re gone.
However, does the former first lady not realize that she’s essentially trivializing every other living first lady? It’s a rare day that I find myself putting in a word of defense for Hillary Clinton, but she, along with Laura Bush, Rosalyn Carter and Melania Trump, is implicitly being told that she’s on a different strata of first ladies, one clearly lower than Michelle. This is to say nothing of the implied insult to future first ladies or the fact that she made the remarks less than a month after the death of Barbara Bush, which seems like awfully inopportune timing.
James Woods, as he so often is, is the voice of sanity here. Michelle’s indulgence of the fantasy that the Obamas will never really leave the White House may be red meat for the liberal base, However, this is something a real first lady — well, former first lady — would be profusely apologizing for.
We’ve heard no apology thus far and I don’t expect to hear anything out of Michelle in the near future. While one hopes she takes James Woods’ advice and pumps the brakes on her ego a tad, it seems somewhat improbable that the actor is on her news feed. A man can dream, though.
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