Race row after bloggers compare 'high-maintenance' Michelle Obama to Marie Antoinette
Face and arms of First Lady grafted onto 1775 portrait of French Queen
Marie Antoinette viewed as profligate during financial hardship in 1780s
Mrs Obama's trips to Hawaii and Spain criticised for being taxpayer-funded
But critics claim comparison racist suggestion that she is 'uppity Negro'
By Wil Longbottom 10th January 2012
dailymail.co.uk
One is the pampered wife of a financially-drained country's unpopular head of state... and the other is Marie Antoinette, or so the joke goes.
But, according to right-wing bloggers, the notional similarities between First Lady Michelle Obama and the hated Queen of France did not go far enough.
So to stress the point, one website has grafted Mrs Obama's face on to the famous 1775 portrait by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty.
A few tweaks have been made, including exposing one of the President's wife's famously toned arms and having her pointing to a location on the globe rather than just resting her hand on top.
Caricature: A right-wing blog site has featured an image of First Lady Michelle Obama as Marie Antoinette and, right, the original 1775 portrait by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty
Above the caricatured image, posted on the Gateway Pundit blog, is the caption: 'Choosing the next vacation' - highlighting criticism that Mrs Obama's recent trips to Hawaii and Spain were tax-funded.
A similar image has Barack Obama's face cut over that of Louis XVI, with a caption 'you should be thanking Me' above it. That image also appeared last year.
However, despite the seemingly innocuous historical comparison between one famous First Couple and another, a row has now erupted over whether the depiction of Mrs Obama was racist.
Christopher Knight, writing for the LA Times, described Mrs Obama's caricature as 'baldly racist'.
He wrote: 'The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an "uppity Negro", which emerged among slave masters in an earlier American era.
'Obama, born into a working-class Chicago family whose roots are traced to the pre-Civil War South, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, prior to holding several high-level positions in the academic and private sectors.'
'Profligate?': The U.S. President has also been depicted as Louis XVI, husband of Marie Antoinette, with a caption 'You should be thanking Me'
Blogger Jim Hoft placed the picture on Gateway Pundit along with a reference to Mrs Obama's guest appearance on Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly.
On the show, she praises the cast for their support of military families and she is mistakenly referred to as 'your excellency', to which she jokingly replies: 'I kinda like it.'
The image is believed to originate from another right-wing website, Instapundit, where it first appeared in 2010.
The First Lady has been criticised after taking high-profile holidays abroad which required a heavy security detail.
In December, she and her husband, along with their children, took a $4million vacation on Hawaii which saw large parts of Kailua cordoned off for security reasons.
And in 2010, Mrs Obama provoked anger in the U.S. after going on vacation with her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, in Spain.
 Vacation: President Obama, the First Lady and their daughters Malia and Sasha spent Christmas in Hawaii, with critics attacking the $4million cost
The U.S. President came under fire over the preparations for his 50th birthday celebrations - including a private dinner for which couples were charged up to $35,800.
But critics have attacked the LA Times blog and denied that the doctored image is racist.
Cost: Michelle Obama took her daughters on holiday to the south of Spain in 2010 - a move criticised in the U.S. because of the cost of the necessary security detail
A blog on www.bookwormroom.com said: 'Is it possible that you're unaware of Marie Antoinette's reputation for living extravagantly while the ordinary people around her starved in the street?
'And are you unable to make the connection between Marie Antoinette's reputation (and she was Austrian, by the way, not African American) and the fact that Michelle Obama just recently went on a $4million tax payer funded vacation, while wearing $1,200 sundresses, even as Americans have been struggling desperately with unemployment and rising prices?
'For the informed mind (or just the living mind), the comparisons are inevitable, appropriate and non-racist.'
The full length painting of Marie Antoinette hangs in the Palace of Versailles, France.
She became Queen of France and Navarre in April 1770 when her husband, Louis XVI of France, ascended to the throne.
The French people were initially charmed by her beauty, but she was accused of being profligate as the people struggled to eat during the financial hardship of the 1780s.
She is said to have proclaimed 'Let them eat cake' when told that starving peasants had no bread, although historians have found no proof that she actually said this.
She was executed by guillotine in 1793 after the French Revolution abolished the monarchy. |
