This in depth investigation by the Washington Post of what Michelle Obama does to earn more than $300,000 working for the non-profit University of Chicago medical center deserves close attention.
It suggests that the concern the Obama campaign professes for the problems that continue to plague many in the black community rings false. In short, a central achievement of Ms. Obama over the last few years has been to run interference for the world class medical facility at the University's Hyde Park campus against the hundreds of thousands of poor black Chicagoans who surround the University's white enclave.
That people who have supported Barack Obama in the past, like lifelong civil rights activist, anti-war activist and single payer health care advocate Dr. Quentin Young (alleged by some to have been a friend of Obama mentor and former Chicagoan, Frank Marshall Davis) openly attack Ms. Obama for her role in this effort adds a level of credibility and should sound an alarm among all progressives. Young was one of those who attended the famous "meet and greet" debut of state senate candidate Barack Obama at the home of fellow Hyde Park residents Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in late 1995.
Young called the Michelle Obama-led initiative at UC "shameful" and said that the level of charitable spending by the medical center is "ludicrous."
"They are arguably, if not defrauding, then at least taking advantage of a public subsidy. We would like to see them give more than the minimum. The need is there."
That the campaign had the nerve to celebrate Ms. Obama's work on "community health" during the Denver DNC suggest how deeply cynicism runs inside the Obama camp.
Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that Ms. Obama hired David Axelrod, the campaign manager for Senator Obama, to help her re-brand the University's program to steer blacks away from emergency room services at their medical center.
What a team.
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