Jesse, you may be missing the point here. Sure, white associates make the same complaints, but that’s to be expected because they’re white. Michelle Robinson Obama was supposed to be grateful to be doing the grunt work that frustrates the white folks, wasn’t she? Is that how it works in York land? Avoidance of uppityness is key to getting along?

If she was white and male, and with the same M.O., they would be praising her/him for her/his ambition, and dare I say, maverick ways! Take that McCain/Palin!

Those National Review folks are silly.

And, umm… where can I find that “Black Rage” poster you’ve got up there. I want one!

She was likely the only second-year associate to say something about the monotony of the work normally done by second-year associates.  Good for her.  That takes balls, IMO (not literally!!!1!).

So when Sarah Palin wants a high-power, high-paid job, she’s a trailblazing feminist that we can all support, but when Michelle Obama does it, she’s greedy.

It’s like people complaining that Oprah is (imagine that!) setting rules for who she will/will not interview on her own TV program.

Hey, give Byron York credit. At least he managed not to use the word “attitude.”

Bravo. That was a tour de force.

Do these wingnuts not hear their own racism? Or do they just not care? It’s really quite amazing.

“Or do they just not care? “

I would say they are proud they can air it and not depicted as wearing white bedsheets in the popular media. They are still wearing a dunce cap though.

Amen, Jesse.  Approximately 52% of all attorneys on any given Monday want to be doing something other than practicing law, and many of the rest are profoundly unhappy with their career choices, whether grunting at low pay or pulling in $250K as a mid-level associate ($300K in DC or New York).  Of course, it’s a racist ass who assumes that there’s something wrong with a BLACK attorney who wants to do something to improve her satisfaction out of life.

I predict a true effervescence of racist ass in the next four weeks.  That’s not much of a prediction really; kind of like predicting that an NFL middle linebacker is going to want to knock a quarterback on his ass every Sunday in the fall.

Count me as a (white) attorney who got fed up with corporate-law-firm-associate life in Year 3 and quit. Now I have a lower-paying but higher-satisfaction job, and I enjoy wiping the walls with corporate attorneys in court. Not that I’m bitter or anything….

The fact that Michelle Obama told Sidley Austin to kiss her ass (okay, I bet it was polite and appropriate and she’s still on good terms with them, but don’t confuse me with facts) has always been a major reason I like her.

Jeese, I deeply admire your ability to keep finding humor in this kind of shit. I’m white and it makes me homicidal. I can’t even imagine how much it would enrage me if I were black.

Show me the 2nd-year associate who isn’t pissed at doing the pseudo-clerical work (one foaf in NYC spent a couple of years doing nothing but logging documents in and out of some major case, 12 hours a day) and I’’ show you someone who isn’t going to make partner.

Show me the 2nd-year associate who isn’t pissed at doing the pseudo-clerical work (one foaf in NYC spent a couple of years doing nothing but logging documents in and out of some major case, 12 hours a day) and I’’ show you someone who isn’t going to make partner.

Well, yeah, but it’s at least in part because they start thinking, “Fuck this shit, being partner’s not worth having to put up with all of this for decades to come.”

There’s a reason most of the young lawyers I know chose lifestyle firms that actually let you, you know, leave for home at 7 pm most nights.

Apparently now every ethnic minority who becomes a lawyer needs to make partner at a corporate law firm, every one who gets a Ph.D. needs to become a tenured professor, and every one who gets an M.D. needs to be a specialist in a private practice, otherwise something’s “wrong” with you.

Thankfully, we white people can become successful in-house counsels, researchers in the private sector, or staff physicians at a hospital, and no one accuses us of being “Mr./Mrs. Grievance.”

So York justifying that the term ‘grievance’ is appropriate to describe someone who is given better work than their similiarly qualified colleagues, but who still goes above their supervisors head to complain to human resources about their treatment, is an obvious example of rascism?

In order to complain to Human Resources what do you need? Some of kind, I don’t know, grievance, perhaps? And as it has been made clear, she was actually being treated better than her colleagues, and no-one seems to dispute this, so where is this sense of grievance coming from?

From Michelle Obama’s personality, and her unrealistic expectations of her initial role at the law firm, obviously. The term grievance can be applied very appropriately, without providing any evidence that Byron York is being rascist.

Mrs. Grievance when when they’re a prominent black woman but is just a normal person when they’re the other tens of thousands of white people who feel the exact same way.

The article isn’t about how she or the other people felt, it’s about their reaction - going over your bosses head and complaining to human resources isn’t exactly the same as the actions of all the other people doing the same(or in most cases, worse) jobs. That the difference. To say she is being discussed differently after doing exactly the same thing is simply wrong.

It seems as though you suffer from the same disease of many on the internet, you take things so seriously that as soon as you see race or sex it turns in to rascism and sexism, regardless of the context or any subtleties involved, so your world collapses in to a one-dimensional caricature of the actual reality.

Apparently now every ethnic minority who becomes a lawyer needs to make partner at a corporate law firm, every one who gets a Ph.D. needs to become a tenured professor, and every one who gets an M.D. needs to be a specialist in a private practice, otherwise something’s “wrong” with you.

To be fair, that’s not a race-based thing, or at least not totally. I get that kind of shit all the time because I chose not to take my Ph.D. and jump on the tenure track, and I am white white white.

Of course, I realize it would almost certainly be a thousand times worse if I were black. So I guess it’s more a case of the effect intensifying as melanin content increases.

LOL, dude, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, taking a simple statement and extrapolating all these bizarre sterotypical beliefs I’m suppossed to hold.

I never said rascism is over, I also never said I’m immune to rascism.

To reiterate what I actually said, it’s incorrect to say that Michelle Obama reacted exactly the same to her situation as her colleagues, as she went over the head of her superior and complained about her duties to Human Resources, despite the fact that her job was actually better than many others, not worse.

Wow, this really isn’t going well. The point I was trying to make was really really specific, and directly connected to the main argument of Jesse’s original article, which I felt was kind of screwed up.

Of course, the last thing I want to do is impute any sort of racial motive to branding someone black a grievance-driven whiner for doing something that thousands of white people do every year.

Thousands of white people every year don’t go over their supervisors heads to complain to Human Resources about their duties, particularly when their job is actually better than their colleagues. Therefore Michelle Obama isn’t being treated differently because she’s black, but rather because of her complaints, at least according to the evidence you presented in this post.

Another thing to note is that those ‘thousands of white people’ you refer to is actually not a homogenous group, but rather a mixture of white, black, hispanic, asian etc people who didn’t complain, and Michelle Obama who did complain.

To reiterate what I actually said, it’s incorrect to say that Michelle Obama reacted exactly the same to her situation as her colleagues, as she went over the head of her superior and complained about her duties to Human Resources, despite the fact that her job was actually better than many others, not worse.

So, just checking:  because other people had it worse than Michelle Obama, she was supposed to shut up and not complain when she felt she was being treated unfairly?

That’s about as logical as deciding that you don’t have to make sure your kid has a lunch to take to school every day because, hey, people are starving in Africa and they’re lucky to even get breakfast.

she went over the head of her superior and complained about her duties to Human Resources

1.  I wasn’t aware that talking to HR is “going over your’ boss’s head”—usually some shmoe in the HR department at a big firm does not outrank the “boss” of a n00b associate (who is probably a partner in the firm).  Not to mention that there are a great many reasons that taking your workplace issues directly to your immediate supervisor might not be the most appropriate thing to do.  HR departments exist to deal with personnel issues.  That’s their job. 

2.  I also wasn’t aware that Michelle Obama invented the concept of taking a workplace grievance to HR.  Even if her particular issue was better dealt with in a different way, I’m sure she wasn’t the first to say, “Hey, this blows, I’m going to go talk to the person who is in charge of doling out the assignments and responsibilities and see if I can’t get something that doesn’t make me miserable”.”  What is it Suze Orman says?  The worst they can do is say no?  Apparently if you’re black, the worst they can do is decide that, in displaying ambition and self-confidence, you are being too uppity and are probably some sort of Angry Black Woman With An Attitude Problem who is obviously more suited to something servile like taking orders at Wendy’s.

she’s a whiny black lady who wants her pink Caddy and government check

It’s “Caddie”...  Caddy is someone who carries your golf clubs.
And most of them are brown, not pink.

Caddie, is short for Cadillac.  See the “i” there?

Sigh.. it like people who call a hearse a “hearst”