Immediate Disclaimer: I didn’t get to exclusively interview her (and probably wouldn’t break my back trying to as everything she could tell you is in her book…which in effect is available for free on Google) but I did attend a special Barnes and Noble Q&A/book signing that she did last night in Manhattan. I thought I would share some general thoughts about the controversy around her book, her book itself, what the questions were, how she came off to me, and, perhaps most importantly, how her family came off to me as probably a third of that Barnes and Noble crowd were her extended family and family friends.
1. The Controversy. For those that don’t know, the book is called “The Obamas” and written by former New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor (with seemingly no insider access that any other former reporter wouldn’t have been given) for a seven figure sum. That’s right, a cool million for a debut, non-famous non-fiction writer in a book market where deals like that virtually don’t exist. The controversy swirling around the book is that the picture she paints of The Obamas, particularly Michelle, isn’t a very flattering one and Michelle has denounced the book as portraying her as an angry black woman who quarrels with everyone around the president.
My Take: Someone asked Kantor directly about the First Lady’s comments and she said that she never refers to Michelle as “an angry black woman” in the book, which is true…and yet virtually every story she told about Michelle last night DID make her sound like a stubborn, quarrelsome black woman who can’t get along with the president’s staff and doesn’t enjoy being First Lady. So it did strike me that even if she doesn’t use the term “Angry black woman,” the overall portrayal in the book doesn’t make someone think otherwise. Still, I think Michelle saying that is the best possible thing that could have happened to Kantor’s book, because the “controversy” element will help sales and distinguish this book from the virtually 500 books about Obama that come out every year. Kantor can say otherwise, but I feel a small part of her knows this and is relishing the controversy for the sake of sales, which is why she kept insisting that everyone “read the book” before they judge what’s in it.
2. Her family and perhaps Jodi herself. Now maybe this isn’t fair to judge someone based on what their family says, in fact I know it isn’t, but I do find it worth noting that a good size portion of last night’s crowd were her extended family and family friends. And to me it feels a bit like cheating to promote a controversial book with such a hometown crowd dominating so many seats in the audience (it seemed to give Kantor’s opinions of the president and first lady more credibility than she might get if, say, the entire crowd were people that don’t share DNA with her). In fact, when Kantor could feel the crowd getting a bit restless of her answers, she called on her “Uncle”…Uhhh, taking questions from a family member? What journalism class taught her that? [And I can almost hear their loud, boisterous voices screeching that such a criticism is “ridiculous” and “insane” and totally irrelevant…well it isn’t.]
My Take: It can be very intimidating to ask an even slightly critical question of someone’s book if you know their sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts are in the crowd. And what these people were actually saying about the Obamas…it wasn’t flattering, and I can’t help but think that that has had to rub off on the writer a little bit. What strikes me especially about their criticisms of Michelle Obama are that they all seemed to revolve around her not immediately doing cartwheels over the book, as if she should be slap-happy about a criticism of her because it’s coming from “their Jodi.” Maybe it’s just a bit too much entitlement for one person. All writers like encouragement but a reporter can’t get swept up in that without losing their neutrality to the subject. They begin to think that whatever they’re saying must be credible because they’re the ones saying it.
I also find it worth noting that her family really, really likes attention and wanted the other people in the crowd to notice them, know who they were, bend to them, accommodate them, and when an argument broke out between a homeless woman and somebody they didn’t know, “Uncle” had to say something so everyone could hear it…even when it had nothing to do with him. Not entirely dissimilar to Cantor writing a book about a marriage she has no inside track into.
3. The Book Itself. In complete fairness to Cantor, she only called on her family members once or twice while going out of her way to call on the room’s handful of black participants who had questions (I’d say 90 to 95 percent of the crowd was white). Maybe she thought they would have the toughest questions about an unflattering Obamas book and she wanted to clear that up. Maybe she knew her book dealt a lot with race and wanted to give people who weren’t white a chance to ask about it. Either way, a lot of the questions were a little repetitive and almost all of them were race based and it left me wondering exactly how much the incredibly white Kantor could really tell us about what it’s like to be the first black First Lady, to have slave ancestry (incestry) and become leader of the free world’s wife and yet still get booed at NASCAR rallies. AND in fact Michelle Obama’s criticisms have been that Kantor can’t say what’s in her mind, and hasn’t had an exclusive interview with them in the book, so how would she know?
My Take: I don’t think Kantor knows anything that any other reporter who’s spent any time with the Obamas doesn’t know. I don’t think there’s a thing in this book that isn’t common knowledge, been reported before, or exaggerated. I don’t think it’s a flattering portrayal of The Obamas or at all “even handed” like she claims. The general opinion the book gives off of Obama is that he’s incompetent and isolated in the White House. And the general opinion of the First Lady is that she’s stubborn, she doesn’t want to be there, doesn’t enjoy being First Lady, and in effect hasn’t been a good one as she’s quarreled with Obama’s staff.
Now, do I think Kantor herself REALLY believes this? No. Like I said earlier, in 2009 she was paid a shit load of money (more than a Times Reporter can ever hope to make) to write a book about the Obamas, whether she really had one or not, and has exaggerated as much of the material as possible to make a juicy, “insider’s” book about the Obamas that any of us could write if we had access to Google. I think people on both sides are probably making more of the book than it really is, and we won’t remember it in six months when the next “insider’s” book about the Obamas comes out by a former reporter tired of making 45k a year and trying to get a fat millionaire’s check.