economist阅读写作分析--The other Obama--3.23--Alex_2009

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Lexington

The other Obama

Mar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Let Michelle be Michelle（该部分主题）

（TS）BY ANY measure Michelle Obama is a remarkable（本段中心词TW） first lady. She is highly educated, with degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and professionally accomplished, having worked for a top law firm, a big-city government and a big hospital. And she is the first first lady who is the direct descendant of slaves.

(学习本段的人物介绍，其中还有一个长句介绍她的受教育、工作情况，最后一句很有力，可以作为Issue很好的例子，本段简洁有力的介绍了a remarkable first lady)

Yet what have we heard about this paragon（本段中心词TW） since her husband won the election? That she likes to display her “perfectly toned” arms in public. That she has a penchant for mixing designer clothes with J. Crew. That she and her husband had a romantic dinner together in a four-star Italian restaurant（学习固定表达）.

（第二段用问答的形式展开，三个“That”构成排比，回答有力！用形象有代表性的三个具体行为简洁清晰的表现出a paragon，尤其三个that句子中的形容词用得好）

Shortly after the election Rebecca Traister took aim in（?）Salon, an online magazine, at the “momification of Michelle”. But since then Americans have been forced to endure the “Oprah-isation” and “Jackiefication” as well. Mrs Obama has graced the cover of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine O, made several appearances on low-end talk shows and earned the sobriquets “America’s next top model” and “leader of the fashionable world”.

第三段主要表现出Michelle的大众形象树立，特别是两个sobriquets 。（暂时不清楚这段在文中是什么作用）

(TS)The news stories about Mrs Obama are almost entirely devoted to fluff. CNN has run a segment on “how to get Michelle Obama’s toned arms”. Every fashion magazine worth the name has run pieces on “the secrets of Michelle’s style”. During the presidential campaign the New Yorker published a cover cartoon of Mrs Obama, complete with an Afro and a machine gun, exchanging a “terrorist fist jab” with her husband; the cover of the March 16th issue features the first lady strutting on the catwalk in three different outfits (none of them featuring bare arms).

第四段主要用了CNN等杂志，New Yorker两个例子突出该段主题news stories about Mrs Obama

（暂时也不清楚这段是什么作用）

(TS)This is more than just a response to public demand. The White House has been doing its best to turn the first lady into a celebrity mother-cum-clothes-horse（这个不懂）. Her White House website describes her “first and foremost” as “Malia and Sasha’s mom” before adding that, “before she was a mother”, she was “Fraser and Marian Robinson’s daughter”. The White House has even engaged in debates with the press about whether Mrs Obama ought to go bare-armed to formal events.

这段主要写的White House在努力将Michelle打造成 a celebrity 。

（暂时也不清楚这段是什么作用）

(TS)It is not difficult to understand why the White House has chosen this tack（开头句式不错，借了）. Hillary Clinton’s determination to act as a virtual co-president back in 1993 helped to create a backlash against her husband’s administration. It also raised uncomfortable questions about power and accountability. Given America’s continued neuroses about race, an outspoken black first lady might prove to be even more divisive than an outspoken white one.

本段举了Hillary的例子，用历史来说明Michelle所处的有争议的环境。

（怎么老是举Hillary的例子，Bush的老婆跑哪去了，都隔了一届还来举Hillary当时产生的影响，是不是犯了A里面“人为事物永恒不变”的错误）——哈哈，纯属扯淡

(TS)Mrs Obama is carrying a certain amount of baggage of her own—though（?）not as much as Mrs Clinton. The Chicago hospital where she worked increased her salary from $122,000 to $317,000 shortly after her husband became a senator. She and her husband bought their $1.65m house with the help of a local property developer, Tony Rezko, who is now in prison. There is no shortage of conservative journalists who are willing to present her as “the bitter, anti-American, ungrateful, rude, crude, ghetto, angry Michelle Obama”, to quote one blogger.

这段又来做比较，写了关于Michelle一些值得争议的地方。。。

So why not just wrap her in designer clothes and be done with it?（这段话字面意思很浅，要挖一下，作者的真正意思是她为什么不安守本分） Mrs Obama’s favourability rating now stands at 63%, up from 32% a year ago. She has embraced an admirable collection of good causes—helping women balance their careers and their families, supporting military families and encouraging national service. And recession-racked America craves a bit of glamour. （这段论证的相当有力，Issue中可以采用）

这段写到了Michelle的突破与成绩。、

先提出问题，为什么不just wrap her in designer clothes；

引用一个事实，很有力，没有狡辩，而是先用事实说话；

再作分析，这个分析充满了论据“--ing...”,“--ing”。 不过最后一句话的用意不太懂？

But there is a danger that the White House is overreacting to Mrs Clinton’s failures back in 1993-94, and a worry that all this fluff is both demeaning to Mrs Obama and disappointing for some of her husband’s most passionate supporters, particularly professional women. Mrs Obama did not campaign as a traditional first lady（这一句看似平淡，作用不小）, staring at her husband with dewy-eyed admiration and limiting her comments to bland pleasantries. She criss-crossed the country giving her own speeches. And powerful speeches they were too: intelligent, substantive and well-delivered. She was particularly important in shoring up(支持) her husband’s support among blacks (who were suspicious at first of his exotic background) and professional women (who were attracted to Hillary Clinton), earning the nickname “the closer” from the campaign for her ability to get people to sign up with Mr Obama.

最后一段x写的很好！第一句是铺垫，是为了更好的呈现Michelle的different, 然后轻轻一句先概述，然后同上用了两个——ing强有力的论证。后面的“And”衔接很到位。说完开始总结陈述Michelle的地位和重要性。

两个括号里的句子相当于举例子，这个方法不错。

Unleash her （该部分主题：释放~~~）

Mrs Obama has a unique ability to act as an advertisement for the virtues of hard work and stable families. She grew up in a solid working-class family on Chicago’s tough South Side, sitting down to family dinner every night, attending a local magnet school and following her brother to Princeton. She is now repeating this virtuous pattern with her own children.

Mrs Obama also has a unique understanding of the precariousness of black life. Born six months before LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, she has benefited from the explosion of opportunities for blacks in both higher education and the professions. But, as a child of an area that became the subject of William Julius Wilson’s classic book “When Work Disappears”, she also knows the devastation that job losses, drugs, crime and family break-up have wrought on the black working class. More than 60% of black children these days are brought up without a father.

这两段用同样的结构介绍了Michelle两个特质，并通过此介绍了Michelle的背景。

（好开头，借了）It is arguable, of course, that Mrs Obama is already doing enough to inspire her fellow Americans without running the risks inherent in pronouncing on policy. But during the campaign she raised a lot of thought-provoking questions（本段中心词TW）—about “the flimsy difference between success and failure” in America, about the removal of rungs from the ladder of opportunity, and about the plight of families at the bottom of the heap. It would be good to hear a bit more about what Mrs Obama thinks and a lot less about what she wears.