[2008.07.05] 莱克星顿：米歇尔•奥巴马之美国

Lexington
列克星敦

Michelle Obama’s America
米歇尔•奥巴马之美国

Jul 3rd 2008 2008年7月3日
From The Economist print edition

Is Barack Obama’s wife his rock or his bitter half?
巴拉克•奥巴马的妻子是他的支柱还是令他痛苦的另一半？

THERE are two ways to be a political spouse. You can shun the limelight or you can grab it. Margaret Thatcher’s late husband, Denis, exemplified the former approach. He never upstaged his wife and though intelligent and rich, he was content to be viewed as a golfing, gin-swilling duffer. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Clintons. Hillary was Bill’s closest adviser when he was president, and he would have done the same for her, had she been elected. Neither approach is right or wrong, but both have predictable consequences. If you keep your mouth shut, you are unlikely to stir up controversy. If you speak up, you may help your spouse, but you risk hurting him or her, too.

做政治人物的配偶有两种方法。要么躲避闪烁的镁光灯，要么努力攫取公众的注意力。玛格丽特•撒切尔业已过世的夫君丹尼斯可谓前种方式之典范。他从来不抢他夫人的风头，虽然他聪明富有，但他乐意被视作一位整日打高尔夫，大口喝杜松子酒的笨蛋。克林顿夫妇与之截然相反。当比尔担任总统的时候，希拉里是其最亲密的智囊，要是希拉里当选的话，比尔同样也会为她出谋划策。这两种方式无所谓对错，但是二者产生的后果是可以预期的。如果你保持缄默，你不可能挑起争论。一旦你畅所欲言，你或许会助你的配偶一臂之力，然而你也有可能伤害到你的另一半。

John McCain’s wife, Cindy, gazes adoringly at him on the stump but says little. If she has to introduce him, she says she loves him and hopes you will vote for him. She may favour pink skirt-suits over golfing trousers, but in her reluctance to say anything that might conceivably hurt her spouse she is unmistakably a (Denis) Thatcherite. Hostile bloggers half-heartedly accuse her of being a Stepford wife or make snide cracks about the fortune she inherited and her past addiction to painkillers. But she seldom captures the headlines and seems to like it that way.

每当约翰•麦凯恩发表政治演讲时，他的夫人辛迪总是在一旁含情脉脉地注视着他，但是她很少发言。如果她必须要引见麦凯恩时，她总是说她爱她丈夫，衷心希望你投票支持他。她也许钟爱粉红色的裙装，而不是打高尔夫时所穿的长裤。然而她不愿谈及任何有可能伤害到夫君的事情，就这一点而言，她无疑和（丹尼斯）撒切尔是一类的。不怀好意的博客们对她只是敷衍了事地指责一番，说她是一位对丈夫惟命是从的花瓶太太，抑或讽刺挖苦她继承的庞大财产以及过去服用止痛药成瘾的经历。然而她很少登上头版头条，她似乎就喜欢这样。（译者注：这里a Stepford wife引用的是电影《超完美娇妻》的故事，片中远离俗世的小镇Stepford环境悠和宁静，彷如世外桃源，每个太太都美丽动人，而且对丈夫惟命是从，绝对是很多男士的梦想）

Michelle Obama falls somewhere between the two poles. Unlike Bill or Hillary, she has never hinted that she expects to be co-president. But unlike Mrs McCain, she criss-crosses the country making fiery speeches on her husband’s behalf. In many ways, she is a huge asset to his campaign. She is clever, driven, beautiful and articulate. Even when he is not there, she draws large, avid crowds. Yet she still finds time to be supermum. She bought two laptops so her husband can see and talk to his daughters when he is on the road. She teases him about his snoring and makes him take out the rubbish. He calls her “my rock”.

米歇尔•奥巴马属于这两极之间的一类。与比尔或希拉里不同，她从来没有暗示她期望与丈夫共同执政。但是也不同于麦凯恩夫人，米歇尔在全国来回奔走，替丈夫代言，她的演讲火药味十足。在许多方面，对于奥巴马的竞选活动来说，她都是一项巨大的财富。她聪明过人，很有抱负，美丽迷人而且还能言善道。甚至当奥巴马不在场时，她也会吸引大量热情的观众。而且她还能抽出时间做一名超级妈妈。她买了两台手提电脑为的就是让她的丈夫在竞选旅途中能够看到他的女儿们，并能够和他们交谈。她常常揶揄丈夫呼噜呼噜的打鼾声，还让他把垃圾清理出来。奥巴马将她称为”我的支柱”。

Like her husband, she exemplifies the American dream, having risen from humble roots to Princeton, Harvard and a $275,000-a-year job handling “community and external affairs” and “business diversity” for a hospital in Chicago. But her story is otherwise quite different from his. His background is more exotic and chaotic. His mother was white, his father was Kenyan, they broke up when he was two and the young Barack later lived in Hawaii and Indonesia. Michelle’s family, by contrast, was hard-up but intact. It was also all-black, all-American and rooted in the South Side of Chicago. Michelle grew up knowing useful people: she was chummy with Jesse Jackson’s daughter and even baby-sat his son when she was a teenager.

同她的丈夫一样，她堪为美国梦之楷模。出身卑微的她先后赴普林斯顿和哈佛大学求学，后来为芝加哥的一家医院处理”社区和外部事务”以及”业务分歧”，这项工作每年为她带来275,000美元的收入。然而她的经历在其他方面与奥巴马迥然不同。奥巴马的背景更加奇异，更加动荡。他的母亲是白人，父亲是肯尼亚人，在他两岁的时候父母关系破裂，年幼的奥巴马后来先后在夏威夷和印度尼西亚生活居住。相比之下，米歇尔一家虽然手头拮据但完好无缺。她一家人都是黑人，都是美国人，世居于芝加哥南部。米歇尔从小就认识了一些可以派上用场的人物：当她十几岁时，她与杰西•约翰逊的女儿亲密无间，甚至还给他的儿子当过保姆。（译者注：杰西•约翰逊是美国著名黑人民权领袖，1984年大选时他是美国民主党的总统候选人）。

When Barack was starting out as a politician, his rivals dismissed him as inauthentically African-American or even “the white man in blackface”. Having Michelle at his side helped reassure sceptical blacks that he was really one of them. Even the precise shade of her skin colour may have helped him at the polls. Famous black men often pick light-skinned or white wives. Some black women resent this. That Michelle is quite dark may have endeared Barack to black female voters who might otherwise have voted for Hillary Clinton.

当巴拉克的政治生涯开始的时候，他的对手认为他并非纯正的非裔美国人，甚至说他是一位”长着黑人脸庞的白人”。有米歇尔陪伴于左右可以让那些心生疑虑的黑人安心，即巴拉克•奥巴马真的是他们中的一员。甚至她肤色的深浅也可能在竞选时帮了奥巴马的大忙。一些有名的黑人经常挑选浅肤色或白人女性作太太。这让一些黑人女性很是恼火。米歇尔的皮肤够黑这一事实或许让巴拉克受到了黑人女性选民的垂青，要不然的话，他们或许会投票支持希拉里•克林顿。

Now that the primaries are over, the issues have changed. Blacks are solidly for Mr Obama, but many swing voters are unsure. Some Republicans think his wife’s habit of speaking her mind could prove a problem. For example, in February, as her husband’s campaign was catching fire, she said: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Some Americans bristle at the implication that the only worthwhile thing any of them has done in the past quarter-century is to back Mr Obama.

鉴于初选已经结束，争论之议题也已随之改变。黑人对奥巴马的支持坚如磐石，但许多摇摆不定的选民还没有拿定主意。一些共和党人认为他夫人这种想什么就说什么的习惯或许算的上一个问题。例如，在2月份，当她丈夫的竞选活动正进行的如火如荼之际，她这样说道：”长大后第一次，我为我的国家感到骄傲，因为似乎希望终于强势回归。”这似乎暗示说许多美国人在过去25年里所做的唯一一件有价值的事情就是支持奥巴马，这令他们颇感愤怒。

Mrs Obama’s speeches rarely accentuate the positive. America, to her, is a “downright mean” country where families struggle to buy food, where mothers are terrified of being fired if they get pregnant and where “life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime”. But she was born in 1964, when Americans lived shorter, poorer lives and southern blacks couldn’t vote. Whereas her husband is magically skilled at not giving offence, Mrs Obama can be a blunt instrument. “Don’t go into corporate America,” she urges young people, denigrating what most Americans do for a living and biting the hand that pays for all the public programmes she favours. “Barack Obama will require you to work,” she says. “He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation…Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.” Some people would rather decide for themselves how to live their lives.

奥巴马夫人的演讲很少强调美国积极的一面。她心目中的美国是一个”彻头彻尾卑劣的国度”,在这个国家，一家人为了填饱肚子往往要紧衣缩食，母亲们极度恐惧，如果怀孕就会被解雇，”在我的一生当中，老百姓的日子似乎越来越糟了。”但是她出生于1964年，那时美国人的寿命比现在短暂，也更贫穷，南部的黑人还没有投票的权力。她的丈夫似乎具有魔法，从不冒犯他人，他精于此道，而奥巴马夫人或许只是一位直言不讳的傀儡而已。”不要涉足美国工商业.”她如此敦促年轻人，她将大多数美国人为了生计所做的事情贬损的一无是处，对于为她钟爱的所有公众计划出资的美国工商业来说，这简直是恩将仇报。”巴拉克•奥巴马要求你们去工作，”她说: “他要求你们不要玩世不恭，要求你们搁置分歧，要求你们走出藩篱…..巴拉克绝不允许你们一如既往，重过昔日那种不参与世事信息闭塞之生活。”有些人宁可自己的生活自己做主。

The bitter bit
麻烦的一面

Conservative pundits have savaged her. One acerbic blogger calls her “Obama’s bitter half”. Others mock her occasional gripes about her personal finances and her solipsistic college thesis about the woes of black Princetonians. The National Review says she “embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology, which is not where most Americans live. On the other hand, it does make her a terrific Oprah guest.”

保守主义的专家们对她猛烈抨击。有一位尖刻的博客将她称为”让奥巴马痛苦的另一半”。还有些人嘲弄她时不时抱怨私人财务状况，讥讽她就普林斯顿大学黑人的不幸遭遇所作的论文充满唯我论色彩。《国民评论》认为她”既享有特权又有一种受害者的心理，是一个奇异的混合体，大多数美国人过的可不是这种生活。另一方面，这的确使她成为奥普拉节目上的一位绝妙的嘉宾。”

Mr Obama says people should lay off his wife. Laura Bush agrees. And one has to sympathise with Mrs Obama. She was always a reluctant political wife. Her husband’s crazy hours and long absences impose a hefty burden on her and on their children. In dark moments, she fears for his physical safety. And all the while, both she and her husband are subjected to maliciously false gossip online.

奥巴马说公众应该放过他妻子。劳拉•布什会赞同此观点的。对奥巴马夫人我们必须抱有同情心。她并不总是乐意当一位政治人物的妻子。她丈夫日程安排可谓疯狂，并且长期不在她身边，这让她和她的子女感到巨大的压力。在夜深人静的时侯，她为丈夫的人身安全忧心忡忡。一直以来，她和丈夫一直承受着网上恶意编造的谣言的伤害。

But not all criticism is unfair. If Mr Obama is president, his wife will have the ear of the most powerful man on earth. So her political views matter. And if she expresses them forcefully in speech after speech, she can hardly cry foul when not everyone likes what she says. On June 30th she appeared on the front page of USA Today saying: “I don’t want to be a distraction.” For better or for worse, she is.

但是并非所有的批评都是不公正的。如果奥巴马成为总统，他的妻子将会对地球上最有权势的人物施加影响。因而她的政治观点至关重要。如果她在一个接一个的演讲中强有力地表达她的观点，当不是每个人都喜欢她的言辞的时候，她就不能鸣冤叫屈了。6月30日她出现在《今日美国》的头版，她说：”我不想分散大家的注意力”。 不管是好是坏，她已经如此了。

译者： kevin.Ren   http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12503&extra=page%3D1