Holding Down The Bar

A couple of points from a quick perusal of Michelle Obama's May 2nd stump speech.

I know that she's a very intelligent woman, but I'm not sure if she really gets irony.

They move the bar. They raise it up. They shift it to the left and to the right. It's always just quite out of reach. And that's a little bit of what Barack has been experiencing. The bar is constantly changing for this man. Raise the money? Not enough. Build an organization? Not enough. Win a whole bunch of states? Not the right states. You got to win certain states. So the bar has been shifting and moving in this race, but the irony is, the sad irony is that that's exactly what's happening to most Americans in this country. The bar is shifting and moving on people all the time. And folks are struggling like never before, working harder than ever, believing that their hard work will lead to some reward, some payoff. But what they find is that they get there and the bar has changed, things are different, wasn't enough. So you have to work even harder.

Even if what she says about all that confounded bar moving is true, is it in any way ironic?

And see what happens when you live in a nation where the vast majority of Americans are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that nation is that people do become isolated.

I have to agree with her here. It's been my experience that when you're struggling to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, you do become isolated. Once the bar starts moving, you usually find yourself cut off and booted out on the street in no time. If you're lucky, one of your friends will come out and pick you up from the sidewalk, but you're often on your own.

By the way, she uses the word "bar" no less than thirty-one times in the speech. Unfortunately, it's never in the right context.