Staff Reports
A short clip of Michelle Obama urging Americans to be “mindful” about who they buy from has gone viral this week, and it deserves to be called out for what it is: an elitist, race-focused lecture from a wealthy former first lady who has no stake in the daily struggles of hardworking Americans. In the clip Mrs. Obama encourages shoppers to make space in their wardrobes for designers of color and to think about “who’s in” their closets, language that conservative critics rightly say slides too easily into exclusionary territory.
She even offers a line that reveals the disconnect: “If you have the money to buy Chanel, then you have the money to buy everybody,” a sentiment that sounds compassionate until you realize it comes from a multimillionaire lecturing ordinary families on how to spend their limited paychecks. The comment landed like a tone-deaf sermon to millions watching their budgets and balancing mortgages, groceries, and gas—issues Michelle Obama has famously never had to confront in the same way.
The remarks come from a November 2025 podcast conversation tied to her fashion memoir The Look, and the clip resurfaced on social media in mid‑January, sparking predictable outrage on the right and hand-wringing excuses on the left. For weeks now conservative outlets have replayed and framed the soundbite as further evidence that the Left’s identity-first politics have metastasized into everyday shopping advice.
Let’s be clear: encouraging people to base purchasing decisions on the color of an owner’s skin is not unity — it’s division dressed up as activism. The reflexive media defense of an elite celebrity saying things that would ruin an average American’s reputation if they said them is a double standard conservatives should expose relentlessly. Plenty of Americans want to support small businesses of all kinds without being guilt-tripped into racial accounting at the checkout.
This moment is emblematic of a larger problem on the left: performative virtue from people who live in gated spheres of privilege and then preach identity politics to the rest of the country. It’s easy to lecture others about being “mindful” when you can afford to treat your closet like a philanthropic portfolio; it’s another thing entirely to ask blue-collar families to choose political correctness over practicality. Conservatives should not let the elites get away with sanctimony while they fragment American life into ever-smaller identity boxes.
Americans of every color deserve better than being pitted against one another for clicks and cultural power. Call out the hypocrisy, demand honest conversation about how to actually help disadvantaged communities — entrepreneurship, school choice, economic freedom — and refuse to accept lecturing from millionaires as a substitute for real policy.
If you love this country, you push back when public figures use race to sort and shame your neighbors instead of offering solutions that lift everyone. Hardworking patriots know unity is built by expanding opportunity, not policing shopping lists, and it’s past time the cultural elites stopped pretending otherwise.
