re: #448 marjoriemoon

Uh… yea, lots of evidence.

She attended Whitney Young High School, Chicago’s first magnet high school, where she was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society and served as student council treasurer.[2] … She graduated from high school in 1981 as salutatorian.[15][16]

Michelle was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University;[3] he graduated in 1983. At Princeton, she challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt that it should be more conversational.[17] As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a thesis entitled, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.”[18][19] “I remember being shocked,” she says, “by college students who drove BMWs. I didn’t even know parents who drove BMWs.”[15] Robinson majored in sociology and minored in African American studies and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.[2][20] She earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988.[21] While at Harvard, she participated in political demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minorities.[22] She is the third First Lady with a postgraduate degree, following Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush.[23] In July 2008, Obama accepted the invitation to become an honorary member of the 100-year-old black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which had no active undergraduate chapter at Princeton when she attended.[24]

Brilliance begins with off-the-scale SAT scores. Had she racked those up, it would have been noted. Brilliance continues with real and truly remarkable achievements in a real field, not African-American studies and not a sinecure job where your pay triples when your husband advances.

Going to Harvard is nice, but as Bush proves, it’s not proof of brilliance. It’s especially not proof of brilliance if you’re getting special consideration for admission for one reason or another, as both Bush and Michelle got. {different reasons, of course}.

Michelle is a bright woman, no doubt of that. But there’s a world of difference between bright and brilliant.