Presto Chango

All change is not growth,
as all movement is not forward
--Ellen Glasgow

No person is your friend (or kin) who demands
your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived
as fully blossomed as you were intended
--Alice Walker
_____________

Lest conservatives charge a liberal bias to the media, one need only read the top papers in the MSM to get a sense of the hack work going on at the expense of the democratic party.

Issues and platforms have given way to momentum. Hillary is being labeled a spoiler, one supposes for not graciously conceding the race, a la Jackie Kennedy, to Oprah's presumptive candidate. The prattle I have heard on NPR recently makes me think my fellow Americans are not very smart. Style trumps substance on the political catwalk.

Today at an Obama rally, a 66-year-old woman said Obama had "a new face," and made her think that the Camelot of her day might be resurrected anew with his candidacy. Another woman said she liked Hillary, but she "just couldn't trust Bill. " To do what, one wonders?

Bill is not running for anything. For that matter, was he not an acceptable President those eight years? We hear that Hillary is one Clinton too much, yet we did not hear the same when the W ran after Bush pere.

While the culture vultures have exhausted themselves over Hillary's coldness / over-emotionalism; fashion androgyny / too-much cleavage; too much something, too little something else, they have been falling over themselves to show that all things Obama excel.

NPR also reported this weekend how refreshing it was to see Obama's wife campaign in a tank top -- "a tank top!" they reiterated, gushing how great it was to see a candidate's wife who actually showed arms, back and neck. Paste the tank top on Hillary and imagine the response. "Shameless panderer/skank/trying to look 20 years younger. . ." Sorry, this smacks of the worst racism in my book.

The implication is that blacks enjoy more bodily freedom, and we all know how well their women score on self-acceptance surveys, loving their bodies even if they are overweight, not obsessed with the pinched up little white woman Barbie focus on that "last five pounds."

We tamped Hillary down when she was seen as too sassy, stepping too far out of the feminine metier. Now we have Michelle Obama, no creme puff she, and one can imagine her during her campaign stumping every bit the harridan Clinton is claimed to be. But on Michelle Obama it works, because, well, she's expected to be loud and mouthy? Racism, even if it makes for acceptability of the stereotype, is still racism.

Here's my theory: a look around television programs will show the movement of formerly marginalized characters to the center. 300-pounder Hurley is the beloved center of the (non-)reality show Lost, and any number of tatooed, pierced and/or minorities hold respected positions in crime labs, law firms and hospitals, usually commanding the former leaders -- older white men. This move resonates with a large number in the viewing audience.

Obama's biological father was a former goat herder who left the family after two years. This is not to denigrate goat herders, certainly not goat herders who make it to Harvard. I'm just saying this shunning of familial responsibility resonates with a large portion of the electorate who are themselves products of broken homes, be they on the receiving end of the treatment or liberals who sympathize with it.

Obama's background exemplifies the best and worst we are capable of. If this qualification were adequate argument for holding the office of president, I'd be inclined to vote Obama, too. But it is not. Candidate's platforms matter. In a way that style and origin does not.

In Obama's melange, he really is everyman. Kind of like Tom Hanks in the world of actors; he may not be the best, but he appeals to the most.

For an ego-centered electorate who believe in fairy tales, he is the logical choice.