Republic of Gilead, Redux

Your love keeps liftin’ me higher
Than I’ve ever been lifted before
So keep it up, yeah, quench my desire
And I’ll be at your side forevermore
--Your Love Lifted Me Higher,
Auto Adrenaline

I'm looking for a miracle man
That tells me no lies
--Miracle Man, Ozzy Osbourne

I can really do wonders, I can,
If you've got the misery,
Bring your misery to me,
I'm that Hi-De-Ho Miracle Man!
--The Miracle Man, Cab Calloway

I am the way, the truth, and the life
--John 14:6
___________________

["Republic of Gilead" is a re-post from 28 Feb '08, relevant as ever. We told you Ms. Clinton was not gonna get it eight years ago; said it again, last year. Like the Man in Black sang, "we've got our eyes wide open all the time".

Like de Tocqueville to America or Mead to Papua New Guinea, Lisa will soon commence a series on post-election U.S. Ranger has a few thoughts up his sleeve, too.]

________________

Luuu-ceee! Remember Ricky's plaintively imploring yet reprimanding calls to his wife, Lucy? And how Lucille Ball managed to wend her way into getting whatever it was she wanted anyway, by pumping up Ricky's ego?

Flash-forward 50 years and I find myself lost in any I Love Lucy script. Obama cuts a retro figure, reminiscent of the well-spoken Malcolm X in dress and manner. And the women who flock to him serve in a behind-the-scenes way, which is also very retro, sans the aprons. 

Women have been abandoning Hillary for The Man, but why?


[1] Their desire for romance. Edward Kennedy suggests in Obama a recrudescence of Camelot. Forget that Camelot never was really Camelot; that is its beauty. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg says he reminds her of her father. Michelle Obama, Oprah, Maria Shiver and Caroline Kennedy "put on the best campaign rally" Andrew Rosenthal has seen "in 20 years of covering presidential politics ("Michelle, Maria, Caroline and Oprah on the Hustings in California.")

Yes We Can campaign for a man.

Three more little ladies advocated for Obama in the Wall Street Journal ("The Obama Opportunity") -- "Ms. Napolitano (Governor of Arizona), Ms. Sebelius (Governor of Kansas) and Ms. McCaskill (D-Missouri)." (See how far we've come -- Ms. Steinem's honorific certainly has taken hold, even in a conservative paper.)

The trio say we need to end "political polarization," "divisive politics" and "bitter partisanship." But Hillary is nothing if not a conciliator. So how can their stated desire tap Obama and not Hillary?


[2] Below romance is just wanting to feel better.

Author/blogger Micki McGee says her book, Self Help, Inc., "looks at the rise of self-improvement culture as Americans have seen their economic circumstances decline." Books about feeling good are good business. If people actually did good and got better, the market would dry up.

When it comes to just feeling better on a Friday night, you are more likely to curl up with an Oprah guru, like Peter Walsh's Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More than the current issue of The Economist. 

Before psychotherapy went pop, there were lurid Gothic romances fronting the impossible Fabio which secretaries would hide in their desks. This escapism has now gone mainstream via programs like Desperate Housewives and Nip and Tuck. You can escape to a desert island and feel your potentiality spread out before you, and of course, this impulse to escape extends to men, as well.

With Obama, the ticket to escape is your vote. He says follow him, "we will do it; we will change." He is your own personal life coach, to help you work off all the bon-bons you ate while watching the latest installment of Lost.

What's more, he'll tell you what to do so you won't be lost anymore.


[3] The desire for direction, which is an equal opportunity impulse.

Once coronated by Oprah, Obama had all but won the election. As goes Oprah, so goes the nation. Oprah ministers to all that may befall a human being, and has assured us that we are all o.k. just by virtue of being here. That is some powerful validation, gained just by virtue of sitting in front of the tube.

After Oprah midwifes you in your walk through the fire of your particular dysfunctions and your subsequent shower, Obama is presented as the man to lift you higher. It is all done for you, like those wonderful prewashed, precut veggies Oprah introduced to her audience.

Her acolytes are on a conveyor belt, and happy to be shown the way. As in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, women are mobilized to serve the Commander.

Obama is their miracle man, mouthing platitudes cribbed from Ghandi, and Krishnamurti, and MLK. Obama is like a good DJ sampling for his mix, but he gives no credit in his mash-ups ("Finding political strength in the power of words.")

It is blatant plagiarism, but I suppose he does it because he knows his demographic so well. They apparently are unfamiliar with the sources of his many platitudes, and this general ignorance saddens me as much as Obama's disingenuousness.

[4] The media has it in for her ("Rendell: The Media Does Not Like the Clintons.")

It is glaringly obvious that any move Clinton makes will be chastised. She can never win. Slate wondered if she'd "Come Undone, 2/13/08". Since then other major outlets have asked why she doesn't concede in a ladylike fashion, even though the candidates are in fact running neck and neck.

Presumably, the only safe stance for her is one of silent deference, in a corner, admitting that she has been bested by a man. It is cyclical American history: black men got the vote before women. A black man will occupy the White House before a woman will.

If a women were to come out with the vacuous platitudes which fire 'em up at Obama rallies, she'd be roundly laughed out of the room as a pollyannaish airhead.

Hillary has been painted as passe, someone who thinks "going viral" means coming down with pneumonia. If she could only play the sax, like Bill -- do something to hook into the national pulse in a visceral way. But that is not a privilege allowed to a woman of a certain age.

I am thinking of a recent ad which showed a fit 50-ish, silver-haired woman in overalls and Doc Martens, smiling. The ad recognized the revolutionary nature of her posture vis-a vis a culture which severely slots women via age. I think the only way the model got away with it was that she was identified as an artist, and we grant them their flakiness.

Hillary has forsaken her younger revolutionary rhetoric, but if you want to hear an actual and authentic challenge to be new, read Hillary's 1969 commencement speech at Wellesley, where she challenges her listeners "to practice with all the skill of our being/The art of making possible."

I'm no feminist, but the vitriolic coverage of Clinton vs. the glowing coverage of Obama speaks volumes. The candidate's platforms simply do not differ that much, and where they do, Hillary's bests Obama's.

Oba-Messiah

Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee
--Augustis Toplady

Oh, Let us all from bondage flee
Let my people go
--Go Down Moses

It's gonna be a new day for you
A new day for you, new day for you, new day for you
--A New Day for You, Basia

Fever in the Morning
Fever all through the night,
--You Give Me Fever, Peggy Lee

___________

Part the third in our Obama trilogy: He is Come.

These are dire times, trouble all across the land. Our conventional leadership has sold us down the proverbial river. A messianic fervor has taken over, and Obamania is that phenomenon.

People have always turned to saviors at such times. Moses came when the people needed liberation and freedom from bondage. The dynamism of such movements propels their prophet onto front and center stage; the problem is the mass blindness which allows this to occur.

Rationalism isn't so sexy and cannot support such a fever pitch, and it is only the fever of being on board a winning team which unleashes the mob energy. Obamania is a political Lollapalooza.

While there are prophets are on every street corner, it takes charisma plus mass desperation to mobilize the mob so they can elevate their prophet to the position of savior.

The Right wing has been playing from the End Times playbook, hastening the degradation of events in the Middle East to facilitate their biblically-ordained Rapture. They feel Armageddon is inevitable and that they will be saved, anyway.

However, the Left feels desolation in the wake of the destructive fundamentalist project in the "Holy lands." They look to Obama to free them from enslavement to this mad project, and he brings Good News -- a message of hope and salvation -- for the price of our devotion and ballot. He is a savior shilling for a vote.

The problem I have with Obamania is its Never-Never land aspect. All will be washed away if we just hop aboard that train. The fanaticism of the left for Obama is as distasteful as that displayed by the right for their presumptive messiahs. Fanatics are fanatics.

The promise of infinite potential is similar to that echoed by two books fronting the entry at my local Borders, both by other O[prah]-gurus.

Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose is self-explanatory, and Neale Donald Walsch's Happier Than God, which tells you how you can be, y'know, happier than God. Does anyone else wonder, what if your life's purpose is cleaning out sewer gratings? And is God really all that "happy," what with his immense responsibilities. So you see, even the feel-good books bring with them a sense of responsibility.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but even the Founding Fathers didn't hand us a life purpose and happiness on a plate. All we were promised was the right to "pursue" life and happiness. Attaining them was not guaranteed.

We want a savior to "take us away" from this vale of tears. "www.Mybarackobama" tells us today that one million people "own a piece of this campaign," and that they are "disillusioned by partisan gridlock in Washington." That may be, but what they don't tell us is that a president may not remove that gridlock, photogenic and optimistic as he or she may be.

How does Obama fit the bill of savior:

[1] Obama is dashing and charismatic. It is doubtful that if he looked like his Kenyan father Obama would be rock-star material in the U.S. We are not quite that color blind yet. As it is, even Larry the Cable guys can look at him in approval, perhaps even imagining they share some of his appeal.

Hillary, however, lacks the same "twinning" phenomenon. Fewer people would like to imagine they share Hillary's flat midwestern intonation or frumpy body or over-the-hill persona. The thing she offers is her intellect, unfortunately, something which has never been a winning quality for the American voter.

[2] Obama's acceptance is unconditional. "We will do it," whatever it is. Come all ye faithful. But what we presume is, it is he who will do the heavy lifting in Washington. He asks nothing of us, just promises a new day, via our acceptance (=vote.) In this way, he is both parent and savior, which we know any good religion conflates for us anyway.

The following two points are not p.c. They are gotten from the local street, and our street is not Worth Avenue. We never promised you a rose garden at Ranger:

[3] We are finally admitting that the Savior is not really a blonde/blue Aryan as depicted on the veleteen Dollar Store paintings. Rather, He was most likely of African extraction, and Obama more nearly approximates this reality than the pasty-faced Jim Bakkers of the world.

While Obama is not running for ecclesiastical post, nonetheless, election as president is the closest we get to national ordination. The fervor behind Obama exceeds that accorded to your typical politico.

[4] Pro-ball. America has been idolizing trim, black athletes since Jackie Robinson crossed the color line. Obama is the Superbowl and March Madness rolled into one, with the invocation by team chaplain Dr. Martin Luther King.

If all else disappoints in real life, the athlete's achievement on the track or field is one of pure beauty and clarity. While Obama is not an olympian, either, desegregation and idolization on that field has allowed for his entree as rock star-candidate.

Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home.

Republic of Gilead

Your love keeps liftin’ me higher
Than I’ve ever been lifted before
So keep it up, yeah, quench my desire
And I’ll be at your side forevermore
--Your Love Lifted Me Higher,
Auto Adrenaline

I'm looking for a miracle man
That tells me no lies
--Miracle Man, Ozzy Osbourne

I can really do wonders, I can,
If you've got the misery,
Bring your misery to me,
I'm that Hi-De-Ho Miracle Man!
--The Miracle Man, Cab Calloway

I am the way, the truth, and the life
--John 14:6
___________

Luuu-ceee! Remember Ricky's plaintively imploring yet reprimanding calls to his wife, Lucy? And how Lucille Ball managed to wend her way into getting whatever it was she wanted anyway, by pumping up Ricky's ego? Flash-forward 50 years and I find myself lost in any I Love Lucy script.

Obama cuts a retro figure, reminiscent of the well-spoken Malcolm X in dress and manner. And the women who flock to him serve in a behind-the-scenes way, which is also very retro, sans the aprons. Women have been abandoning Hillary, but why?

[1] Their desire for romance. Edward Kennedy suggests in Obama a recrudescence of Camelot. Forget that Camelot never was really Camelot; that is its beauty.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg says he reminds her of her father. Michelle Obama, Oprah, Maria Shiver and Caroline Kennedy "put on the best campaign rally" Andrew Rosenthal has seen "in 20 years of covering presidential politics ("Michelle, Maria, Caroline and Oprah on the Hustings in California.") Yes We Can campaign for a man, though he lost that one.

Three more little ladies advocated for Obama in the Wall Street Journal ("The Obama Opportunity") -- "Ms. Napolitano (Governor of Arizona), Ms. Sebelius (Governor of Kansas) and Ms. McCaskill (D-Missouri)." (See how far we've come -- Ms. Steinem's honorific certainly has taken hold, even in a conservative paper.) The trio say we need to end "political polarization," "divisive politics" and "bitter partisanship." But Hillary is nothing if not a conciliator, so how can their stated desire tap Obama and not Hillary?

[2] Below romance is just wanting to feel better.

Author/blogger Micki McGee says her book, Self Help, Inc., "looks at the rise of self-improvement culture as Americans have seen their economic circumstances decline." Books about feeling good are good business. If people actually did good and got better, the market would dry up.

When it comes to just feeling better on a Friday night, you are more likely to curl up with an Oprah guru, like Peter Walsh's Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More than the current issue of The Economist.

Before psychotherapy went pop, there were lurid Gothic romances fronting the impossible Fabio which secretaries would hide in their desks. This escapism has now gone mainstream via programs like Desperate Housewives and Nip and Tuck. You can escape to a desert island and feel your potentiality spread out before you, and of course, this impulse to escape extends to men, as well.

With Obama, the ticket to escape is your vote. He says follow him, "we will do it; we will change." He is your own personal coach, to help you work off all the bon-bons you ate while watching the latest installment of Lost. What's more, he'll tell you what to do so you won't be lost anymore.

[3] The desire for direction, which is an equal opportunity impulse.

Once coronated by Oprah, Obama had all but won the election. As goes Oprah, so goes the nation. Oprah ministers to all that may befall a human being, and has assured us that we are all o.k. just by virtue of being here. That is some powerful validation, gained just by virtue of sitting in front of the tube.

After Oprah midwifes you in your walk through the fire of your particular dysfunctions and your subsequent shower, Obama is presented as the man to lift you higher. It is all done for you, like those wonderful prewashed, precut veggies Oprah introduced to her audience. Her acolytes are on a conveyor belt, and happy to be shown the way. As in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, women are mobilized to serve the Commander.

Obama is their miracle man, mouthing platitudes cribbed from Ghandi, and Krishnamurti, and MLK. Obama is like a good DJ sampling for his mix, but he gives no credit in his mash-ups ("Finding political strength in the power of words.")

It is blatant plagiarism, but I suppose he does it because he knows his demographic so well. They apparently are unfamiliar with the sources of his many platitudes, and this general ignorance saddens me as much as Obama's disingenuousness.

[4] The media has it in for her ("Rendell: The Media Does Not Like the Clintons.")

It is glaringly obvious that any move Clinton makes will be chastised. She can never win. Slate wondered if she'd "Come Undone," 2/13. Since then other major outlets have asked why she doesn't concede in a ladylike fashion, even though the candidates are in fact running neck and neck.

Presumably, the only safe stance for her is one of silent deference, in a corner, admitting that she has been bested by a man. It is cyclical American history: black men got the vote before women. A black man will occupy the White House before a woman will.

If a women came out with the vacuous platitudes which fire 'em up at Obama rallies, she'd be roundly laughed out of the room as a pollyannaish airhead.

Hillary has been painted as passe, someone who thinks "going viral" means coming down with pneumonia. If she could only play the sax, like Bill -- do something to hook into the national pulse in a visceral way. But that is not a privilege allowed to a woman of a certain age.

I am thinking of a recent ad which showed a fit 50-ish, silver-haired woman in overalls and Doc Martens, smiling. The ad recognized the revolutionary nature of her posture vis-a vis a culture which severely slots women via age. I think the only way the model got away with it was that she was identified as an artist, and we grant them their flakiness.

Hillary has forsaken her younger revolutionary rhetoric, but if you want to hear an actual and authentic challenge to be new, read Hillary's 1969 commencement speech at Wellesley, where she challenges her listeners "to practice with all the skill of our being/The art of making possible."

I'm no feminist, but the vitriolic coverage of Clinton vs. the glowing coverage of Obama speaks volumes. The candidate's platforms simply do not differ that much, and where they do, Hillary's bests Obama's.

The Great White Hope

Gamble, Florida Times-Union

Girl you're every woman in the world to me
You're my fantasy, you're my reality
--Every Woman in the World, Air Supply

Keep you doped with religion and sex and tv
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
--Working Class Hero, John Lennon

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers
of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining
to a higher eminence,
in whatever he takes up, than can woman
--Charles Darwin

__________

This is a post on confusion: why are the actual political issues in this campaign being skirted in favor of a cult of celebrity, and where did women go in our society's ostensible march to inclusivity?

Presidential candidate Obama is a rock star without music. He fills stadiums in 10° degree weather, with groupies strung around the building at 7 a.m. for the 10 a.m. show. He has earned Oprah's imprimatur, which usually goes to self-help gurus who help her and her audience feel better, folks like the elfin Eckhart Tolle and Marianne Williamson, Andrew Vachss and Dr. Phil. Former addicts, or street people, or tough-love advocates.

If you believe that Oprah's got The Secret, then O politics wins. In this age of wanting to feel good about oneself -- the spa-entitlement age -- Obama's slot, like that of a good pastor, is to make you feel good. To give you hope in your wretched life for a new day. We want to get pumped up over something, and have a sneaking suspicion that it ought to be about something other than ourselves.

Obama's soaring rhetoric accomplishes this nicely. His is the role of the self-help guru, a genre which is bursting with titles at your local bookstore. Thousands of tracts promise to show you how to navigate your wretched spouse/parents/children. The Calgon moment has never been bested as the prescription, and Obama is the one who will take you away.

As William Kristol said Sunday in the NYT,

"So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.

"John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.

". . . Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for ("It's All About Him")."

Obama is like O[prah]-guru Tolle, who promises in his latest bestseller to midwife you along to your best you in the modestly titled, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. That is, presuming there is one for you. How could there not be, after all? Aren't you the one who felt so good after all the hot rocks were aligned on your back, while ylang-ylang and chrysanthemum were wafted in the air?

We, the scions of the Me generation, seek aggrandizement of the self via Facebook and MySpace, not even shuddering from the possibility of egocentrism as a negative. For her part, Oprah is there to salve any nagging fears we might have on the matter.

She is on the daily menu for a large number of your cohorts, maybe even you yourself. While there are the crazies who let it all hang out, like Jerry Springer's guests, there is Oprah to lead you to your higher self.

But for all her wealth, Oprah struggles. Her weight drops, only to be packed back on. She has an on-again, off-again relationship with her stately, light-skinned lover Steadman, but always the affection of her steadfast girlfriend and dogs. Oprah owns this niche; she is Black Like Me. She is everywoman, as Obama is everyman.

This is not a racial screed. It is a lament for a society which disallows honest, non-racist, non-sexist consideration of the very real political topics at hand. It is a lament for a provincial society stuck in its -isms, which harbors a real and barely latent disdain for anything other. A society that wishes to feel good by covering up these tendencies and gloating about how inclusive it has become by fronting a non-musician rock star for president.

It is odd to see Hillary's all-but-inevitable moment be so cruelly quashed. It seems women are denied the parabolic peak. Their ascent looks like a mined West Virginia mountaintop--flat. A good place for a golf course.

The first female candidate for president was Victoria Woodhull in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket, with a black man, Frederick Douglass (Up From Slavery) as her running mate. Race is again on the table today, but it seems gender is the more onerous issue.

White women have written many of the seminal tracts in the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Freiden, Irigaray, Klein and Horney and many others have all written grounbreaking works on the stature of women in society. We still go to white women for financial advice (Suze Orman, Maria Bartiromo et. al.), presumably because they can do the heavy lifting on boring fiduciary matters.

Geraldine Ferraro had a run at VP and we all knew she wouldn't make it, but felt it was only a matter of time. It seemed for a time Condoleeza Rice was on the fast track, being groomed as a possible presidential contender. But her star has fallen, and recently she was consigned to introducing a display explaining the obtuse symbolism on the back of the dollar bill.

One wonders why Hillary is so suspect, why her detractors so viscerally despise her. I have spoken with numerous people who admit they cannot put their finger on the reason why; they simply hate her.

What has this admittedly wanting-for-charisma woman tapped in the national psyche? It appears that even her husband, former President Bill, sabotaged her efforts early on with some notably non-charismatic additions. Hillary stood by her man, but he has not stood by her.

It is not that she is part of a "Clinton dynasty" as the press is hectoring. If that were so, democrats who were pleased with Bill would be pleased with Hillary. And political dynasties are nothing new to U.S. politics.

Presidents, no matter how high-minded, have only limited power to bring about change. They may encounter not only inertia but, more often, its exact opposite: an active, self-interested opposition, frequently fronting a broad constituency. Seeing this reality, one should choose a conciliator for president, not a firebrand, if change is what is actually sought.

I have heard well-intentioned liberals discuss the fact that Obama will make a fine role model for young black males if elected. But that is not the reason we elect someone president. That is the reason to join your local Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Obama has been successfully branded -- he is hot, and he is cool, while Hillary is not. She is just another politician, who tends to spreadsheets and fiscal data, nothing that makes you want to get up and scream; she possesses nothing like Obamania.

Hillary simply doesn't rock, and we want someone to rock our world. Just look at who can run for president -- little Ray-Ray from the Chicago hood, who made it through his AA at community college.

Well, not actually.
____________

correction: Frederick Douglass's autobiography is, A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom. Thanks to vigilant reader Minstrel Boy.