Do You Believe in Magic?

If you think we are worked by strings,
Like a Japanese marionette,
You don't understand these things:
It is simply Court etiquette
--The Gentlemen of Japan, The Mikado

And it's magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
--Do You Believe in Magic? The Lovin' Spoonful

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution
--Spirits in the Material World, Sting
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In "The Obama Delusion," the WaPo's Robert Samuelson charges Obama with boilerplate, "goody-bag" politics; nothing unusual, but certainly disingenuous for the man who's arrived on the Change Express. Samuelson says,

"The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. . . "

This statement confuses matters. Obama does not have a slavery pedigree. His father was a shoot-and-scoot African freely in the U.S., and Obama pere freely spread his genetics in the best Darwinian sense.

The main point is, Obama does not arise from American slave stock. His blackness is not an American reality; it is a campaign bullet point.

Samuelson continues,

"(O)n inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. The task requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems."

"The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't."

In a piece today on the Beatlemania phenomena that has become Obama rallies, Charlotte Allen poses the direct question, "We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?"

"(S)uch episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning make me wonder whether women -- I should say, 'we women,' of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial."

Of course, it is not women alone who have been swept into the machine. Maybe with the rising cost of all commodities, American are looking for added value, the super-sized meal, wherever they can find it.

The Doonesbury cartoon is reminiscent of a recent experience at a megachurch. The crowd was getting primed for the advent of the pastor via a rollicking music show featuring tunes which were both hypnotic and repetitive. "No more sorrow / no more pain / no more heartache, you are free," repeat, ad nauseum.

Many in the audience began twirling round and round, like dervishes. The pastor was absent that day, but his surrogate later lectured on the need for tithing. The best of the show was the narcotic-like repetition of the vacuous lyrics, which had the effect of inducing a mildly hallucinegenic experience.

Why choose a dull campaigner when you can have politics + a rock concert? Multitasking -- it is the American way, right?

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

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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.
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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.