Obama Rallies' Feinted Faints?

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting
as to dislike him because he isn't white.
--e. e. cummings

Bring me little water, Sylvie
Every little once in a while
--Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie, Leadbelly

You call that a preacher?
No, no
He scandalized my name!
--American spiritual

Lord loves a workin' man; don't trust whitey;
see a doctor and get rid of it
--The Jerk (1979)

__________________

I know of an amateur videographer who has captured Obama's Oral Roberts moment in two different campaign rallies. It sounds like Elmer Gantry, redux.

Twice, a young women has fainted at Obama rallies, in approximately the same area of the arena. As the kerfuffle unfolds, from the stage Obama raises both hands shoulder height, a la Rev. Wright and in his stentorian voice calms the crowd: "Do not worry -- she has only fainted. She needs water. Someone please bring water." Subsequently, she revives.

It is right out of the tent revival circuit. The only thing missing was the KFC bucket for the contributions, but that would be simply gauche amongst his latte-swilling demographic.

Two possible explanations come to mind: [1] The faints were scripted, or [2] He is accustomed to women swooning in his presence, and so takes it all in stride. If so, perhaps the campaign should travel with smelling salts.

I thought we'd already laughed the millenialists off the stage after Y2K. Yet after suffering through 7+ years with a born-again fundamentalist president, we are now being cadged by this tent revival hokum from the democrats?

I guess to someone who's never been to a revival, this all sounds very new. And to those who do know the revival circuit, very familiar. Obama is playing a winning hand among the dupes.

Carolyn Glick writing at RealClearPolitics.com took a compelling look at "Obama's cult of personality." Following is an excerpt:

OPPONENTS OF Clinton claim that she is a soulless woman who will do whatever is necessary to have power, because she likes power and wants it. But if this is true it is hard to see why a power-hungry president is worse than a president who believes that he is the people's redeemer. It is hard to see why a leader who wants power because she likes power is less reasonable than a president who thinks he has a right to demand that the American people follow his lead and fix their souls in the name of unity. In the former case, opposition to the leader is a policy dispute. In the latter case, it is apostasy.

Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls."

She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. . . He can heal his countrymen's broken souls. He will redeem them.

But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won't place the whole burden on her husband. He'll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

At base, Mrs. Obama's statement is nothing less than a renunciation of democracy and an embrace of fascism. The basic idea of liberty is that people have a natural right to live their lives as usual and to be uninvolved and uninformed. And they certainly have a right to expect that their government will butt out of their souls.

It is the ultimate PoMo hagiography, a total mashup: Obama will enter the white house and make it white again. He will wash you clean, pick you up and give you faith. A preacher-man politician. He listens to Jay-Z on his i-Pod, but listens to Old School, too. He is a 12-Step program for the nation. Because we are guilty as sin. Of course, we started out that way, according to the Good Book.

You're paying five bucks for a blended Frappacino, when you know the hard-working brother down the street is going to Micky D's. Worse yet, fixing his coffee at home. Maybe even instant. Do they even make that anymore? You don't know, so you follow Michael Moore's admonition to atone for Dred Scott in the 19th century -- maybe before your people even came here. It doesn't matter, for you go to Panera Bread, and that can't be all good.

You are weaned on Oprah, and have never been to a tent revival, so the gesture seems redemptive and new, and all the New Age sages want to help you to be your best self, and here he comes. Presto-chango! Hop on the Obama train and vote for a new and better you.

The religious pander is especially unctuous. Redemption blather has no place in the American political circuit. Our Founding Fathers were fairly stern on the matter of separating church and state.

The savior choreography simply grates, probably because of the contradiction between the posture and the reality. The iconography is so simplistically rendered -- how can a thinking person fall for it?

Hillary's tossing pack boilermakers renders her the workingman's pal, but that construction is more easily borne than that of messiah, for the latter engenders an unquestioning herd mentality, as Glick says.

It is more than a little terrifying to see Americans so accustomed to being pumped up -- whether via Prozac or Oprah or whoever the cheerleader du jour might be -- that they now take their self-improvement fix even from politicians. Is the raft of self-help books at Borders not enough?

Rick Warren, where are you now?

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.

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.

Death Wish?

Too much time on my hands,
it's ticking away with my sanity
I've got too much time on my hands,
it's hard to believe such a calamity
--Too Much Time on My Hands, Styx
___________

A recent emergent trend from within the liberal community vis-a-vis candidate Obama disturbs me -- it is chatter about an imagined assassination plot.

The macabre nostalgic jag seems to emerge from a wistfulness and a longing to resurrect Camelot 1960, hence all things attendant to that time. Some MSM commentators are feeding this frenzy, likening Obama to a latter-day JFK -- someone at the WaPo described him as long and lanky and young, "like JFK, not RFK." How that matters, I don't know.

It is like witnessing NASCAR fanatics who secretly hope for a mashup, and the subsequent martyrdom of the victim. Our own Dale Earnhardt or Benazir Bhutto? Is this persecution complex-via-affiliation what it takes to light a fire under people?

Obama's platform simply is not revolutionary. Is it his coloration? He is within the same tonal value as Colin Powell, and George W. Bush and Company accepted him as Secretary of State. Ditto Condoleeza Rice, though she is even darker.

One could argue Ms. Rice's acceptability rides simply on the basis of a latent desire for minstrelsy in the power elite -- she plays the piano, and is President Bush's good friend. But that would be unkind.

The country seems far more ready to accept a well-connected mulatto male than a female, which would actually be the more daring choice for America. After all, Obama is still a Man in a Grey Flannel Suit, and can play ball with the boys.

Tom Toles cartoon today in the WaPo says it all: Hillary Clinton is damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't. She is a calculating, heartless castrating woman, or an hysterical female. In this race, the real bile is launched at the uppity bitch in the pant suit. (At least pretty little Nancy Pelosi has the good graces to wear tailored skirt suits, above the knee, at that.)

The crone's power is unharnessed by any man, and therefore, untenable to the misogynist. Clinton's opponents have not forgotten her dismissive stance vis-a-vis Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man."

For the bigot, the threat it is six of one, half a dozen of another. You might say the intelligent woman is the larger threat, as he still nurtures the "field negro" type -- easily manipulated by his controllers. If those sorts emerge from their dens, I wouldn't want to call which of those two candidates would rile them the most. But if theirs were such a sizable bloc, Edwards would be making a better showing.

From the British press, "(n)o wonder the clichéd word change works like magic for Obama," for in this way, "it is better to be black. To put it bluntly, for a large, frequently inattentive electorate, there could be no more potent symbol of his differentness" than his blackness (Black is Electable.)

Robert Samuelson in the WaPo today addresses the sad fact that most of the candidates lead with a clarion call about a bright future, but fail to address the lack of funds with which to create it. Specifically no one is addressing Social Security and Medicare in a meaningful way, which would be a real change. These are real issues which will cast a real pall upon any pretty rhetoric in the very near future.

They pay lip service to children but ignore the actual programs that will shape their future. The hypocrisy is especially striking Obama. He courts the young, promises "straight talk" and offers himself as the agent of "change." But his conspicuous omissions constitute "crooked talk" and silently endorse the status quo (Promises They Can't Keep.)

Speculations are running riot about Obama's possible targeting. It is wistful and perverse paranoia. However, I can see from whence it springs. We are being spied upon by our own government, and our pride on the world's stage has been squashed. But we need not pull in like a bunch of Middle Ages rune-casters, prophesying death as though that were the only thing to animate us.

These assassination forecasters speak as though they will coalesce into a militant uprising upon such an anticipated eventuality. What will they do then, that they are not doing or can not do now?

Obama is not a revolutionary. He is a party man who talks nice, and is easy on the eyes. This conspiracy theorizing would be a happy distraction on our part for the republican party, I am certain.

The only thing for a thinking citizen to do is study the platforms and politick and vote accordingly. None of the leading candidates is a magic bullet to the heavy problems that ail us. Whiter shade of pale or not. Saying you'll bring a new day doesn't amount to a whole hill of beans.

Any of us can get shot up at the local mall by a deranged kid with a gun. The full Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination remains sealed until 2017, and most people who cared will be dead by the time it is fully declassified. That bit of legal obfuscation occurred in the 1960's -- the most revolutionary of modern times.

Do you really think you are any more organized today? That is reality.

We can remain above the fray by not engaging in a theatre of the macabre.