For a look at Barack’s actual policies on anything (instead of propaganda) please simply visit http://www.barackobama.com/.
I may have revised some small bits, but the spirit remains.
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First this:
Don Wycliff, editor of the Chicago Tribune, reviewed Steele's book and disagreed with his analysis of Barack noting that:
"[as] I read his essay, I found myself thinking that Steele was trapped in a time warp, that his knowledge of the currents of thought and attitude among black people stopped sometime around 1990. Less charitably, I found myself thinking that the egregious Al Sharpton is not the only one with an investment in a static view of American race relations....It apparently never occurs to Steele that for a man a generation younger than himself the terms of blackness might be different, that the “totalitarian” demands he [Steele] encountered in the ’60s might no longer prevail, that Barack Obama’s mixed-race experience might actually be different than Shelby Steele’s."
My own bit:
Let’s see... Bargaining..? Trade-offs..? Relieving white guilt..? Wants to ‘be black’..? Wait! You’re calling Obama an Oreo!!!
Oh, God!!! Is this a tired old accusation, or what?... The above review is dead on! Not Shelby... Basically, Shelby Steele’s take is just a revamped version of the ol’ uncle Tom Oreo name callin’ thang... That’s it. For all his intellectualizing and pseudo psychological neo Freud-o babble about ‘trade-offs’, it just boils down one black guy calling another black guy a house nigga’... and it’s so, so tired and boring... He reminds me of the children I grew up with (yes, a father remembers...), except he’s still angry... Whatever...
Steele talks about Barack’s charisma as if it’s entirely a contrivance. In fact, lots of people who want Obama to just “go away already!”, talk like that; like it’s all an image he’s somehow positioned himself in, to manipulate... This isn’t that surprising because hey, that’s what campaigns and politics is all about, right? Show business, right; focus groups and PR and positioning and shit? But we are all aware of this by now... And we’re not under some funky contextual spell, and Barack isn’t stirring toads into a magic iron urn and mumbling spells of hypnotic delights to delusional wide-eyed blind optimists, towards which he’s positioned himself as some savior.
Interesting note: Charisma is based on the word charism... Originally, is was a term used by monks to describe a quality given to a person by god, in order to validate that person’s presence in a place.
Doesn’t that just piss off the gatekeepers and how!
Yeah, admittedly, some of what is happening is about the context which Barack is positioned in. But he didn’t do it himself. He may be providing Jungian hooks on which we are hanging all kinds of archetypes... None of them, from his direct causation or manipulation. But he is a famous young black politician running for president in the United States, for chrissake!
Now, if he were an eloquent and poetic black boxer protesting the war, it wouldn’t be so surprising... Well, not these days anyway...
So, why should all that archetype hanging surprise us? Sheesh...
This doesn’t make him manipulative, psychologically strange, nor the new hope to his supporters... it just means that on (whatever truthful and real) hook he’s got, those archetypes, today anyway, hang quite well...
Maybe, just maybe his charisma is because, within today’s context, he may be the right person (when compared to the current alternatives) to help us heal some of this pessimism, masquerading as realism.
Maybe this exchange on your blog is all it’s all about...
But does it really have to sink to some house nigga thang..?
My name is Barack Obama...
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful...
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Copyright © November 2008 by Gerald Ollison. All rights reserved.
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