Where to begin. Where oh where to fucking begin. Numero uno, I thought I already covered this, and wherever I have failed—and the possiblity exists, the reality exists, that and my public is the size of a pea—The New Yorker has nicely picked up the slack.
Surely these are not overly-complex ideas, people! Barack Obama ich bin ein politician. Yes, I understand, you liberals got yourselves all worked up by the fact that he reads books. Christ, he writes them, and by all accounts, not only very well but all by his talented self. I understand you got all your introjected hopes up—you know, the ones you’ve been saving since childhood, or at least adolescence: that the wise and kindly uber-parent would come along who would at last understand, er, I mean, whom you could vote for.
But really, let’s call a sp- … no, that analogy won’t do. Let’s just tell ourselves the truth, like the adults we imagine ourselves to be. If you don’t have a paper copy of The New Yorker (paper? She mentions paper online? What balls—except I don’t have any, unless of course you mean in the psychic sense, exactly as Roseanne Barr once meant and look where it got her. Or, alternately, the stupid bitch, only that won’t work either. Bring me the head of an A-list blogger. It doesn’t even have to be detached yet.)
If you don’t have a boughten (another insult) copy, here is your fucking link, jack, so you got no excuse: read it and weep. Weep at all you will learn, and in the end, try to wrap your brain around the complex, highly interesting picture of Barack Obama this article draws. Because when you are done reading … yes, you are going to read, something neither short nor Jacob Nielsen-ized.
… when you are done (I’ll give you this in advance) you are not going to be able to pin Obama to the split little extremes on which the American psyche so depends. More’s the pity. Truth is, George Bush has given you one long, easy shot: Bad. Simple-minded. D.u.m.b. More truth: he may have diminished our national ability to think. You remember thinking, yes? Or at the very least, you’ve heard your parents speak of it? What is this rough beast. slouching towards the opposite of Bethlehem, clearly on it’s way to, like, you know. Not busy being born.
It’s that damned moral ambivalence again. Coming to the best conclusion in the moment. Having some sense of the greater good. The activity of Thinking. Not to get all Hannah Arendt on you (I only wish.) Welcome to the pain and pity—and ultimate loneliness, and the only freedom there is—of being an Adult.
You want morsels? For it is a superb piece of writing, one in which the writer is equal to the complexity of his subject, and that’s the stuff of real delight, all round. As well as the reason I sincerely hope I croak before The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books do.
Saltzman, a soft-spoken activist who worked for Senators Adlai E. Stevenson III and Paul Simon, took an immediate interest in Obama. “I honestly don’t remember what it was about him, but I was absolutely blown away,” Saltzman says. “I said to several people that this guy, who is now thirty years old, is someday going to be President. He will be our first black President.”
Chew on that one for a while. It actually contains the nut of the thing, the root of the matter, though I would be hard put to say what that is. It takes a long article, it takes a real writer (Virginia Heffernan, do take note.)
Morsel numero dos:
Obama seems to have been meticulous about constructing a political identity for himself.
Meticulous is a special grace. Truly. Have you seen any meticulous in the past, oh, eight years? And are just you awash in meticulous, online?
Obama was writing “Dreams” at the moment that he was preparing for a life in politics, and he launched his book and his first political campaign simultaneously, in the summer of 1995, when he saw his first chance of winning.
I’m only going to tell you this once: Ryan Lizza is not damning Obama. Read through his archives: he ain’t damning anybody.
This morsel I add for myself and my creaky peers, who should get a weird thrill out of this one:
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, another activist Hyde Park couple, also held an event for Obama. Forty years ago, Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weathermen …
… the fucking Weathermen, second (if indeed that) only to the Black Panthers in revolutionaries you will never know, in a time you will never know. Yes! Right here in dumb ol’ America! And you missed it! Eat hearts out.
… the militant antiwar group that bombed the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.
Mindblowing. Has anybody ever had guts, since then.
Allow me a few more out-of-context pleasures. After all, you are going to read the whole thing, especially if you are still upset with Obama. And the real after all: it’s my blog.
It was a classic Obamaism: superficially critical of some unseemly aspect of the political process without necessarily forswearing the practice itself. Obama was learning that one of the greatest skills a politician can possess is candor about the dirty work it takes to get and stay elected.
Lastly, before I snippet the whole damn article, I’ll be honest of how Obama got under my psychoanlytic skin. Knowing how someone bought and sold you is part of becoming that which we all must strive towards, if there’s to be any hope at all: the one who loves and at the same time, retains an objective heart. Ooh, tricky.
We must also engage …
Obama wrote after September 11, 2001,
… in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate …
Ah, hell. Of course it is, when it is. But the man writes a hell of a speech. That alone, tell me it does not bode well. Go ahead. I dare you.
