Seriously , Atticus Finch /Atticus Flinch? Dulcinea Dowd is really stretching the Dorothy Parker thing. However, she's still incisive and rapier-witted, as well as Irish and lovely.
The president who is always talking about wanting to be perfectly clear is ever more opaque. The One, who owes his presidency to the intense feeling he stirred up, turns out to be a practical guy who can’t deal with intense feeling.
He ran as a man apart — Joe Biden was enlisted to folksy him up — and now he must deal with the fact that many see him as a man apart.
Too lofty to pay heed to the daily bump and grind of politics, Obama has failed to present himself as someone with the common touch. And to the extent that people don’t know him or don’t get him, he becomes easier to demonize.
Obama is the victim of the elevated expectations he so skillfully created in 2008.
He came as a redeemer and then — tied up in W.’s Gordian knots, dragged down by an economy leeched by wars and Wall Street charlatans — didn’t redeem. And nothing bums out a nation that blows with the wind like a self-appointed messiah who disappoints.
If we’re not the ones we’ve been waiting for, who are we?
I think the problem Obama faces is the problem of the ironic. He's the guy who sees the absurdity, and refused to act like it's OK to be stupid or to pander. No Bush drumming and dancing day for him -- no Indian feathered bonnet or cowboy hat. He's a skinny black guy from Chicago by way of Hawaii, Indonesia, Columbia and Harvard Law. He knows that he looks stupid with hats and he's willing to be funny, but not stupid. No fish-throwing in Seattle on his recent visit; he was in Pike Place market, but no salmon sailing for him.
The turkey pardoning last Thanksgiving said it all. He knew that it was silly, but he also knew he was supposed to do it. So, "some days you change the world, some days you pardon a turkey." At least, he hasn't pardoned a turkey like Scooter Libby yet.
Dulcinea does miss the point, wondering is so terribly misunderstood. There is a background level of racism that flows in this country -- and probably every ethnically divided country because, as Kristofferson put it 39 years ago, "Everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on/Who they can feel better than at any time they choose/Someone doin' something dirty decent folk can frown on/If you can't find nobody else, help yourself to me."
Well, In the case of this administration, their effort to impose rationality on the bread and circuses of this late Republic has made them the someone decent folk can frown on. They have already got it coming to them because they're black. And, he's got a funny name. And, his kids are smarter than most of our kids. And, their dog is hypo-allergenic. And, and, and...did I mention he's a Muslim?
Yeah. He got bitchslapped two years ago because he was attending a mainstream Black Church. I've listened to Reverend Wrights sermons, and read a few and he's as traditional as Billy Graham or Martin Luther King in his style of homiletics. He has a different perspective, but he's as Christian as they come. There is no difference between his message and that...
BLACK MAN:
And now... This weeks sermon is from our Beloved Reverend Cleophus James!
REV. BROWN:And now people. And now people. When I woke up this morning I heard a disturbing sound. I said, when I woke up this mornin' I heard a disturbing sound! What I heard was a jingle-jangle of a thousand lost souls! I'm talkin' about the souls of mortal men and women, that departed from this life. Wait a minute! Though the lord take the souls, without them seein' 'em on the earth, seekin' the fine light! They will not find! Because it is too late!! Too late!! Yeah! Too late to find the light, they chose not to follow! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Don't be lost when the time comes! Dont be lost when the time comes! For the day of the lord cometh, as a thief in the night! AMEN! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Well Well Well!!
Somehow, the Christian who was slapped for listening to someone influenced by Liberation Theology and Martin Luther King has morphed into Obama the Muslim. Yeah. Franklin Graham, who bears more resemblance to Billy Sunday than Billy Graham, babbles some lunacy about Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim because the religion passes through the male line, like Judaism passes through the female line. He then went outside, got upbehind the whore of Babylon and roade off on the beast with many heads leading the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...only instead of Famine, Pestilence, War and Death they're Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy and Rudolph. My father was a Republican -- does that mean I'm doomed to wear sansabelt style pants up around my armpits and vote for idiots?
President Obama is obviously not a Roman Dictator, yet in a way he reminds me of Caesar. We forget, because it doesn't fit our concept of the man or the times or the mores to steal a line from Cicero --O Tempora! O Mores!" -- but Caesar didn't want to kill people or take power to just take power. He wanted power so he could do things, so he could fix the shit that was all fucked up by the failure of the late Republic to function because of faction, greed, the influence of mystery cults and the disenfranchisement of the Roman people. Nothing worked...He didn't want to kill Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Pompey or Cato -- he wanted to be in charge but wanted to work together to find bi-partisan solutions. He wept at the deaths of Pompey and Cato. Ptolomey's first mistake was letting his eunuchs plan the murder of Pompey; his second was giving Caesar Pompey's head. Ultimately, of course, it worked out so well for him...
We are blessed with a president who can think coherently, who can think in complete sentences and paragraphs, who can do the math. We are also blessed with a Democratic Republican form of government that protects the rights of the minority. We have recreated a structure that depends on people working in good faith to solve problems. Not for ambition, but for the common good. We're fucked.
About the slacks, probably.
Posted by: CK | 23 August 2010 at 09:54 AM