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She is a bellwether of public opinion but has no convictions of her own. And here is the proof. This being the case, why should her support of Obama mean anything? Her bullying tone is becoming all too familiar to me.
Update: Here is a drop dead Hillary piece from Nora Ephron, someone I once respected but no longer do. And that is getting to be a long list of people.
"Anyone who thinks that Berkeley is just a hotbed of political radicalism is in for a surprise. From the main gate on the UC Berkeley campus (show here) to the city's revamped sophisticated boutiques and shops, Berkeley offers a quirky mix of attractions."
This main gate has a name, Sather Gate. It's been around a lot longer than the "revamped sophisticated boutiques and shops" and "quirky mix of attractions." Striking to me is the quotidian drabness of the Cal students in this upscale and expensive town.
Of course Berkeley was not only the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement; it also was the birthplace of Yuppiedom. It has long been favored by young professionals. Now it is on the tourist route as well. The traffic is awful and it is crowded beyond belief. I really don't relate to Berkeley anymore, not as it is today.
I lived there when it was another place entirely.
Update: After a good deal of searching, I found this by Charles Wollenberg in the Berkeley Public library online archives:
The word "Yuppie," referring to young urban professionals, was first coined in the early eighties by Berkeley writer Alice Kahn in a wry social commentary published in the East Bay Express. Although the word was quickly adopted by the national media, it was particularly applicable to Berkeley. College-educated people in their twenties and thirties were moving to Berkeley, attracted by the cultural life of the university town and the relatively tolerant, multi-ethnic environment. Living costs were somewhat lower than San Francisco's, and the new residents were often blessed with good jobs or at least good job prospects. Often childless with few family obligations, the young professionals had disposable income to spend on good food, drink and other amenities. This created opportunities for a new generation of Berkeley entrepreneurs, often veterans of the cultural wars of the sixties. They responded to the "yuppie market" with an array of new businesses ranging from coffee houses to New Age boutiques.
This excerpt is from a ten chapter history of Berkeley that I find fascinating. I'll probably have more to say about it once I finish it.
Here's a little quiz: Who is she? A Congresswoman who confronted Rumsfeld in a hearing and made him look like a fool. Caricatured as a crazy violent female who had shoved a security guard. Who lost her next election under dubious circumstances. Whom Oliver Willis reviled, as did many other influential blacks, to their eternal shame. A black woman who speaks truth to power, to whom Martin Luther King is a vital presence.
(I can't express what Martin Luther King meant to me. I can't forget how we all sat in front of the television in tears after he was assassinated and the marches afterwards that brought out thousands where I was living at the time. When I showed my film about King to my classes on MLK Day I had to leave the room, because his greatness and his martyrdom have never really stopped affecting me. And look what we have now. Totally corrupt mass media machines grinding out propaganda trying to convince Americans that we do not have to confront our evil history.
Condaleeza Rice, of all people, got it exactly right when she said this country suffers from a "birth defect." She has diagnosed the problem, all right, but she is hardly the one to cure it, since, like Obama, she has become a tool.)
Here is our mystery politician's web site
Here is Oliver Willis, now a happy camper at the Obama Koombaya love-fest, on our mystery politician.
And here is the sordid tale of how Diebold stole the election from her.
I’m taking a hard look at the Obama campaign, trying to assess the long-term consequences of the push by his supporters to win the Democratic nomination and election at all costs. They are behaving as if the future of civilization depended on Obama the Victorious. If I do not talk about Clinton’s campaign here, it is because I have not been following it closely. The Clinton camp has its own strategies. Furthermore, the leftist press is mobbing Clinton and her supporters right now, everyone from “The Nation” to the “Huffington Post” to “Talking Points Memo,” so it is hardly necessary for me to provide a critique of her and her operatives.
Obama has been set up by important internationally minded capitalists, as Ishmael Reed points out, as the noble new force in politics, the unstoppable engine of history who will lead us out of the wilderness. This being the case, can he also be a political progressive? The fundamental dishonesty that the nature of his most important backers puts at the center of his campaign makes this a dubious proposition. How do his people deal with this cognitive dissonance, the notion of a rich man with rich friends who wants to be the most powerful man in the world yet who is nonetheless a man of the people, up from oppression and so on?
Clearly, Obama’s campaign people have been reading the cognitive linguist George Lakoff’s primer on politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant. However, they are using his points in a manipulative way and forgetting what is at the core of progressive thought.
The left agenda as Lakoff lays it out consists of uniting the six basic progressive values into a coherent, honest, and moral world view and program for America. Lakoff identifies these values as socioeconomic, identity, environmentalist, civil libertarian, spiritual, and antiauthoritarian. He identifies two basic world views: that of the strict father or the nurturant parent. He says that the six basic values are nurturant. They demand honesty and two way communication rather than simply issuing orders or telling other people what’s good for them. One aspect of communication here that he does not go into is the use of the media and the manipulation of ideas and emotions in order to win elections. Obama certainly displays nurturant qualities when he urges people to be the change they want. But his campaign is above all media savvy.
Lakoff says people vote their identity, not their self interest. So what is it that voters find in Obama that they identify with? Since I personally do not identify with Obama, I have asked friends who support him what it is they see in him, where they find their commonality. One friend told me he likes Obama because he is going with the young people. In spite of being himself in his 70’s the days of his youth were the important ones and his life thereafter has been an anticlimax. For him, as for many Americans, youth is a positive value and age a negative one.
Other friends respond to his message of a new, shiny America where the difficulties of our history will be washed away. I sense that they want to continue to enjoy their prosperity in the white enclaves where most of them live while at the same time regarding themselves as open minded liberals. Some of these enthusiasts are first and second generation immigrants very pumped on the American dream who have made a lot of money and have far more things than they would have been able to amass in their parents’ home countries.
Understandable is his popularity among blacks; of course they identify with him as one of their own. His background, however is really nothing like that of an African-American. His father is a Kenyan who was killed in a traffic accident, and his mother a white woman, a free spirit from Kansas who travelled the world, saw many things, and died at the age of 53 of cancer. He experienced much disruption and sadness growing up, but his ancestors did not come to this country in chains. Surely, he experienced discrimination, but arguably to a lesser degree than, say, a typical black woman living in St. Louis.
What I return to in my mind over and over is the necessity for total honesty in anyone who wants to take the stage as a progressive. Media manipulation is dishonest. The soaring images of Obama and all the flags, as he gave his speech on race, to me undercut his message. That, and the appeals to sentiment that were geared to women, something that Lakoff talks about. Women like personal stories about suffering, love, and redemption, according to Lakoff. Hench the popularity of Oprah and Dr. Phil. When Obama evokes his grandmother who loved him (in spite of being a racist) or tells other personal stories and tales, he is pitching the woo to women, in particular to white women. Since blacks are 90% behind him, he does not bother to cater to them. Instead he says in so many words that although white people are racist they can still vote for him and be redeemed. They can do a little for lesser people, or even just have feel-good moments about minorities, yet still retain their privileges.
To use such tales in a major speech about the enormous subject of race in America is cynical. To say all politicians do this is fair enough, but isn’t Obama supposed to be better than that? That’s part of why I believe that winning is what is all important to the Obama crowd.
As Lakoff says, honesty and two-way communication are vital progressive values. But look at these two examples of betrayal of the trust of the voters:
Consider his obtaining the backing of the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper and, I would suspect, funding from his constituents. His spokesperson or spokespersons did this by assuring Harper that Obama did not really mean what he said about the evils of NAFTA but was just saying that to appeal to the working class voters of the Midwest. Harper is furious at the leak, apparently.
Less serious but better known is Samantha Power’s averring that Hillary Clinton was a “monster” who would “stoop to anything,” a statement so shocking that she had to be fired. But what interested me most about what she said was that Obama’s anti-war stance was also something of a deception.
Clearly, there is a betrayal of trust here, a violation of progressive values.
Lakoff says that Conservatives are always honest. I’m not 100% in agreement with Lakoff about that, but he claims that they say what they believe. Liberals try to appease them by moving to the right. That is a mistake. Voters perceive the insincerity. Conservatives believe in perpetual war, and they say so. They want to eliminate social welfare programs, and they say so. They want to cut taxes on the rich, and they say so and follow through. They believe in god’s law before civil law. What do liberals do? Clinton ends “Welfare as we know it.” He caters to the military. And that is how it’s been going.
Will Obama be different in this regard? What is worrying to me about Obama is that he talks left in public and his people talk right behind the scenes. He has wrapped himself in the flag and praises the lord on a regular basis. Is he perceived as sincere on this? And if he is sincere, why should I want to vote for him? I am not religious and I’m not an America firster. And if he doesn’t really believe these things he is a dishonest hypocrite. Or worst of all, a tool, a rock star, a product.
The National Park web site has updates on the eruption (s) and great photos, such as the one on the left. (As usual, click for enlargement). Halemaumau Crater is looking very explosive. Our tourist industry is delighted and thanks Pele very much.
There is a fine article by Judith Shulevitz in Slate about Toby Wolff. I heard him speak and read from his work in the 80's. One of his early stories, "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs," says it all about women in the academic world. If you are willing to ignore humiliation, insults, to lie and be lied to, you can perhaps gain a foothold in academia, but even at that you can't count on anything. And if you decide to tell the truth, it's all over. Great story. I love his work. He is a feminist, a person who actually understands the plight of women in the patriarchy, where the rewards go to the biggest and best liars and truth is the enemy.
Last night I had a conversation with Canadian friends of my daughter. From their viewpoint, Obama looked like a rock star. They couldn't understand why a person with so little experience seemed to be on the fast track to the Presidency. He's not Martin Luther King, after all, one of them said.
I remarked that Martin Luther King was a world historical figure, assassinated when he was only 39. They were amazed to learn that he had been so young. They were also surprised that Obama is 47. I don’t know how to interpret that, if interpretation is called for; it may be just a stray fact. However, Obama is not a young person and yet is perceived as such, whereas King is remembered as a grave middle aged man. I expect that part of Obama’s appeal is to older people who like to think of themselves as young or at any rate in league with the younger generation.
The Canadians also asked me if I had seen “Sicko.” They said it was pretty accurate as far as the Canadian health system goes. They don’t have the money for all the fancy machines and esoteric procedures, so sometimes Canadians do come to the U.S.for more unusual treatments, but overall the system serves people well. We related some of the routine matters that everyone in this country accepts, such as that it becomes harder to get insurance and costs go up if you have a “preexisting condition.” You mean, the Canadians said, that if you are in poor health it is more difficult to get care than if you are in good health? They thought that was exactly backwards.
I am lending them my copy of Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. Their social welfare system is under attack by the rich people around Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and they can’t analyze what’s going on, because it seems so contrary to common sense. This book should help them, as it has helped me to get my political thinking straight.
I have been hearing complaints about how aggressive the Obama campaign workers are. They feel that fund raising is the #1 priority and do not hesitate to annoy anyone who has ever contributed to his campaign with constant phone calls and e-mails. The Clinton fund raisers are far less persistent. Knowing the convictions of some people who work for Obama and their belief that their man must win, I can quite imagine that these incessant requests for money seem quite justified to them.
It also appears from some e-mails I’ve been getting that Obama fans are so sure that I agree with them that he is the obvious choice for President that they don’t even bother to assess my opinions on the matter.
The Pennsylvania primary will be interesting.
Update: Where's teh Koombaya? Obama is not asserting control over the messages rabid fans are leaving on his official website. As this blog also reveals, I guess his people have been making deals with Prime Minister Harper about NAFTA that the public was not supposed to find out about. Harper is trying to discover who leaked the information to the press. So what do we have here? Very open attacks on perceived enemies while making deals with possible (conservative) allies once Obama takes office.
Well, if Richardson endorses Obama, that clinches it. The kitsch aspects of his campaign do bother me a lot. Charisma has its dangers, as history shows. But it appears that the only thing that can get Americans moving in the same direction is strong emotional appeals and the clever use of symbols.
I do not like to see the debasement of liberal thought through "Disneyfication" and emotional manipulation. Lakoff tells us that language analysis says that sentimental appeals and the use of the word "love" in particular have a powerful effect on women. So the anecdote about his grandmother could be perceived as manipulative. This is not straightforward stuff at all but the work of clever media people.
For something more down to earth, here is the web site of Real Change, the "homeless" newspaper. The distributors make a small amount of money selling the paper around town for a dollar.
When I get an hour or two I'm going to write a piece about Obama and Lakoff.
An excellent grandson was born today in Seattle. We're flying out tomorrow to meet him.
