This piece is about a politician. Or about writing. Or images. Or what the media does, both subtly and blatantly. Even though ed makes an appearance and makes fun of me, it’s mostly not that funny.
We have a righteous wind at our backs, and, as we stand at the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.
Americans do seem to love perpetual political campaigning… for all that we say we don’t. Or maybe just US journalists love it.
The somewhat Kennedy-esque first TV commercial for Senator Barack Hussein Obama Jr.’s possible presidential run has surfaced here.
Sasha, Michelle, and Barack Obama (l to r).
Scott Olson, Getty Images
Note what I did with his name above? I gave his name in full. This probably subtly attacks the man: the technically accurate “Jr.” — he was named for his father — is somewhat demeaning. The ‘Hussein’? A lot of people are talking about that. Some of (right-wing) talk radio is pushing the ‘Hussein’ angle.
Granted, a politician running in 1948 named “George Hitler Jones” might have attracted some attention, but Hussein is a much more common name.
(There’s also the subtle point that mostly full names are only given in the U.S. for notorious serial killers).
I don’t think there’s any ‘there’ there. It’s about as controversial as the “W” in George W. Bush’s name. Both are named for ancestors. And, as Senator Obama sensibly noted, if you can get by the name “Barack Obama” the Hussein really shouldn’t give you pause.
But I thought I’d just dissect my reference to his name. Signals we send are subtle; sometimes unintentional. They can be propagandistic nevertheless. Henceforth, I’ll refer to the man as “Barack Obama”, but I thought the fact that his middle name is “Hussein” is an interesting bit of trivia.
I suppose I could leave it as an exercise for the reader, but I’ll point out the two ways I boosted him in this article.
First, opening with “We have a righteous wind at our backs”. I could have opened with no quote, or quoting him denying the scandal of a Chicago land deal (see below). That would have certainly altered the initial perception of the man in this post.
Second, a smiling picture of the man with his family. Short of kissing babies or running into a fire to rescue people, there’s little that’s more telegenic for a politician. Pictures can exalt or destroy politicians. Consider the two rides in tanks of two politicians in the ’80’s: Margaret Thatcher and Michael Dukakis. (The latter was the Democratic governor of Massachusetts who challenged George H.W. Bush for the presidency in 1988).
Everyone believed Dukakis was a technocratic nerd (I say that as a bit of a technocrat and maybe a nerd — though at least a tall and athletic one — myself). [can someone blog and NOT be a nerd? --ed.]. The tank pictures didn’t help.
No one in this galaxy, or our neighboring galaxies, believed Thatcher was anything but tough — very tough. Riding in a tank — however prim and womanly she looked — just plain felt like the kind of thing she’d do on weekends for recreation. After running over Michael’s Foot. [Everyone's going to think you mean Dukakis' foot, and no one will get the joke --ed. (well it made you laugh -wolfe). Touché, but it's still a bad joke -- ed.]
Dukakis was dressed photo-op-style for it, down to having a helmet with his name on it. Thatcher was wearing a flowing, female [trouble using the word 'feminine' with Thatcher? -ed.] ensemble that looked as though she’d just stepped out of Selfridges. [Little known fact: the founder of Selfridges was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, a town that Diesel should like].
The results? Well, here goes:
Hi, I’m Mike Dukakis, and I’m a dork. AP Photo
Which way is Moscow? BBC Photo
Dukakis, in all his 5′6″ magnificence [come on, give his real height -ed.] OK, OK, … Dukakis in all his 5′8″ magnificence looked, like, well, a technocratic dork. That’s worse than nerd. I think. Worse yet, going up against a tall, patrician genuine war hero in George H.W. Bush (youngest carrier aviator pilot in the USN; gave up university to go into combat in WW 2) he looked… well… pathetic is the kindest word.
Thatcher, by contrast, looked as though she wanted to nuke Moscow, yet unlike Dukakis was completely inappropriately dressed.
Papers that endlessly reprinted the Dukakis disaster of a photo-op were subtly saying “vote Republican”. Or maybe they were saying “Dukakis is an idiot”. Similar thing I guess. Papers that endlessly reprinted the Thatcher tank photo-op were, of course, the Sun.
With that digression into politician photos and photo-ops, we come to an important point on Obama. Recent allegations have surfaced that he was the beneficiary (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) in a sweet land deal seemingly orchestrated by a supporter of his.
Now see what I just did? I talked endlessly about other things, including going back to the 1980’s then unleashed an important bit of current (negative) news on Barack Obama.
This is what newspapers call ‘burying the lede’. (Yes, ‘lede’ not ‘lead’, though it means much the same thing).
Newspaper stories, unlike blog posts or newspaper columns, are written so that they can be chopped off, arbitrarily, at the end any paragraph, after about 1-3 paragraphs. Try it in a good newspaper and you’ll see. It’s quite an interesting style of writing.
By ‘burying the lede’, you not only hope that the conclusion (A1 story continued on page A17) will not be read because of a ‘jump’ in pagination, you also hope that online readers won’t read it, either because of a ‘jump’ (beyond a big online ad) or because they are bored. You also faintly hope an editor may excise part of the damaging information at a paragraph break. Purely for space constraints of course. Even online space constraints. Of course.
But you can then truthfully say, yes, we reported on Obama’s land scandal problems in a page A1 story.
Needless to say, when it’s a Republican, the lede tends not to be so buried.
Senator Obama’s land scandal? Oh, it’s smelly. But pretty much par for the course with politicians. Seems about as bad as anything George W. Bush has gotten up to, but only one instance rather than several. And nothing near Hilary Clinton’s “Whitewater” and “Cattlegate” scandals. (In the latter, a $100,000 bribe to her husband was ‘laundered’ through Hillary Clinton.) And Senator Obama’s reacting appropriately, I think. You can read the linked article for more information. Unless Senator Obama is lying, there’s not much ‘there’ there.
What do I like about the man? Though this is a buried lede, I’m boldfacing it in the hopes that it will be seen. From Wikipedia:
In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes a nearly race-blind early childhood. He writes: “That my father looked nothing like the people around me –- that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk –- barely registered in my mind.
Wikipedia goes on (accurately, I think), to describe him as a cultural and ethnic Rorschach test:
an ink spot on which his fans can project their own personal histories and aspirations. Obama’s own self-narrative helps encourage diverse multiethnic affinities. In Dreams from My Father, he links his maternal family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the Civil War. Speaking before an elderly Jewish audience during his 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate, Obama likened the linguistic roots of his first name Barack to the Hebrew word baruch, meaning blessed.
This country is too screwed up on ethnicity and race. To our detriment. I hope that we’ll see an end to legally enforced racial discrimination by the 2020’s, and an end to most other forms this century. But I’m not holding my breath.
In the end, do I support the man? Heck no. His voting record in Illinois was virtually unreconstructed Marxism. His quotes are long on platitudes and short on ideas. But I think he’s a good and decent man and one worth thoughtfully looking at. You may differ.
-wolfe
