I’m afraid I can’t agree with Michael Tomasky:
Michelle Obama should have laid the schmaltz on even thicker than she did last night.
It’s all very well to talk about her and Barack Obama’s working class origins, but it might be a bit better to forget the American Dream narrative and actually discuss what might enable more than a minority of poor folks to actually get a bit of opportunity in a deeply unequal society. “Yes We Can”? Not through any actually existing Democratic Party, we won’t.
PS: The old white guy’s worse though.
Update: The Audacity of Hype? Jennifer Baumgardner:
Barack Obama is saying “Yes we can…support a biracial (Ivy-educated, male, lawyer) candidate for the highest office in the nation,” which shouldn’t be confused with “Yes we can…wage a social justice revolution in which everybody has health care, the death penalty is considered an abomination, and we won’t bomb Pakistan.”
Naomi Wolf:
Of course the real fault is not Obama’s, but ours. We have forgotten the kind of risk and work it takes to build transformative mass movements, and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he’d better win.
just like the 2000 election, one is thinking “a nation of (circa) 300 million people and it comes down to a run-off between these two turkeys?”
The only thing sticking to the old white feller is strength of character, in which he is miles ahead of the young blackfeller.
Update: The Audacity of Hype? Jennifer Baumgardner:
Naomi Wolf:
Naomi Wolf’s comment is so spot on it hurts.
“just like the 2000 election, one is thinking “a nation of (circa) 300 million people and it comes down to a run-off between these two turkeys?””
No. This kind of South Park “douche vs turd” argument is completely wrong knowing what we do now about the Bush administration. Hell, it was wrong back in 2004, and even further back in 2000. John Kerry was not the perfect candidate, nor was Al Gore. Obama isn’t the perfect candidate. However when the alternative is so bad, so unimaginably awful the only responsible option is to vote for the imperfect candidate even if he ‘looks French’, is kinda boring, or is heavy on the rhetoric. A McCain Presidency will be just as disastrous for the U.S and the world as Bush’s has been.
Daniel, time to change hands, (if you think Kerry or Gore where anything but dickheads on a bush scale)
The US, like Australia, is a rich state under seige. The system operative in our world seems not unlike the dying days of the Roman republic, where Roman politicians dealt in a populist way with the plebeiens; the weakened remnants of old Rome offered up the leadership field for the new (relatively)globalised state in return for promises answering concerns about food supplies and the relative status of Romans to foreigners.
In our time the US is the defacto world governemt, but the electorate for this government is small, geographically isolated to the North American continent and narrow in self focus, being concerned that its symbolic and material perks are not ( further) removed in the interests of dogooder middle classes insulated from economic failure, or more pertinently, international capital that is less subject to local laws than ever; who manipulate public perceptions through MSM anyway.
All candidates must first prove their isolationist, anti-intellectualist and imperialist credentials to the Bubbas and Crackers, not unlike Howard, Rudd,etc, here as to the Hansonist mortgage belt operated by tabloid press and media on behalf of locally operative capital formations.
How do you prove isolationist and imperialist credentials at the same time? Is this about Hawaii and Alaska because if it is I reckon you’re onto something.
BBB
It’s showbiz babe.
The only thing sticking to the old white feller is strength of character
Oh c’mon, the US electorate is being presented with basicallty two choices:
“Hope!” (”Hope!”is a fully owned trademark. All rights reserved. Rhetoric May Appear Closer In The Mirror)
and
“I was a fucking POW you stupid cunt! I deserve this!”
Whoever wins, they’ll in be hock up to their eyeballs and beyond in the vast web of vested interests spun throughout
Shelob;s LairDC.But hey citizen, look on the bright side! The US is too big, crazy, vital, ruthless, funky, sexy and whacky to be dragged down anymore by useless governments. It’s gonna keep doing its many cool and crazy things regardless of who’s nominally in charge. The US is gonna become more like Iraq than Iraq like America.
And then some Black Swan event collapses the US’s civil structure, the Canadians and Mexicans move in and suddenly NAFTA’s now a political entity with a legislative body – where chipper Canucks, rich Mexicans, baffled Bostonians and cunning Texians are all equally confused about what to do next with what is now the most powerful economic and cultural empire the world has ever seen. And one that just will wriggle through their fingers like a smart polymer heading for Legoworld FTZ in Nigeria,.
While China fragments, Russia goes pyscho, India gets drunk for the first time and Brazil’s commuter aircraft industry has got your biofuelled lift home.
The world’s gonna get seriously whacky soon and like the rest of us, POTUS will end out there trying to catch a wave too.
Hey, I’ll gonna be in DC on the first Tuesday in November this year. Then going to a Space Shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Centre on 10 November.
I’ll attempt to put in words the roar and vibration of several hundred thousand pounds of volitle hydrocarbons turned into flame and smoke just to deliver a comfort package to a bunch bunch of freeloaders revolving about their axis in an increasingly expensive and high maintenance bunch of living pods which smell strongly of feet.
On the other hand, I just may ignore Election Day altogether and write instead about America’s gallant and brilliant space program.
It seems that a lot of progressive Australians have embraced Barack Obama’s new secular evangelism. His consensus politics are reminiscent of Bob Hawke. His campaigning is pure Planet Hollywood. Le’s hope he’s not the Democrat Starbucks – lots of froth but a dodgy future.
No doubt those of us who support him now will be highly critical within six months. His policy to increase the size of the military and defence spending will be one aspect.
“That said, he’d better win.”
Whoever wins will be hardpressed to explain why higher taxes are not preventing the crumbling of infrastructure and civil society.
The answer is that the Chinese, Arabs and Russians want their money back.
And the American punters won’t be happy to hear that answer.
Stand by for some self-righteous American assaults on globalism.
“…why higher taxes are not preventing the crumbling of infrastructure and civil society”
What higher taxes Katz?
Yes it’s all panem et circenses now in the US. The manned space program is a truly wonderful circus, and much cheaper and less harmful than random small wars. As Katz notes, their problem for the future is going to be keeping the bread shipments flowing when the granaries are owned by the barbarians.
Ya gotta admire the sheer chutzpah of them selling the “log cabin to White House” theme again in the face of the hard statistical evidence that the US now has about the least equality of opportunity of any country in the OECD. If you’re born poor in the US you stay poor. Perhaps even more worrying, if you’re born rich you stay rich.
Shakespeare’s sister is good.
Something like this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1993
The only thing sticking to the old white feller is strength of character, in which he is miles ahead of the young blackfeller.
If you think abandoning your disabled wife (because she’s not as pert and lovely as she used to be) for a rich woman whose funds you use for your political machinations, and then calling Wife 2 a “c**t” represents “strength of character”, your definitions are way askew of the general population.
Katz, that was 15 years ago.
Got anything much since then?
BB etc, one discovers it is easier to oppress one’s subjects when discretely distanced from them.
The curent electorate is a bit like the pre civil electorate- it loves democracy just so long as the masses of slaves are not included.
Naomi the sheep in Wolf’s clothing says,
“…and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he’d better win.”
How lame, how accommodating, how craven to the power of media spin. Us LP folks are made of sterner stuff, are we not ???
Notice either the pant suit is hidden or she’s wearing a dress!
Grace, perhaps we are talking at cross porposes.
I’m suggesting that the next POTUS will accept or perhaps even lead a raising of taxes to reverse GWB’s recent lowering of taxes.
Well, that’s what Obama is running on, while McCain has reversed his previous opposition to the GWB tax cuts.
Whoever wins will be a Yank, with a Yank outlook on the world.
Naomi Wolf is a silly little girl.
.
Obama gives the impression that he’s solving ALL THE PROBLEMS. He can’t do this in 8 years no matter how amazing he is. I think if he can solve the foreign policy mess and maybe disengage the US government from the corporations and religious freaks it’s been in bed with he might’ve achieved something. Good luck.
Nope, ’cause…
Yep. Wanna bring America down just say: Can we have that in Euros please?
.
Which they won’t just yet if they don’t wanna go down the same plughole.
Lol, holy crap. One of my favorite memeories from Uni was researching an essay for a unit called ‘The State and Political Economy’ and stumbling across an article in The Economist called ‘Naomi Klein should grow up.’ I thought it was the ultimate in dudes just not caring how they looked anymore.
Of course, this situation is somewhat different, obviously.
Economic symbiosis is a bitch, huh? Trade. When will people learn?
BBB
Stuff all the critics, whiners & naysayers…Obama’s been nominated & I’m on the “Love train” tonite…goin’ out to party! We’re one step closer to a SANER, more PEACEFUL world. Believe it!
N’
I might add, it was all those whiners & doubters who didn’t bother to vote in America in 2000 that got us into this SH*T in the first place.
WAKE UP.
N’
I remember the article. As I recall it had something to do with Klein’s indulgences in criticism of capitalism whilst ignoring pertinent underlying issues. I respect her more than her namesake however.
Indeed. Trying to bust an awkward situation out as a national sexual harassment scandal, it was a pass not harassment, is simply bad form. It also raises questions as to the viability of this ‘feminist’ that she reacted the way she did; and waited 2 decades to do so.
The article itself was great, and certainly made me much more cynical about Klein’s attitude to brands. I still think ‘Naomi Klein is a fuckwit’ would have shown much more sensitivity to public opinion, rather than suggesting she was just immature.
Indeed. Unfortunately The Economist has a strict style guide and makes an exception in their normal support for Old German terms in the case of the word ‘fuck’. Too bad really. I think ‘fuckwit’ quite apt considering many of their subjects.
Ooops.
.
I didn’t mean to infer that Klein is a fuckwit. I think she’s actually quite relevant. But she’s a partisan journalist hence doesn’t tell the whole story just a explicates a slice of it. It would be good if the ‘anti-globalization’ types would read criticism of her views rather than elevating her to the High Priestess of the No Logo Religion. I suspect she might agree.
.
OT I know.