Why Does This Man Make Me Uncomfortable?
09/12/07 07:34
At first, I thought he was in it for 2012 or later. Frankly, I didn't imagine Americans would cast a vote for president for any candidate of any color who had as little national experience as Obama. I thought the press would kill him on that issue alone. I grossly misread his appeal. I had acknowledged the Reaganesque qualities of his candidacy--the reliance on vision and charisma vs. policy, but I truly thought that the experience issue would be a killer blow.
However, I see the speeches and watch the news reports and fail to see what so many others see in him. I read breathless hosannas to him suggesting that he will transform the world by simply showing his face, that he will bring back the true spirit of the 60's, and my jaw drops. I just don't see it. I see a very bright, promising politician with the chops of a good talk show host who has learned to co-opt the language of the motivational speaker for the political realm, which is huge, for that is language that America reads as "authentic" and "uplifting." It is the language in which folks like Suze Ormon and Oprah Winfrey are utterly fluent. However, it's a language I, as a marketing executive by trade, have always found hollow. It usually places the speaker at the center of your betterment. You are not the focus, nor is the end result. The speaker is. You become the passive recipient of the speaker's knowledge and wisdom (usually personal, not professional or academic), through which you will make a better you.
M.J. Rosenthal suggests that Obama refreshes the promise of Bobby Kennedy. But back then, folks weren't sitting at Starbucks musing about some vague notion of change. They were in the streets demanding and working toward the specifics of it. Kennedy did not offer himself as the vessel through which we could achieve our unspoken desires. He offered himself as the agent of the desires we had shouted to the rooftops.
Perhaps Obama is the answer for a society that trends toward the voyeuristic--the reality show, the celebrity obsession, etc... yearning for something, yet detached from any means of achieving it. Just as George Bush provided us a war without sacrifice, Obama promises movement without the huff and grunt of a push. All we have to do is cast a vote, and he'll take care of the rest. Kenneth Bear writes, "Also to Obama’s credit, the speech is much more about the audience, and less about him – “I believe in you” is his explanation for why he decided to run." However, "I believe in you" just leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken, which is "to vote for me." The motivational speaker's solipsism does seem to be there. It's just a few unspoken words below the surface. And I can't tell you how many speeches I've seen and helped executives write that drool all over the audience in similar ways while designed specifically to burnish the exec. The common purpose around which he lauds his audience for coming is... himself. There seems to be no other interpretation. He IS change. It is his brand.
Perhaps, also, I just don't see the value in "bringing us together." Black, gay and Afro-American (the American descendant of African slaves), I have always watched a country grossly divided on the issues of my very existence. I have no room for those who expressly or tacitly display contempt for me and suggest that my life and rights are less valuable than theirs. I don't wish to be "brought together" with them. And I don't believe that Barack Obama or anybody else can change them. I don't foresee their success in changing me, either.
Perhaps that means I don't have "hope." If the definition of hope is that the divisions which have marked this country throughout its history will suddenly disappear through the force of an individual personality, as opposed to through the willingness of masses of people to do massive amounts of work, then I have none, and stand glad of it, for that, to me, is not hope. It is fantasy.
I'm sure I am not the voter Obama is seeking. He may know his audience extremely well, far better than I, who cringe at reality shows and find motivational speakers and game show hosts who promise enormous return for precious little effort quite creepy.
Perhaps in today's America, it takes a motivational speaker to compel people to do the work for a change the specifics of which they can't yet articulate. Perhaps. But I will continue watching the Obama phenomenon with fascination. I don't believe that anyone has yet come close to getting to the bottom of it.