But He's So Dreamy!

It's a hard time for liberals when they're reduced to stuff like this:

Whatever my feelings about Obama's centrism I've got to say that he and Michelle really adorn the White House. As a couple they are just...well...magnificent and the children are fucking adorable (same age as my two so I really feel for them). The huffpo lineup of former first ladies and their dresses at these state dinners was like the evolution of humanity from grotesquely old and billowy faux victoriana to blooming, statuesque, youth.

Those words were written by a commenter on this post at alicublog, a hardcore Obama supporter and Democratic party loyalist. (No permalink, but it's on the first page of comments.) Now, I confess I paid tribute to the Obamas' charm (with due reservations on the table) before the killing, torture, jailing, and general suppression really got going, and his emptiness was confirmed once and for all. On one hand, slobbering about their glory like a courtier (who probably has never yet gotten within grovelling range of Himself, but evidently still Hopes) while brushing aside his "centrism" (! -- does she consider Dubya a centrist?) is obscene. On the other, even she recognizes that she has nothing else positive left to say about her Leader's policies and actions. Flattery: the last refuge of political apologists.

And then I found this on the FAIR blog. Obama's new press secretary is a former journalist, and married to a journalist. (Hell, why didn't he just appoint Rachel Maddow his new press secretary?) The writer, Peter Hart, then quotes Howard Fineman, whom we've heard from in these precincts before, and he's nothing if not consistent: always on the side of the cool kids, the In Crowd.

Among his other attributes, Jay Carney is a cool dancer. I know that because I saw him and his wife, Claire Shipman, getting down on the tented dance floor of a fancy Georgetown wedding years ago. Jay Carney, who went to Yale and was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is--besides being smart, savvy, loyal and well-connected with the right sort--suave.

Don't touch that dial! There's more:

There are few better-connected couples in the Washington media and social scene than Carney and Shipman. Their children attend the Sidwell Friends School with the Obama girls. They are the kind of well-liked, Ivy-credentialed insiders who make the Tea Party boiling mad. But why should Obama care?

To my mind, there are better ways to infuriate the Teabaggers, but it doesn't surprise me that Obama chose this one.

Howie -- I'm sure he won't mind me calling him "Howie" -- concludes by comparing Carney and outgoing press guy Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs, the son of teachers at Auburn University, liked to celebrate Auburn football victories by wrapping White House trees in toilet paper. I could be wrong, but I don't think Jay has done or will do that for a victory over Harvard.

Well, I'm sure that at the very least Carney would have underlings TP the trees for him. When I was a child, I TP'ed trees as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things and let the servants do them on my behalf.

But He's So Dreamy!

It's a hard time for liberals when they're reduced to stuff like this:

Whatever my feelings about Obama's centrism I've got to say that he and Michelle really adorn the White House. As a couple they are just...well...magnificent and the children are fucking adorable (same age as my two so I really feel for them). The huffpo lineup of former first ladies and their dresses at these state dinners was like the evolution of humanity from grotesquely old and billowy faux victoriana to blooming, statuesque, youth.

Those words were written by a commenter on this post at alicublog, a hardcore Obama supporter and Democratic party loyalist. (No permalink, but it's on the first page of comments.) Now, I confess I paid tribute to the Obamas' charm (with due reservations on the table) before the killing, torture, jailing, and general suppression really got going, and his emptiness was confirmed once and for all. On one hand, slobbering about their glory like a courtier (who probably has never yet gotten within grovelling range of Himself, but evidently still Hopes) while brushing aside his "centrism" (! -- does she consider Dubya a centrist?) is obscene. On the other, even she recognizes that she has nothing else positive left to say about her Leader's policies and actions. Flattery: the last refuge of political apologists.

And then I found this on the FAIR blog. Obama's new press secretary is a former journalist, and married to a journalist. (Hell, why didn't he just appoint Rachel Maddow his new press secretary?) The writer, Peter Hart, then quotes Howard Fineman, whom we've heard from in these precincts before, and he's nothing if not consistent: always on the side of the cool kids, the In Crowd.

Among his other attributes, Jay Carney is a cool dancer. I know that because I saw him and his wife, Claire Shipman, getting down on the tented dance floor of a fancy Georgetown wedding years ago. Jay Carney, who went to Yale and was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is--besides being smart, savvy, loyal and well-connected with the right sort--suave.

Don't touch that dial! There's more:

There are few better-connected couples in the Washington media and social scene than Carney and Shipman. Their children attend the Sidwell Friends School with the Obama girls. They are the kind of well-liked, Ivy-credentialed insiders who make the Tea Party boiling mad. But why should Obama care?

To my mind, there are better ways to infuriate the Teabaggers, but it doesn't surprise me that Obama chose this one.

Howie -- I'm sure he won't mind me calling him "Howie" -- concludes by comparing Carney and outgoing press guy Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs, the son of teachers at Auburn University, liked to celebrate Auburn football victories by wrapping White House trees in toilet paper. I could be wrong, but I don't think Jay has done or will do that for a victory over Harvard.

Well, I'm sure that at the very least Carney would have underlings TP the trees for him. When I was a child, I TP'ed trees as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things and let the servants do them on my behalf.

Cult of Personality

Back in the early years of this century (pardon that, but I couldn't resist), I worked with a student who told me that she didn't want to discuss George W. Bush's conduct as President because she knew him personally. She'd met him at a state dinner while he was governor of Texas, and she liked him.

I respect her feelings, but something is wrong when adults (and as a college student old enough to vote, she was and is an adult) can't even conceive of a difference between their feelings about a person and their judgment of his or her conduct. This seems to be a basic human trait, though; I'm beginning to realize that what I consider a basic necessity is for most people an ability to be gained, if at all, only slowly and painfully, with regret that it's even necessary. It's so much nicer and easier simply to judge people by their cuteness or lack of it, by their accent, by their shared fascination with this or that Saturday-morning children's tv show, by the color of their skin, by the way they dress or walk or wear their hair.

One reason I've always liked online discussion is that you get to know people only by their words and, ahem, ideas. It took me a while to figure out that for most people, this is a major downside. It especially seems to bother people who are used to getting their way either by being cute and charming, or by being threatening. Suddenly the physical presence they've always relied on doesn't work any more. Wink! Grin! Twinkle! Menace! Loom! Argh! What's the matter with this thing?

It took me a while to figure out that, as I mentioned once before, many of the political / intellectual writers I follow know each other in person, and underlying their debates with one another is their personal friendships and enmities. Which, of course, they're entitled to -- they're only human, after all -- but it sometimes introduces undercurrents and weirdnesses in their published writing that interfere with their argument and analysis. I am still haunted by the memory of mentioning to a friend a scholar of Judaism I'd been reading with interest. Her response: "Oh, I've heard he's really hard to get along with!" I was boggled. What does that have to do with his scholarship? I'll never meet him; nor, as far as I know, did my friend. But gossip takes precedence, I guess.

So, of course, I've been working my way around to our new God-King, Barack Obama. As I've said before, I suspect I would like him if I ever met him. (Weirdly, over the past few weeks I've had several dreams in which he was a character.) But that had nothing to do with how I voted, or how I'm going to evaluate his presidency. For many people, though, it's all that matters. I decided to write this posting after I found a comment on another blog by someone who found it "amazing to feel such closeness--true 'intimacy' with the occupants of 1600 Penn..." Even if she does (and I think it's a self-deluding fantasy), so what? A good many Americans felt "true 'intimacy'" with George W. Bush and his lovely family, or with Sarah Palin and hers.

Still, I admit to a slight, infinitesimal sense of inner conflict. My friend Anne Haines mentioned at her blog that

Later on, I watched an online video of the Obamas dancing at one of the balls -- not the ballroom dancing with each other, but cutting loose a bit and dancing with the crowd. And there was Barack, big as life, DOING THE BUMP.

... with a teenaged girl who asked him to, it turned out when I found a clip.

It's true, Obama is a good dancer, if a bit too contained. (On the other hand, can you imagine the corporate media's reaction if he'd let loose and done something fancy?) I wouldn't mind dancing with him myself. And it was sweet to see him dance with the girl; I'm sure she'll tell her grandchildren about it. But a few days later, Obama was killing children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's talked about how he'd feel if his daughters were killed by Palestinian missiles; but what if they were killed by US missiles, fired at the orders of the President of the United States?

Then there's this photo. Had I known before that Obama is a southpaw?


(But then, so is McCain; and so were Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bill Clinton. The horror ... the horror... ) That gives me a sense of fellow-feeling with him. Intimacy, though? Huh-uh. He also used that hand to sign the orders that killed civilians a few days later.

Finally, there's this photo by White House photographer Pete Souza:

Such a likable man, really. But he's taken on a job that enables him, requires him to do horrible things, and he's shown no hesitation about doing them.

Cult of Personality

Back in the early years of this century (pardon that, but I couldn't resist), I worked with a student who told me that she didn't want to discuss George W. Bush's conduct as President because she knew him personally. She'd met him at a state dinner while he was governor of Texas, and she liked him.

I respect her feelings, but something is wrong when adults (and as a college student old enough to vote, she was and is an adult) can't even conceive of a difference between their feelings about a person and their judgment of his or her conduct. This seems to be a basic human trait, though; I'm beginning to realize that what I consider a basic necessity is for most people an ability to be gained, if at all, only slowly and painfully, with regret that it's even necessary. It's so much nicer and easier simply to judge people by their cuteness or lack of it, by their accent, by their shared fascination with this or that Saturday-morning children's tv show, by the color of their skin, by the way they dress or walk or wear their hair.

One reason I've always liked online discussion is that you get to know people only by their words and, ahem, ideas. It took me a while to figure out that for most people, this is a major downside. It especially seems to bother people who are used to getting their way either by being cute and charming, or by being threatening. Suddenly the physical presence they've always relied on doesn't work any more. Wink! Grin! Twinkle! Menace! Loom! Argh! What's the matter with this thing?

It took me a while to figure out that, as I mentioned once before, many of the political / intellectual writers I follow know each other in person, and underlying their debates with one another is their personal friendships and enmities. Which, of course, they're entitled to -- they're only human, after all -- but it sometimes introduces undercurrents and weirdnesses in their published writing that interfere with their argument and analysis. I am still haunted by the memory of mentioning to a friend a scholar of Judaism I'd been reading with interest. Her response: "Oh, I've heard he's really hard to get along with!" I was boggled. What does that have to do with his scholarship? I'll never meet him; nor, as far as I know, did my friend. But gossip takes precedence, I guess.

So, of course, I've been working my way around to our new God-King, Barack Obama. As I've said before, I suspect I would like him if I ever met him. (Weirdly, over the past few weeks I've had several dreams in which he was a character.) But that had nothing to do with how I voted, or how I'm going to evaluate his presidency. For many people, though, it's all that matters. I decided to write this posting after I found a comment on another blog by someone who found it "amazing to feel such closeness--true 'intimacy' with the occupants of 1600 Penn..." Even if she does (and I think it's a self-deluding fantasy), so what? A good many Americans felt "true 'intimacy'" with George W. Bush and his lovely family, or with Sarah Palin and hers.

Still, I admit to a slight, infinitesimal sense of inner conflict. My friend Anne Haines mentioned at her blog that

Later on, I watched an online video of the Obamas dancing at one of the balls -- not the ballroom dancing with each other, but cutting loose a bit and dancing with the crowd. And there was Barack, big as life, DOING THE BUMP.

... with a teenaged girl who asked him to, it turned out when I found a clip.

It's true, Obama is a good dancer, if a bit too contained. (On the other hand, can you imagine the corporate media's reaction if he'd let loose and done something fancy?) I wouldn't mind dancing with him myself. And it was sweet to see him dance with the girl; I'm sure she'll tell her grandchildren about it. But a few days later, Obama was killing children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's talked about how he'd feel if his daughters were killed by Palestinian missiles; but what if they were killed by US missiles, fired at the orders of the President of the United States?

Then there's this photo. Had I known before that Obama is a southpaw?


(But then, so is McCain; and so were Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bill Clinton. The horror ... the horror... ) That gives me a sense of fellow-feeling with him. Intimacy, though? Huh-uh. He also used that hand to sign the orders that killed civilians a few days later.

Finally, there's this photo by White House photographer Pete Souza:

Such a likable man, really. But he's taken on a job that enables him, requires him to do horrible things, and he's shown no hesitation about doing them.