Oh, but to have the popcorn concession, as we observe the latest developments in this 2008 political season, as the elementals of ebony and ovary collide. Really, it’s like the clash between the gingham cat and the calico dog – they’ll be nothing but little shreds left. Or might it be like matter and anti-matter – nothing left but a little smoking hole in the ground. How the various partisan factions of the Democrat party will ever be able to work together after all the free-flowing animus is beyond me. And I’ll have my popcorn with a teensy bit of salt, please.
What to say about Her Perhaps Not Quite So Inevitableness? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There will be a female President of this US of A in the near future, but I never invested any of my faith that she would be the one. It has annoyed me no end over the last couple of years, the blanket assumption that because she is a woman of certain age, as I am, that of course I would vote for her, strike a blow against the patriarchy, and for equal rights and anyway aren’t we entitled to have one of our own elected to the highest office in the land? Er… no.
I might have, once. Say, if she had divorced that two-timer she was married to, as soon as they moved out of the White House, and build a political career on her own, and on her own accomplishments. And if I had a lobotomy, or spent the last thirty years in a patchouli scented haze, re-living the glory days of the 60s. But I didn’t. I don’t do entitlement politics. I do accomplishments; Real accomplishments, not something jiggered up in an attempt to meet some vague ideological component or for a crowd to cheer at.
About the one positive thing you can say about Her Perhaps Maybe Inevitableness is that just about all the dirt ever on her has been out there for decades, and pretty carefully sifted through. If she is to be the Democratic nominee, AKA The Last One Standing after the convention, we can be pretty certain of there being no startling new developments. All the existing well-known dirt would be pretty well sifted again over the next five months, but I can’t visualize anything new and startling emerging.
This cannot be said of The Fresh Prince of Illinois. B. Obama, he of the middle name which can’t be mentioned, he of the thin resume and even thinner skin, nourished and groomed by the Chicago political machine and led before us, the Chosen One himself, hailed by the hosannas of the elite, the trendy, the daring… and also the Europeans. (Note to Euro political thinkers – umm, many of us have ancestors who left Europe to get away from people like you. Your recommendation in this respect is kind of a kiss of death. It’s like that letter-writing campaign during the last election, where Guardian readers were encouraged to write personal letters to American voters encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. )
As of this weekend, Sen. Obama has done a U-turn and departed his church of twenty years; that very trendy, large Chicago church with the charismatic and very popular black liberation theologist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright… whose fulminations from the pulpit (handily recorded and originally distributed by the church itself !) did not strike quite the same note with the larger public. Observers of the current election scene had wondered for weeks if Obama really believed various of the Reverend Wrights’s racist fantasies – in which case he is belying his own words about racial healing – or did he just go along with it all because it was politically useful – in which case he is just another cynical, grubby politician, whoring after votes and influence. Guess that question has been answered.
Considering all the people who have now been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign – the Fresh Prince’s white grandmother, various staff members, the Reverend Wright and now his church – one hopes that sucker has wheels on it like a monster truck. I am sure there will be more, even without the rumored recording of Mrs. Obama saying quite unfortunate and impolitic things. I have the impression that the Obamas and their circle live very circumscribed lives, an echo chamber of their own making. They appear to have no notion of how appalling, ham-fisted or just dim-witted some of their off-the-cuff remarks sound to the larger world outside their little bubble.
I rather miss Teresa Kerry, as the campaign season gets into full swing! I despised her husband, but at least she seemed to be a quirky, intelligent, interesting woman and a fairly experienced political wife. Michelle Obama just appears as a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement. I can imagine her behaving appallingly and when called on it, blaming it all on teh racism! Straw-person argument, I know. But I have run into women like that in real life. In interviews and speeches she comes off as just that sort of woman.
Oh, yeah – interesting convention coming up. Interesting election season too. Pass the popcorn.
(Later – Additional thoughts from Cassandra at Villanous Company)