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"Coffee, JFK?"
by Marc Sidwell
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Obama: the new JFK? Don’t be so patronising.
General Theory of bullshit:
When someone is called, “The New Somebody-else”, translate it as
“nothing new to say about him”.
Special Theory of American electoral bullshit:
In a long campaign, expect journalists to get bored of naming the
obvious front-runner. When reading of outsiders making the race
competitive again, check that they are not (a) made of papier-mâché,
(b) the editor’s dog, (c) the answer to 3 Across in yesterday’s New York
Times crossword.
If you’ve been drawn in, shame on you. Barack Obama is currently being
treated like the house-boy by the American media classes. They
summon him with a snap of the fingers to stimulate their dinner party
guests – “Oh, a café-au-lait JFK! How darling!” – and refuse to treat him
as a serious politician.
Want proof? Who can name a policy of his?
Instead everyone’s talking about mood, about “renewal”, about
“standing for the best of America”. Don’t be so bloody silly. If you want
to make a statement about the best of America, you design a new
stamp. For the most powerful man in the world (™) you want a
commander-in-chief who knows which way up the nukes go.
We should just look at Obama as a candidate with policies. When you
do, he’s no contender.
This madness has crept into politics for too long. You hear it too about
laws. People say things like, “it sends an important message”; I suggest
sending one back at the offender, preferably in the form of a bread roll
or well-aimed glass of cold water. This is especially effective if they are
an MP.
Sam Goldwyn had it right: if you’ve got a message, use Western Union
(certainly better than Royal Mail). Laws aren’t semaphore signals: they
must be judged on whether they impinge on personal freedom, impede
commerce or restrict essential liberties, and then they must be sent to a
subcommittee to die.
What matters is whether a law is just and whether it can be enforced,
not what it says about Britain. Otherwise you end up with a legal system
whose broad message can be summed up as, “lots of laws, little justice”.
Barack Obama is a bad case of our common disease. The US polling
expert Mark Penn explains exactly what’s going on here in his 2007 book
Microtrends, when he identifies America’s “Impressionable Elites”.
Penn points out that if you want to talk about the issues in an American
election, you should go out among the regular citizens. If you want to
find a braindead airhead who switches votes with the candidates’
hairdos, go find yourself a PhD.
And the reason? It’s because they have cushy jobs with no heavy lifting
and the policies don’t really affect them that much.
by Marc Sidwell
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Obama: the new JFK? Don’t be so patronising.
General Theory of bullshit:
When someone is called, “The New Somebody-else”, translate it as
“nothing new to say about him”.
Special Theory of American electoral bullshit:
In a long campaign, expect journalists to get bored of naming the
obvious front-runner. When reading of outsiders making the race
competitive again, check that they are not (a) made of papier-mâché,
(b) the editor’s dog, (c) the answer to 3 Across in yesterday’s New York
Times crossword.
If you’ve been drawn in, shame on you. Barack Obama is currently being
treated like the house-boy by the American media classes. They
summon him with a snap of the fingers to stimulate their dinner party
guests – “Oh, a café-au-lait JFK! How darling!” – and refuse to treat him
as a serious politician.
Want proof? Who can name a policy of his?
Instead everyone’s talking about mood, about “renewal”, about
“standing for the best of America”. Don’t be so bloody silly. If you want
to make a statement about the best of America, you design a new
stamp. For the most powerful man in the world (™) you want a
commander-in-chief who knows which way up the nukes go.
We should just look at Obama as a candidate with policies. When you
do, he’s no contender.
This madness has crept into politics for too long. You hear it too about
laws. People say things like, “it sends an important message”; I suggest
sending one back at the offender, preferably in the form of a bread roll
or well-aimed glass of cold water. This is especially effective if they are
an MP.
Sam Goldwyn had it right: if you’ve got a message, use Western Union
(certainly better than Royal Mail). Laws aren’t semaphore signals: they
must be judged on whether they impinge on personal freedom, impede
commerce or restrict essential liberties, and then they must be sent to a
subcommittee to die.
What matters is whether a law is just and whether it can be enforced,
not what it says about Britain. Otherwise you end up with a legal system
whose broad message can be summed up as, “lots of laws, little justice”.
Barack Obama is a bad case of our common disease. The US polling
expert Mark Penn explains exactly what’s going on here in his 2007 book
Microtrends, when he identifies America’s “Impressionable Elites”.
Penn points out that if you want to talk about the issues in an American
election, you should go out among the regular citizens. If you want to
find a braindead airhead who switches votes with the candidates’
hairdos, go find yourself a PhD.
And the reason? It’s because they have cushy jobs with no heavy lifting
and the policies don’t really affect them that much.
| CONTACT THE LIZARD |
| Updated at least 26½ times a day |
| Marc Sidwell is not joking |
Just as college students have always had views that change
when they get out and have life experiences, so today’s elites
are like perpetual college students, far removed from the
experiences and struggles shaping everyday American life. And
so it is a lot easier to spin America’s elites than it is to spin the
voters.
when they get out and have life experiences, so today’s elites
are like perpetual college students, far removed from the
experiences and struggles shaping everyday American life. And
so it is a lot easier to spin America’s elites than it is to spin the
voters.
Now, I like to think of myself as a perpetual college student with the
best of them, but not the smug, patronising-Obama kind that indulge
their political whims without a thought for the actual consequences.
Those guys should be forced to graduate and get real jobs, preferably
something backbreaking in the cotton industry.
Can Obama be elected? Let’s not put anything past the idiocy of
Boomers on a nostalgia-jag.
On the other hand, as Penn also points out, “if you can get over all the
din created by the chattering elites and the out-of-touch journalists,
you can talk to some pretty smart people”. I doubt that America’s real
smart people (as opposed to the people paid to sit on TV and look
smart) can deliberately elect a man whose main foreign policy position
appears to be, “I look OK in nothing but a pair of swimming shorts”.
President of the United States is a job for grown-ups. And alcoholics.
And sexual Lotharios. And slave-owners. And oil barons. It’s not a job
for some sweet-faced poster boy whose main qualification is that he’s
too young to have an embarrassing past.
Maybe all the media foofarah can bounce Obama into the Democratic
candidacy, maybe even into The Big Round Room. But he’ll be there as
puppet and photo op, chosen not to have opinions but to smile at the
camera while other people work the levers of power.
Surely this election was supposed to get us away from all that…
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
ALSO SEE:
best of them, but not the smug, patronising-Obama kind that indulge
their political whims without a thought for the actual consequences.
Those guys should be forced to graduate and get real jobs, preferably
something backbreaking in the cotton industry.
Can Obama be elected? Let’s not put anything past the idiocy of
Boomers on a nostalgia-jag.
On the other hand, as Penn also points out, “if you can get over all the
din created by the chattering elites and the out-of-touch journalists,
you can talk to some pretty smart people”. I doubt that America’s real
smart people (as opposed to the people paid to sit on TV and look
smart) can deliberately elect a man whose main foreign policy position
appears to be, “I look OK in nothing but a pair of swimming shorts”.
President of the United States is a job for grown-ups. And alcoholics.
And sexual Lotharios. And slave-owners. And oil barons. It’s not a job
for some sweet-faced poster boy whose main qualification is that he’s
too young to have an embarrassing past.
Maybe all the media foofarah can bounce Obama into the Democratic
candidacy, maybe even into The Big Round Room. But he’ll be there as
puppet and photo op, chosen not to have opinions but to smile at the
camera while other people work the levers of power.
Surely this election was supposed to get us away from all that…
© lizardmagazine.com, 2008
ALSO SEE: