The uproar over the New Yorker cover shows once and for all, the insecurity, superficiality and immaturity of millions of Americans, the Obama campaign and both supporters and detractors of Barack Obama. For me, it is a significant turning point.
Even though I haven't read the article behind the cover, I watched quite enough television last night, a rarity for me, to have heard an editor at the New Yorker describe the context of the caricature. It is a classic sort of argument, which is to accept a faulty premise and exaggerate it so much that it becomes ridiculous. The cartoon and the content satirize those people who actually believe that such characterizations of the Obamas tend towards the truth. Essentially, the intent of the New Yorker article is to be a satirical defense against hyperbole and stereotyping of the Obamas. That the caricature has caused so much alarm in the Obama base demonstrates how thin skinned they are.
There is little irony for me in the knowledge that The Obamafied, be they career politicos or electrified youth who have invested so much emotional energy into the surface of their candidate, now focus so vapidly on a magazine cover instead of the article itself. It is exactly the behavior I now expect. It is further becoming clear that the coalition in support of Obama is becoming disjointed and conflicted over Obama's latent common sense over FISA, gun control and the death penalty. There can be no clearer demonstration that identity politics and outright psychological projection is a substantial component of Obama support than fundamental agreements on the nature of what is, and what should be done. In the midst of real crises in America, Obama himself is unable to get his audience to be serious. His stuttering bag of insults and non-sequiturs directed at McCain over Phil Gramm sounds like of warm-up act at a comedy club.
In a world of broadcast media where Jim Cramer's volume moves millions and where the likes of Chris Matthews are considered to have gravitas, this is a story from heaven. In the greatest nation on earth where serious intelligent people operate the heavy machinery of civilization, this story is a station wagon full of children with a drunk driver behind the wheel. I'm not sure which is worse, the drunk driver who crashes or the one who survives to abscond with more trust. Whichever the case may be, Obama's shallow following allows him all the opportunities of a fascist. I don't think he is any more or less corruptible than the average Senator, but the nature of this following provides the sort of power that personality alone cannot and will not check. For that, he needs a rationality and policy that will be consistent when a man cannot be. For his campaign to denounce that which defends him logically but offends his illogical supporters demonstrates that he will lie when the truth is sophisticated. It is the first mark of a man who doesn't respect the capacities of the citizenry, the license of the free press and the world as it is.
This phenomenon must be stopped.
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