I haven't thought at length about whether or not it is appropriate to consider the new mocking of our President as an apt caricature. But I am relieved to see that it's catching on, primarily because it's catching on. I think it is singlehandedly the slickest parody of Obama since we've gotten to know him. It's simple, it's clever and it works.
But is it apt?
That's not the question a lot of people are asking. Instead they are asking racial questions. I think the racial question is existential. That is to say, it's a Rorschach test about whether or not *you* are racial. So people are likely to get bogged down in that with no resolution, that meaning how do you undo the whiteface reverse-racial subtlety of a non-racial... and so on down that idiot hole. (The world is full of rabbit holes, and I think we should do more honor to those furry mammals than disgrace their habitats with implications of human stupidity. Call it an idiot hole.) Of course when the New Yorker came under fire for it's caricature of the Obamas, I knew we were knee deep in idiotry.
Idiots aside, there is one consistently solid message here that began as a critique of Obama long before his other faults were evident. That is that he is a leftist straight out of Leftville. His masterful triangulation during the campaign season has brought many people to question if he is as honest a politician as they believed him to be. But what Obama truly believes is his ability to use his political skill to evade fundamental ideological questions. He ultimately must duck ideological questions because at bottom he would prefer a more socialist America, and this finally is something he cannot dodge. Everything else is image. It is from that unwillingness to admit any deep-seated socialist influences that Obama is most dangerous. It is the unanchored pragmatism of great power that leads populists into fascism, because fascism is the ultimate end of that which is pragmatic for no other sake than that of political success. It has no principle but winning and collecting all who are on the side of popular power against dissent, especially principled dissent.
You cannot deal with the effectiveness or aptness of the Joker caricature without the context of the Obey Giant artist Shepard Fairey who made the very popular Hope poster. The irony of the original Soviet style poster was completely flattened as Obama supporters adopted it en masse. Hope is not an ideological agenda. It has become, in the hands of Obama's pragmatists, an icon of conviction. It has become exactly as Camille Paglia describes, an emotional desire to go down with the ship. It is the collection of egos, unwilling to admit they are wrong. They have made an emotional commitment. That's their story and they are sticking to it.
Even as one listens to Fairey describe his politics and motivations to get into the art biz, you wonder if he's having any second thoughts at all. It's probably not fair to hold artists to a political standard, but it doesn't really make sense for someone who is inspired by punk music and who is generally against structure to support Obama. Then again, Obama's hold on American imaginations is very abstract and difficult to pin down.
The socialist label sticks, and it will continue to stick for a number of good reasons not necessarily related to socialism but more related to totalitarianism. What I notice of late is that Obama hasn't shown much ability to convince skeptics. What he needs is juggernautery, he needs momentum and consensus and it is this that he plays. What seems to me to be very consistent in his style of leadership is his ability to generate a wave and ride that wave. But that is something very different than what he does practically. I sense a disconnect. What Obama needs is the sort of unanimity of a single party dogma, an overwhelming ascent from the people for whom he is dedicated to serve in his Lefty way, and this gives him license to be practical. But he doesn't have the practical ideas up front which serve in a straight-forward way to gain the proper consensus. In other words, very much like a socialist or totalitarian, Obama wants and needs to have it clear that he has a generic mandate. His marketing is to get people to believe that what has never been served is their political will and he converts that goodwill into an exercise of his own will to power, which is enormous. The simplest example is his entire continuous 'not George Bush' angle. He will continue to bank on the stereotype of his intelligence against the stereotype of Bush's ignorance, and he will play that angle to 'The World'. So that 'the world' and 'Europe' loves Obama more than they love Bush. This stance converts no American skeptics.
One such skeptic is the ever critical Robbie Conal, a guerilla artist who has plagued politicians for many years. Almost nobody has seen his take on Obama which has it's own kind of sinister aura.
When I was a McCain supporter, I understood very well what a number of Americans don't, which is that alternative energy is not enough. And Obama's unwillingness to deal with energy as a high priority and specifically with nuclear energy is a clear and present waste of presidential authority. Even the weaselly scale of his Clunkers program, as sloppy as it has been implemented betrays how unserious he is on the things that even Palin was serious about. Those shovels should have been ready to break ground on nuclear power construction long ago. His failure to do so makes Conal's gripe prescient.
Obama has become, for all of his vaunted intelligence and ability to draw coalitions together, a mere caricature of himself. He is an icon, a symbol, and somebody whom I think desperately wants and needs to be pragmatic and effective. But he cannot outrun the fact that he has come to power without policy and has broken promises with every one of his constituencies. He has bristled at scrutiny and criticism, which means he will remain out there, a victim of his own image, and unable to work across any aisles.
I think these iconic descriptions of Obama will continue, and they will all be apt. He will continue to obsess over his ability to move the crowd, to be a popular man of the people rather than an ideologue or a man of strong pedigreed philosophy. All the while he will effect Machiavellian machinations behind the image and sacrifice any and all who cannot stand the white hot light of his loving media. He will be the last man standing, and nobody will know what he's really all about.
Recent Comments