The LA Times is usually one of the most insipid English-written newspapers in the world, partly due to its proximity to the vapidity of the Hollywood Hills, and not to mention the burgeoning English literacy crisis of Schwarzenegger’s “Kalifornya.”
However, columnist Joel Steins, in a piece called “He’s got Obamaphilia,” trips over a political fact that only years of probing the profound pools of Hollywood’s monotony could prepare one to discover. And that is, that Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is sooo much hot air.
He is the black Anthony Robbins hyping up the crowd, making one feel inspired with hope. As Stein opines, “I want the man to hope all over me” and I must say, I want him to hope all over me too.
For “What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man” to persuade the youth of America to even show-up and vote in their respective caucuses. Obama is the guy on the Tonight Show who warms up the crowd: “Where are you from Sir? Carolina? Well hey. Lots of blacks in South Carolina. Anyone know a feminist lesbian midget? I know one. She’s in Seattle. You people rock!”
As Steins suggests, “The dude is Urkel with a better tailor” – charismatic, good-natured and slightly goofy. He is the material recipient of all our quixotic aspirations. Quixotic because, at the end of the day, you don’t think Obama, like Urkel, will be able to pin down the job. But we so want him to. We want him to succeed. We want to live in a perfect world where idealism works and the goofy black kid becomes President of the United States.
But what such a comparison of personalities reveals to us is his calculatingly unobjectionable persona. And at the end of the day, it is a campaign run on persona, as well documented by the image-starved celebrities in the [excuse me while I vomit] “Yes We Can” music video. His one and only personality quibble is a self-confessed short-lived cocaine experience that makes him seem all the more “real,” and when touched on by a Clinton aide, backfired into Hillary’s face. His is a persona so well crafted that the LA witch doctors must have been brought in from the get-go.
Like a great actor – a master of empathy – he is whatever we want to project onto him: mainstream, alternative, activist, socialist, Christian, secularist, black, white, immigrant, native, African, American, African-American… He speaks to and for all of us: from the Heartland of America to the Middle East. He is a man of masks, of tricks, veils and surfaces, which is perhaps what is exactly needed to move mountains in a land that thrives on such impossible illusions.
For who else has such a virtual impact on the lives of so many? Who else turns the nullity of vapid hot air into the airwaves of success and power? The answer is she who has already anointed this one to serve as her demigod. Who else but Oprah, that vacuum of personality, so calculatingly unobjectionable? After all, she is the master of dealing with America’s hopes and inspirations.
“The medium is the message,” said Marshall McLuhan. It’s not what Obama says, but how he says it. It’s not who Obama is, but how we perceive him. Messages don’t matter as long as they’re delivered with, hmmm, inspiration and hope.
And so, in the 54th year of our Lord and Savior Oprah Gail Winfrey, will Barack Obama, on a platform of change – “what change?”… “who cares, just change!” – be anointed President of the United States of America?
As Leonard Cohen sang in his forgotten epitaph “Democracy”:
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
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