Why did this post switch blogs?

Oops, sorry, the comments didn't appear when I typed that.

They're not smears.  They are demurs which, at best, will remain tacit, subliminal and even inchoate, but nevertheless there.

Things like the father, Indonesia, the middle name Hussein, the last name like Osama...to the high minded here, sorry -- it's as if a candidate of sterling character and proven abilities were named Fart or Bozo.  Obama has a problem.  With 9/11 still seared in memory and Islamic terrorism still an ugly presence, though Americans may or may not believe Obama a Muslim, closeted or otherwise, their turnoff is not contemptible.  Hell, Gore had a problem with the fact that Americans will not elect a president named Al.

Call it æsthetics, but like it or not, æsthetics, like culture, matter.

Overheard someone at a gas station yesterday "informing" a friend that Obama wanted to "outlaw Christianity" and "ban the Bible" if elected. He even directed the poor listener to a website that told "the whole truth" about Barack's devious plans.

Oi.

When are we going to have an admendment suggested that all sould wear a lapel pin.

jm_rice,

the question is, what portion of the voters is affected? How many potential Obama voters will be turned off by his name, his background, or the unfounded rumors which a cursory internet check will prove false? Some would say zero, and I won't go that far; it's not as if all the bozos vote Republican (at the end of the day, it's probably split). But I don't think, unless it's a squeaker, it would be a decisive bloc.

I buy the nationalism thing but not the race thing.  Colin Powell, at the height of his prestige, had a very good shot at the presidency.  And he's not only black, but of Caribbean descent and, I believe, in the first generation of his family to be born in the U.S.

As  Kane mentioned above, I pointed out in another thread that historically, we have never elected a president whose family hadn't been several generations on American soil.  

Even the Kennedy's, practically professional Irishmen some days, are in JFK and Ted's generation, the great grandchildren of immigrants.

It is the multiple exotic components of Obama's background, which include a "bohemian" or hippyesque upbringing, a forgeign father who abandoned both him America, a second foreign father who took him to Indonesia where he was educated during four impressionable years (7 to 10?) in Indonesian schools.

And then in the states, Obama marinated amongst the Leftist academia and intelligentsia interests in our post-60s Ivy League (not your father's Harvard, folks).  He's very much a part of that world.  A world that the Clinton's have their own ties to, but Bill went out of his way to separate himself from culturally.

All of these components of his background make Obama intriguing as a man, but all of them, including the American part, like strong Leftist academia ties, make Obama very exotic for an American president.

Hell, we haven't even had another Catholic since Jack Kennedy, have we?  Culturally, our presidents are very "All American",  

Look at Bill Clinton.  Very white.  Very Anglo Saxon (In America Irish is anglo), protestant, and although his childhood was practically trailer park,  (what could be more American?) far as I know the Clinton's and his biological father's family have been in North America since the Whiskey Rebellion.

Now the irony is, Obama is "better bred," than most other black politicians who can trace their American roots back four hundred years (Senator Biden and his "clean" statement.)  He speaks and carries himself pretty much in the mode of the American aristocrat, with his own interpretation of the type.

We'll see.  But, it's probably Boomers, who despite being ex-hippies themselves, many of them, are getting old now, who are going to decide this.   Boomers vote heavily, and having been deeply dipped in the American attitudes they so ostentatiously rejected, large re-embraced them all-- from money to family values.

I don't think until the genXers and Millennials hold sway and the 20 million illegals and their many more descendants are voting will America change fundamentally.  (And the Latin vote is going to make the black-white thing completely antedeluvian.)

I saw that ugly pander representative Jack Kingston (R) on Bill Maher's Real Time the other night pushing this Republican propaganda.  I like Bill Maher but he obviously has a problem with Barack Obama, a few weeks ago he compared African-Americans who support Obama to those who supported O.J. Simpson, which got him plenty of boos, and he seems to be more than a little sympathetic to the Clinton campaign. In this last episode he seemed to give the right wingers almost a free hand to go after Obama distorting his positions and record, and there was no one on the panel to rebut these assertions.

It's interesting how much better the show is now that the writers have returned, the first few episodes where Bill tried to wing it were pretty lame.  Without his writers Maher seemed lost at times, you better believe writers matter.

Maher has a well-known history of dating Black women, it's not uncommon for such white males to find Black men threatening, threatening to their social interests and their masculinity, I don't know enough about Bill to determine whether he falls into that category, but he obviously has some difficulties with Barack Obama as an African-American, though he may not even be conscious of this. It's apparent at least that Bill doesn't get the Obama campaigns message and what they're trying to accomplish, perhaps because he's blinded by prejudices which seem to be subtly and not so subtly servicing on HBO.  Last season on Maher's show NPR's Michel Martin was openly hinting at some of these conflicting attitudes concerning race and perhaps some underlying misogynistic tendencies that Bill may be harboring, it seems Michelle may have been on target

Michael

I saw you on Tim Russert's show on MSNBC, you came off pretty well, and you're right about the balloon popping theory concerning Obama, all the pro Hillary Clinton sites are pushing that very hard right now, trying to portray Obama supporters as disillusioned and waking up from their dream, pretty pathetic and desperate if you ask me.

Aaron,

Funny I had the opposite impression of Maher -- that he kind of has a soft spot for Obama, at least as much of a soft spot as a dyed-in-the-wool cynic can have for an idealistic candidate, and as much as a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist can have for someone other than himself.

I agree the show got much better after the writers returned, not just in the opening monologue but in the unscripted moments too, like he got his energy back. I haven't seen the episode you discuss though.

As for the "Obama's disillusioned fans waking up" meme, it's not just the Hillaryites. Did you read David Brooks' last column? Talk about a flip-flop.

I do think that Obama & Co. would do well to counteract these kinds of smears more quickly and efficiently than they have done before, and to avoid making sloppy remarks that sound unpatriotic.  On the other hand, the whisper campaign hasn't done him a whole lot of harm at the national level, has it?  The "Obama-Is-Muslim" e-mails have been circulating for months, as has the National Anthem photo, and the man is still leading in head-to-head national polls against a man who has been a national news fixture for the past and is most prominently identified as a war hero.  And, because McCain is also identified as an unfair victim of anonymous rumors, he will be under great pressure to publicly disavow and criticize smear campaigns against Obama in the general election.  Unlike Bush and the Swift Boaters, McCain won't get a free pass on slime-by-association from the media.  

As for the wonderful contrast between unpatriotic Obama being part of the anti-war movement and war hero McCain ... this would probably have been a better meme before 65% of the US public came to believe that the war was a mistake.  If Republicans want to remind people of the wisdom of decisions made in 2003, they will be waging a battle right on Obama's turf.

wildboy is right here, and ChanRobt -- well, I won't say Chan is wrong, but I'm not sure what to make of his comment. OK, leave aside the generalization about the Boomers (lots of whom vote Democratic, obviously, and will this year too). And about this comment that Irish is Anglo in America -- the point is that it WASN'T that at all at one time, it was "exotic" (certainly for purposes of choosing presidents), and we overcame that. When, exactly, I don't know, but people who thought those attitudes were still dispositive when JFK ran turned out to be looking at pocketwatches that were running a little slow: By then, Irish either was or was rapidly becoming Anglo. There's plenty of evidence that the equivalent is true now with regard to blackness, at least of the kind we see in Obama -- that, yes, it's still exotic and a bit new, but not so strange anymore that it's a dealbreaker to a critical mass of voters. That's the result of plenty of change having obviously happened ALREADY, and I'm not sure why that degree of change doesn't qualify as "fundamental" compared to some further step that has yet to be taken.

Furthermore, Americans are not going to be attending some enormous focus group to test their reactions to the roll-out of Brand Obama. They're going to be asked to make a binary choice between two candidates, Obama (I think) and another guy who has lots of liabilities, including age, lack of an enthusiastic following within his own party, strong support for continuing a war most people emphatically reject, and leadership of the party that people blame for that war and that by fall they'll be blaming for rapidly rising levels of economic distress. Maybe McCain can run a flawless campaign that brilliantly minimizes these liabilities, and maybe Obama will screw up and maximize his own. Clearly that's what McCain's people are envisioning when they speak (as in one of the articles linked to here) of Obama as part of "the antiwar movement" and the "blame America first" faction. They're thinking they can make this Reagan vs. McGovern, and maybe they can. I doubt it, though, and in fact I think those Golden Oldie slogans -- along with the "experience" argument, which they still have some kind of touching faith in even though it never works -- basically tells me they have no idea how to run against Obama.

This whole thing about patriotism is as like people thinking they are supporting the troops because they have a magnetic ribbon thingy on the back of their cars.  It's about time people started getting called on their patriotism.  Just because they can say the pledge - which would have angered our founding fathers for adopting - and just because they can sing the national anthem doesn't make them patriots.

Anonevent,

Entertaining your argument would be a huge problem for Obama.  The question, in the end, is not whether Obama could make the case for false patriotism ("ribbon thingy," "pledge," etc.) to elites; rather, the question is whether working class Reagan Democrat types would tolerate that argument from a presumptive President.  They wouldn't -- especially when he's running against a decorated war hero!  

Notwithstanding the open mindedness of those on this blog, it is a demonstrable fact that huge swaths of the American population (many living in swing states!) are outraged by anything that even smells of anti-patriotism.  If Obama wants to get elected, he needs to swallow his pride (and the uber-leftist argument that supports it) and wear a flag pin, put his hand over his heart, even during the National Anthem, muzzle his wife who seems to relish her historical amnesia, and genuflect to our symbols of American exceptionalism.

His university-bred left wing sentiments about "true patriotism" are a sure fire way to put a Republican in the White House.    

Jsmith125, you may have missed my main premise in my longish posts.  It's not Obama's blackness that is "exotic".  It's the combination of the other components:

foreign father who abandoned him and returned to Africa;  second foreign father who took him to Indonesia where he attended Indonesian schools at an impressionable age;  a "hippie" upbringing followed by heavy emersion in leftish elite academia.

And, most unusual for an American president, not on American soil for very long on his father's side.  The Kennedy's, Irish and Catholic though they might be, came from very well established families that had been here four generations.

Colin Powell would have been seen as far less "exotic" despite a recent Caribbean family history.  At the height of his prestige a few years back, he would have had a very good chance of being elected.

So it's not race, per se that's so exotic about Obama.  It's all the other stuff.

mike,

Just go to FOX/GOP website and you will see all what you have noted.

I think that the GOP will be using this tact and I think that it will be successful in solidifying the know nothing bias of the hard core base, which btw, are the same 30% who have decided to ride Bush's derailed boxcar as it jumps the river bridge and screams down to the bottom of the murky river.

The real question is whether this year, like in 1988, the American public will be swayed by these kinds of jejune attacks. Obviously, reading this thread, it will work with some, but my guess is that the vast majority of the electorate may be tired of this kind of bullshit. Do we really want the choice to come down to whether one wears a lapel pin?  

The stakes are so high in this election and if the GOP is successful in this election, against this candidate, with these tactics, I think I will just pull a Nathan Zuckerman and dedicate my life to better pursuits, my kids, my work, and Sherlock Holmes and PG Wodehouse. Forget politics.

nturner, you and I are in staunch disagreement on the other post. However, I'm pretty much with you on this one.

Chan, to be fair I think it's race PLUS the other stuff, not just one or the other.

Chan and nturner,

I was intrigued by the American-flag lapel pin debate -- do a Google images search of John McCain, and you may notice that he isn't wearing a lapel pin in any of those pictures.  For that matter, I can't recall any other 2008 candidates for President (Dem or Republican) wearing one on a regular basis.  I think that Brit Hume, Bush and Cheney (whenever he surfaces in public) might be the last guys to wear them anymore.  Just goes to show how much water has passed under that bridge since September 11 (or since 2003, for that matter).

Chan, I got that you meant "exotic" in a multidimensional way, even if I buried that fact in my longish reply. Correct me if I'm wrong, though: You're suggesting that we are still a step or two short of the "fundamental" social change that would make someone with a background as exotic as Obama's a likely president. You think whatever equivalent change was needed to get an Irish-Catholic elected had already happened by 1960, at least for Irish-American families of long standing, but Obama is still a bridge too far for a critical mass of voters. Is that right? Because if so, my point is that I think America has already undergone the needed change (whether we call it "fundamental" or not), and that while he might not beat an Anglo candidate of equivalent gifts, he can certainly beat a candidate whom he contrasts with in the many ways he contrasts with McCain.

Of course, if that's what we're debating, this is all Sunday-morning quarterbacking; we're going to know the answer in a few months.

The Republican attempt to smear Barack Obama with misinformation gleaned from hoax e-mails.

Republican Congressman Embraces Obama Hoax Email

talkingpointsmemo.com/.../179868.php

["Overtime, and pretty quickly now, it'll make sense to keep a list of stuff like this. On Friday night's Bill Maher show, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) claimed that Barack Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. This along with other bogus claims about Obama come from the hoax emails circulating on the internet."]

Normally I would agree the idea that -  what the heck, put on the damn pen and shut the patriotically correct moron patrol up (even though I thought Obama was the picture of class with that and showed calm, unprovocative spine by sticking with it, not cowering to the phony jackals - so in that case they went away - poof. Very satisfying).

But something has changed out there.  I have no idea how resilient that something is, it may fall apart with the first Swift Boat attack in the general, but I don't think so.

There is a particularly good fit between the man and his times with Obama, he's very lucky that way and smart enough to have realized it:  he's done extremely well with the trick taught to me long ago in my first corporate job: let people bury themselves.  

This never would have worked at any other time.

But I sense that the American people, after the defilement of the last eight years and the degeneracy of our political culture, really are fed up and not easily jerked off (sorry for my crassness, but that's what it is) with that standard right wing nonsense.  It won't pay the bills, it won't clean up Katrina finally, it won't rebuild our stature abroad, it won't address our debt, it won't address health care or the trade deficiet -  and I think they finally know it.  There may be huge chunks of people who are still able to manipulated by fear and loathing, but after seeing a line of 10,000 white people IN OKALHOMA in cowboy hats chewing chaw clammering to vote for Obama, maybe not so much.

I'm sure we all have the greatest show on earth waiting to be rolled out for us in the general - they'll practically have Obama singing Mammy wearing a Malcom X holding the Quran. In a hut in Kenya.  With Michelle holding an ouzi saying "by any means necessary" behind him. It should be pretty disgusting.  We'll see how much it flies.  

This hand-over-the-heart and lapel pin issue is utter crap.  It's not unpatriotic not to put your hand over your heart.  The etiquette only requires that you stand respectfully.  The heart thing is optional. (When men wore hats it was a good place to hold them.)  It's a matter of how pious you want to look.  Same with the lapel flag.  Personally, I think the only people who have any business wearing lapel flags are government workers, like the only people who have any business wearing tattoos are soldiers and sailors.  Of course, in this narcissistic era, everybody's on display.

Lots of chest thumping going on here.  It's rich to see his fans, who take so seriously the symbols (as opposed to substance) around which their boy has built his entire campaign, be so dismissive of the negative symbols.  There's no more substance to Obama's rhetorical blather than there is to lapel pins and middle names.

By the way, Michelle's patriotism or lack of same isn't as interesting as the fact that she's such a bitch.  Maybe even more than Teresa Heinz Kerry.  Whoa!

My impression of her is that she's a composed and controlled woman who has only recently got her head around the fact that she might be first lady.  I don't know that anything she's said has been bitch-like, irrespective of whether her comments are to your political or cultural taste, or not.

Barbara Bush, on the other hand . . .

CHanRobt - Disagree about the family tree / stability argument. The American family of JFK's era is gone. In its place is a smorgasbord in which anyone can pretty much pick and choose whatever family model he or she or (s)he likes, and for people under 40, the same goes for mixed-race marriages, kids, kids-of-unwed parents, relationships of every sort.

Maybe you're right, but I don't see this is a serious charge that will stick to Obama outside of a fwe senior citizen communities. Those votes are going to McCain anyway.

The q of q's is how Obama's identity narrative will play with _hispanics_. Still waiting to see some in-depth, solid research and analysis of same. Probably have to wait until December or January, under the rubric of How Hispanics Helped McCain COme From Behind and Win, or somesuch