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London Zoo: [Sink] Obama and America's War About War

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      CommentAuthorC.c.
    • CommentTimeDec 7th 2007
     (226.1)
    Andrew Sullivan wrote a very fine article for The Atlantic on the problem with America's political landscape and the ripple-effect of the Baby Boom generation, and why Obama might be the best candidate for change in American politics.

    A couple of small excerpts:

    A Giuliani-Clinton matchup, favored by the media elite, is a classic intragenerational struggle—with two deeply divisive and ruthless personalities ready to go to the brink. Giuliani represents that Nixonian disgust with anyone asking questions about, let alone actively protesting, a war. Clinton will always be, in the minds of so many, the young woman who gave the commencement address at Wellesley, who sat in on the Nixon implosion and who once disdained baking cookies. For some, her husband will always be the draft dodger who smoked pot and wouldn’t admit it. And however hard she tries, there is nothing Hillary Clinton can do about it. She and Giuliani are conscripts in their generation’s war. To their respective sides, they are war heroes....

    Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

    I'd like to see some input on the piece, clever, erudite people that you are.
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      CommentAuthorARES
    • CommentTimeDec 7th 2007
     (226.2)
    I can dig the concept of the hypothetical. I'm not sure if it would work in practice, but then again were he elected I might take a step back, mutter something about progress actually happening in the US, and then swear meaninglessly about nothing in particular.

    What sucks is that Giuliani will likely win, and we'll be even more fucked. Four more years.
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      CommentAuthorobliterati
    • CommentTimeDec 7th 2007
     (226.3)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    Giuliani was going to run against Hillary for Senate but he got cancer up his ass. That was pretty cool.
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      CommentAuthorAriana
    • CommentTimeDec 7th 2007
     (226.4)
    I may be completely alone in this, but that editorial reeeeally makes my skin crawl.
  5.  (226.5)
    I think it reduces people to nothing more then slogans built on their background, gender and race - but in an unfortunate way there might be a point lurking in those dark waters. In that I think many people see the president as nothing more then a symbol built of sterotypes and thats what they vote for.

    So I am not sure its wrong in a practical way, but it is not our best face forward and certainly not something we should encourage or celebrate.
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      CommentAuthorAriana
    • CommentTimeDec 8th 2007 edited
     (226.6)
    Oh, I was more concerned, I think, with the part where we're a desperate nation huddled under the looming cloud of terror apocalypse, and our only chance of survival is to take on a chameleon puppet leader to fool our shadowy enemy. Or, y'know, McCain.

    As I said, could just be me.
  7.  (226.7)
    Ok, yes, that is an excellent summation and I am actually embarrassed I just took the points on face without questioning the subtext.
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      CommentAuthorC.c.
    • CommentTimeDec 8th 2007
     (226.8)
    @Ariana I could have picked better quotes. I don't think it comes off as awfully in the whole context of the article. In any event, I thought the article itself would be good for discussion, as it seemed Sullivan was trying to paint a very definitive, perhaps polarizing picture of the American political landscape. I don't think, in the context of the whole article, that he is putting Obama up as a "chameleon puppet leader," but I made a bad choice taking that chunk out, as is.

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