Op-Ed
I’m a F@$%ing Steamroller
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Byrne it Down
.jpg "Byrne it Down")
I hear the hum of Presidential politics. The acid-laced rhetoric, the simpering sound bytes, the jingle-jangle of fat cat campaign contributions. The sordid music of America.
But hark! A melody in the distance, high and hopeful and sweet. It swells from the state of Washington and rolls across the plains of Nebraska. It echoes in the gorges of Tompkins Country and reaches a roar on Ho Plaza. It is the Obama sonata, harbinger of truth, beauty and the American way.
The Facebook groups, the rallies, the campus newspaper endorsements — all point to strong collegiate support for presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). But in recent weeks, the talking heads have started a “Baracklash.” TV and radio personalities, columnists and bloggers have equated Obama’s campaign to a messianic cult harvesting the souls of America’s youth with sugary promises of “hope” and “change.” The mantras may be empty, but they are potent. Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 DNC stirred even my black and festering conservative heart.
Touched as I was by Obamititis, I thought the cult comparisons were excessive. Until I saw that “Yes We Can” video on YouTube. Watch it on mute while listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall backwards. Creeped me the hell out.
“Yes We Can” says Scarlett Johannson. “Yes We Can” what? As many pundits have pointed out, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have similar economic and immigration plans. Both are aiming for universal health insurance via a rollback of the Bush tax cuts. And both want a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. So blind fold me, spin me around and shove me in a voting booth, because when all is said and done the two are stock Democratic candidates. The power of Obama, grouses the media, is in the pretty platitudes.
But since when does the media require substance? In a January 2008 article in Vanity Fair, writer David Margolick gave an overview of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s (D) first “troubling, tantrum-filled year.” Margolick kicks off the article with a poetic bit of Spitzerism directed at New York Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco (R), just three weeks after Spitzer’s inauguration: “‘Listen,’ he shrieked, ‘I’m a fucking steamroller, and I’ll roll over you and anybody else’.”
First of all, anyone who can use a James Taylor lyric as a vehicle for rage is A-ok in my book. Particularly when the next stanza in the song begins with, “Well, I’m a cement mixer/ A churning urn of burning funk.” That’s not the problem. The problem is this: The Spitzer-as-steamroller theme continues for the rest of the 8,000-plus word article — his hissy fits, his maneuverings, his feud with New York Senate leader Joseph Bruno. Margolick mentions policy triumphs and failures only in passing, and only insofar as they pertain to the Albany get-ahead game.
The angle of the article is one of treating politicians as tacticians, not issue-oriented public servants.
Obama’s rhetoric is a tactic, not a policy, and the newsrooms seem to have just now realized this. He doesn’t actually have a magic bag of hope and dreams to unleash once in office. But as a tactic, the bag of hope and dreams, complete with frenzied, fainting crowds and sinister celebrity propaganda videos, is valid and effective. It’s the job of the “Baracklash” progenitors, to stop being in awe of the maneuvering and start questioning the policy particulars.
Of course, if The New York Times does another hatchet job on Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), we may not have to trouble ourselves over Obama. In a Feb. 21 article, the paper made insinuations of sexual impropriety between the senator and lobbyist Vicki Iseman during his 1999 presidential campaign. The allegations, which blared from the second paragraph of the front-page story, seemed to be based on second-hand reports of heated glances and flirtatious hair flips. The readers were outraged, the Republicans rallied, and the next afternoon McCain’s campaign reported its best 24-hour period of online fund-raising.
McCain is more up my alley, but I’d probably vote for Obama. The promise of four years of obnoxious neologisms trumps whatever political principles I have left in me.
In any case, the multitudes paying Obamage in Wisconsin have left Hillary between a Barack and a hard place. So eat your Barackli, knock back some Baracktails and let those enchanting Baracklamations lull you to sleep. It’s an Obamination.