Hagiography

I am reading The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. The book is fascinating in that it is wholly revealing of Barack Obama's character. Many will find some of the revelations surprising considering that the author, David Remnick, is the editor of The New Yorker and clearly a dyed in the wool liberal. For example, Chapters 10 and 11 repeatedly talk about, in the words of many people who were close to Obama, that he is an absolute chameleon or, more appropriately, a manufactured politician. From Salim Muwakkil: “His ambitions were well disguised…One reason that he was so knowledgeable about the arcana of black politics is that he studied it and he crafted himself. He doesn’t share the traditional ancestral narrative. That’s not part of his being. One of the reasons he is so attractive to a lot of people is that he doesn’t have this sense of cultural grievance. He never had that sense of a family being socialized to subservience. He has an ease of interaction with whites that a lot of African-Americans don’t have. He had to learn that cultural repertoire of African-Americans. The notion that you are socialized in an environment that insisted that you aren’t inferior, that you spend much of your energy proving that you aren’t inferior, that kind of double consciousness – he didn’t have to deal with that. He has Malcolm’s capacity for self-creation. That’s what Barack did. He made himself, like a kind of existential hero. He picked this out and that out, and he created himself." I find these comments to be creepy, if not fairly alarming. A person who "creates himself" for the sake of politics is not trustworthy. Yet, Remnick apparently sees nothing wrong with that because he quotes one person after another who express that same theme: Terry Link - “One thing Barack has is the ability to adapt." Bobby Rush - "He’s been adapting all his life. He had the discipline to accomplish it and the foresight to see what his vision of himself required, you know? Barack’s calculating in almost every decision in terms of how he wanted to project himself."

David Kupelian wrote an article in 2008 about how Obama was "The Manchurian Candidate:" http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=79411. Kupelian describes the character from the book and movie as follows: "In the classic 1962 movie thriller "The Manchurian Candidate," a man was programmed by communist handlers, and then emerged into the public arena as a hero, with a largely manufactured history, large parts of which were either obscured or changed. Then he was planted into a position of great influence, having been programmed to usher in tremendous change at the appointed time." He then ties this into Obama. Strangely, Remnick, a leftist writer of a leftist magazine, quotes people that say the same thing: Bobby Rush - “The forces that created him were the same forces that were always coming after me…But Barack was backed by that same liberal elite cadre or cabal that came out of Hyde Park. These folks, they didn’t like me. I wasn’t upper crust. I came from the streets of Chicago. I’m not Harvard or Ivy League, although I’ve got two master’s degrees. I’ll never be accepted a member of the elite…And Barack was the antithesis of a street person. I saw this as racist. They wanted someone with a better pedigree.” Later, Rush is quoted as saying: “My whole effort was to make sure that people knew that Barack Obama was being used as a tool of the white liberals. Now, these people later on also helped launch him as a candidate to the U.S. Senate and as President. You cannot deny Obama’s brilliance, his disciplined approach. He is a very political guy, very calculating.”

Why would the liberal press, Remnick included, who have had a slathering lovefest with the President ever since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and who have, invariably, refused to report anything remotely damaging to this administration or critical of its policies, suddenly roll out these ostensibly negative quotes about their guy? I think the answer lies in the attitude of liberal elitism. Remnick and other liberals do not see the assumption of an alter-ego to get yourself elected as being something negative. First, liberals care little about character. Two, they care quite a bit about intentions. If Obama assumed a persona or public identity in order to get elected and work miracles (in their eyes), then that is acceptable because what he accomplishes will be for the collective good and, therefore, his intentions are noble. Thirdly, his skillful self-creation shows how intelligent he is and that is the sine qua non for all of liberaldom.