March 28, 2008
Cockburn, Hitchens and their Reaction to Obama
Speaking of Obama, does anyone else find something weirdly symmetrical in Alexander Cockburn's response to Obama's speech and Christopher Hitchens'? Somewhere in the shared biography of the two is some deep insight into the New Left and its aftermath. Cockburn:
Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia about race stuck pretty carefully to the unwritten rules of a national conversation, in marked contrast to the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose stimulating rhetoric has caused such an extraordinary affront--if you will--to the conversing classes.
The junior senator from Illinois is a master at drowning the floundering swimmer he purports to rescue while earning credit for extending a manly hand in solidarity. I noticed this the first time I wrote about Obama, back in the spring of 2006, when Ned Lamont was trying to make the disgusting political conduct of Senator Joseph Lieberman part of the national conversation, at least among Democrats. Obama hastened to a big political dinner in Connecticut to cut the conversation off and denounce any deviations from support of his mentor Lieberman.
It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 01:21 PM | Permalink
Comments
Sad that none of them seems to have bothered to watch the entire sermon in full, nor bothered to listen to Obama's speech. Then again, it is not like Hitchens has real credibility, he is more like that person you invite to the party to say ridiculous things and provide amusement than anything approaching the intellectual he fancies himself to be. Sort of like Ann Coulter I suppose.
Posted by: akatsuki | Mar 28, 2008 2:45:56 PM
I love a good talking point as much as the next fellow, but have a care, petards are notoriously dodgy things.
Hitchens would only have Real Credibility® if he marched in lockstep and respected the parrotings of meme numbed robots? Don't be that guy.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 28, 2008 3:05:36 PM
- Hitchens does of course have a certain problem with being taken seriously, but it seems self-evident that the Obama campaign did know the Wright mess was going to blow up in their face at some point. They'd have to be unfathomably stupid for it to be otherwise. I think Hitchens' line on why Obama didn't disown Wright is mistaken, but surely he's entitled to wonder why Obama maintained a close relationship with this crackpot.
- I enjoyed Hitchens' presentation of the grandmother issue...definitely the crispest elaboration of that argument I've seen so far.
- I can't get to the Cockburn article. Is the link bad for anyone else?
Posted by: D | Mar 28, 2008 3:36:14 PM
So who do these enlightened Brits prefer? I also can't link to the Cockburn article but no matter. It's safe to say he has disdain for all three candidates. Maybe he liked Kucinich? As for Hitch, I do always enjoy reading him. He is, as he once declared, a one-issue voter. Which means he likes McCain, whether he tells us so or not. And of course, he despises all things Clinton, which always makes for entertaining reading.
Being an Obama supporter myself, I'd prefer kinder words for my candidate, but the truth is, these guys are professional a-holes.
Posted by: Rick | Mar 28, 2008 4:12:54 PM
"Professional a--holes" says it all. That they hate each other, adds to the fun. And of course, Hitchens supports McCain. He is the only one among the "liberal" cheerleaders for the Iraqi invasion who remains unrepentant to this day.
And yeah, I too like to read what Hitchens has to say about the Clintons.
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 28, 2008 4:46:49 PM
Cockburn does not believe in Global Warming
(I had a email exchange with him on this), and Hitch is a supporter of the Iraq Occupation.
Both are attached to ideology that prevents correct analysis.
Almost religious in their views, but without the Bronze Age Fiction to fall back on.
Hitch frequently switches roles, so we may be addressing him as Pope Hitch in the future.
He is a dam good writer though, and his current work on religion is cutting and insightful.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Mar 28, 2008 6:55:38 PM
These guys are remarkably talented at tearing things down, but I almost never see them contributing any constructive ideas. They are full of invective and bile, which may be amusing in small doses, but is ultimately demoralizing.
I remember when both writers had a featured column in the Nation at the same time. Week after week, they would unleash a torrent of harsh criticism at the target du jour. But what did it ever add up to?
Posted by: blah | Mar 28, 2008 7:43:40 PM
I can't get to the Cockburn link either.
Posted by: mentalelevation | Mar 28, 2008 10:58:23 PM
missing link:
Cockburn Obama Article, via the Nation
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 29, 2008 12:13:22 PM
I think Hitchens is sensitive to the notion that McCain is the only candidate unlikely to launch a sin-tax funded public awareness campaign warning against the social undesirablity, health threats and other percieved evils of smoking and drinking, which I suspect he loves as much as anything, and which he sees as synomymous with liberty and freedom.
Posted by: doug l | Mar 29, 2008 10:53:24 PM
Hitchen's implication that Obama rejected his grandmother or used a "silky" maneuver to distance himself from Rev Wright are wrong: Obama was making the brave, complex point that good people sometimes say bad, objectional things and that race issues don't follow the notion that society is divided into the righteous and the wicked.
Posted by: aguy109 | Mar 30, 2008 4:52:30 AM
Sorry, no.
Brave would have involved a personal example. Using the words "I myself..."
Complex would have involved making a distinction between Wright's deliberate public proclamations and Grannie's private ignorance and fears.
Posted by: Carlos | Mar 30, 2008 9:55:10 AM
The irony is Obama himself said in his speech that fears about urban crime shouldn't be equated to racism, which makes one wonder what precisely he thought his grandmother's sin was.
Posted by: D | Mar 30, 2008 2:40:21 PM
It doesn't mean anything. I doubt that he was creating a moral equivalency between grandma and the Reverend, as many seem to interpret the two statements. His point was that people take a jaundiced view of other races depending on how they have been treated by the system and what often happens on a dark street corner.
I don't know why this big hullaballoo about bringing up his grandma. Has anyone ever paused to consider that granny may have been the only white person in Obama's experience who spoke candidly to him about how white folks may view a strange black man?
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 30, 2008 3:55:40 PM
Such a good point, Ruchira. He wasn't outing his grandmother, or using her, but citing her as a family member for the way she unthinkingly saw the world, to show that he /understood/. That she as "the woman who raised him," as he called her in his memoirs, yet also a woman who tensed up at the sight of blacks on street corners. I think we're supposed to take away from this that he has seen up close, in an intimate way not available to many, the irrationalities and fears that race issues provoke, and that frankness about them is the best route to dismantling them. Readers like Hitchens and Cockburn, who miss the focus of his remarks, might ask themselves -- has anyone besides James Baldwin been more frank than Obama?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 30, 2008 5:02:43 PM
Of course he wasn't establishing a moral equivalence between the two. (Though I wish I had more than common-sense to rely upon for that point. I wish this miracle of a speech had explicitly said as much about granny, not to mention Geraldine Ferraro.) He emphatically was comparing them however, and the comparison simply isn't well taken on any level:
- one is a family member he's simply stuck with, the other is a pastor he chose to associate with after law school, who officiated at his wedding, and preaches weekly to him and his family.
- the worst thing he managed to find to say about the first is (gasp) that she was frightened once by a black man she saw. It doesn't even take a man of Obama's considerable nuance to know that many people, black and white, have said as much in the past, and the statement doesn't necessarily/automatically qualify as racist.
Ultimately though, it comes down to decency. It's one thing to bring up Geraldine Ferraro. She’s in the news, made a deliberately naughty argument, and is a politician who can take her punches. It is another entirely to rake up mud about someone who raised you, was on the whole rather less racist than most in her time, has never been in the public eye, and will probably be dead in a few years. Decency should have stayed him from talking about her imperfections in public. It didn’t.
I still don’t think he’s as cynical a manipulator as the Clintons, for example, but a few more of these, and I will.
Posted by: D | Mar 30, 2008 5:20:18 PM
The woman who raised me would reach over and lock the car door. She could also recite Langston Hughes- learned in her 2 room Minnesota schoolhouse - from memory.
It's not as if witnessing racism committed by respected and loved elders was/is a rare experience for most Americans.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 30, 2008 5:32:50 PM
Vicki -- it is great to see you here! I think being the black grandson of a white working class lady who 1.) raises you through your teens so that you can attend on scholarship a widely famed college prep school in Hawaii, and who 2.) tenses up at the presence of blacks on street corners is not only unusual but mind-bending. I would imagine only children reared in trans-racial families -- of which there are many -- could tell you what THAT felt like. One of those children grew up to run for president -- if he's talking, why not listen?
I have witnessed extraordinary liberal-mindedness and appalling prejudice within my own Anglo-American family -- often from the same person. You're right -- it's universal. But I don't think it's the same, to witness this in your family as a Euro-American among others and to witness it as the black teenager in a white family.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 30, 2008 7:02:42 PM
D:
If your only problem is that he brought up a private family matter to illustrate a public point, I can understand. But it was not as treacherous as you make it out to be. You said, Ms Ferraro is fair game but not grandma. Yet, Obama is even more certain of what grandma meant than he is of what Ferraro (who has been roaring in protest ever since her statement was put under the microscope) did. Still, he shouldn't have washed his family's dirty laundry in public, you say. But that is not how he himself presented the racism of his grandmother or the Reverend's - something particularly surprising or dirty. He understands both, forgives them and loves these elders despite their prejudices. It is we who are flinching at the mention of an uncomfortable subject and looking at it as a breach of confidence.
And oh! Thanks for the use of pointed italics to correct my English usage. English is officially not my first language (although I can hardly tell -it has been so long since I learnt it). However, a quick dictionary check would have shown you the following.
equivalence = equivalency. Not elegant perhaps...but correct.
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 30, 2008 8:05:04 PM
Yikes. Just a response to the spelling thing...I italicized "equivalence" to contrast to "compare". As in, he wasn't asserting an equivalence, but he clearly was making a comparison. (Italics as in original) Imagine me speaking the sentence and inflecting the words, if you will. English isn't my first language either. And of course equivalency is perfectly fine (equivalent, even. Or equivalent :) )
Perhaps it's a sign that we're scanning texts for far too much hidden meaning! Certainly I may be doing precisely that in reading Evil into Obama's character from a few remarks. I tend to think not (said remarks being well chosen and planned), but maybe you're right in your assessment.
Posted by: D | Mar 30, 2008 8:56:42 PM
Elatia - sorry if it sounded like I was trying to claim equivalence with the experience of young Barack. He's been both the kid in the car with the frightened parent and the guy on the street corner, and obviously I will never fully understand the second experience.
I was thinking more of those who are criticizing him for even mentioning it. Many of them must have had similar experiences to ours- but they're acting like it's some shameful aberration - "dirty laundry" - instead of a near universal. Can't we just acknowledge that America's history of racism means that most of us have heard people we love utter cringe-worthy bigoted remarks, and that admitting this publicly is not the same as disowning our relatives?
Ruchira, I think the word you're searching for is "equivalentiness."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Mar 30, 2008 9:59:50 PM
D:
Sorry about jumping to conclusions about the italics. May be I was a bit paranoid. In the last Home Owners' Monthly Meeting in my neighborhood, two board members tore each other apart over the "capitalization" of a word in an e-mail exchange. Oh well.
Vicki, nice to see you back.
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 30, 2008 11:52:29 PM
I don't think Owners should be rendered in the possessive in this instance, Ruchira.
Posted by: Carlos ; | Mar 31, 2008 8:07:56 PM
Okay, enough about Obama.
Here is Christopher Hitchens on Hillary's Bosnian Killing Fields.
Posted by: Ruchira | Apr 1, 2008 7:59:10 PM
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