Michelle Obama is not a politician.
Michelle Obama convinced me that she is a well-educated, profoundly grateful, proud black woman who genuinely believes Mr. Michelle will make a damn good President.
Challenged to be “authentic,” Michelle Obama stood before the Democrats and the world, proclaiming “I am a sister… I am a daughter… I am a mother… And I am a wife…” In other words, Michelle is every woman. And, speaking on behalf of every woman like her, Michelle believes in America’s promise, she loves America when it fulfills its promise, and she believes that guy “with the funny name” stands-out as the guy to hold America accountable, making it fulfill its promise.
According to this perfectly representative American woman, whose father, despite his crippling illness and gut-wracking pain, dedicated himself to making life better for his children, Barack Obama will guarantee that American fathers everywhere will have fair opportunities to make life better for their children, too.
Michelle Obama also met the tacit condition: Assure us that your man is just as authentic as you are. Give your word that Barack, a brother and a son and a father and a husband, deals with us as truthfully as he deals with you and the girls. Promise us the Hope he’s peddlin’ ain’t just so much snake oil. Give us your testimonial; show us the product works as advertised.
I think Michelle did what she could. The rest had to come from the man himself.
Do the rules govern all that a person does not say? you naturally wonder.
I wonder about that, too.
It doesn’t exactly take a boa deconstructor to figure out that Michelle put everything in the affirmative. Michelle maintained her dignity—no cheap shots, no pejoratives. America is great when it fulfills its promise. We love America when it fulfills its promise. Mr. Michelle is the keeper of the American promise. Go, Mr. Michelle!
Of course, Michelle Obama wants us to infer that our country recently has kept itself really busy betraying its promises. It’s a nice rhetorical move, because it satisfies two needs at once: Michelle’s refusal to make the case for the betrayals comes across as a mark of her respect for us—she refuses to lay siege to the obvious. Her refusal to detail and dramatize the Bush administration’s ugliness also demonstrates her capacity to “rise above…” And I show my respect for you by declining to itemize the list of all the things above which she rises.
Barack ain’t the only ace orator in the house.
But the implications still hang in the air. The subtext still creeps into the statements. We know the betrayal includes a war no one wants, an economy that won’t even feed our kids let alone get ‘em through Princeton, a government that’s so broken the insurance companies would total it, and a President whose name has become the eponym for “moron.”
The implications still hang thick as the humidity in The Crescent City. For example, we know Michelle Obama is a woman of faith, and all the Democrats have grown a lot more forthcoming about their faith. Good for you, Michelle, but we wonder about your catechist. I’m really sorry—I am; but I still hear The Reverend Jeremiah’s voice boomin’ out the belfry. The guy who brought Michelle into her faith doubles as the guy who invited God to damn America and inspired the congregation to say Amen.
So the question persists: Do you really, authentically believe Barack Obama can redeem the nation and drive it to fulfill its promise?
If you think I’m pissed at the Bush administration for messing up the country in which I invest all the faith that isn’t properly God’s, just how pissed do you think I’m gonna be if Barack Obama turns-out to have all kinds of toxic artificial ingredients?
Michelle, Princeton is a nice place if you cannot get into Berkeley. I hope the Ivy Leaguers taught you to speak truthfully and rewarded you lavishly when you did. Up here in the cheap seats, the view is encouraging, but the questions remain. Up here in the cheap seats, we didn’t just hope you would speak authentically; we absolutely required nothing less than perfect correspondence between conscience and speech.
Although I know I sound cynical, I speak literally: A person cannot work as a politician and remain authentic. A politician takes the colors and voice of his constituents; he or she speaks for them, and he advocates their causes because they chose him or her to advocate. They expect, hell, they demand the politician’s aggressive advocacy. You don’t really think it’s an accident that most politicians come from the ranks of attorneys? The word “mouthpiece” comes to mind. It seems a little disingenuous to indict a guy for his oratory while you’re giving him a try-out as your mouthpiece. It seems a little duplicitous to bitch about “bridges to nowhere” if you hired the guy to bring you well-paid construction jobs. Maybe if you had inserted “worthwhile” in your statement of the objective, you would have seen a different result. If you cannot set the target where you want it, you cannot blame the sharpshooter for missin’.
If we demand that our politicians speak accurately and forcefully for us, we don’t leave a lotta latitude for “authentic” speech.
In 1968, student protestors urged, “Be realistic. Demand the Impossible!” We routinely demand the impossible of our politicians. We believe that our politicians ought to speak on our behalf because he or she believes just exactly as we believe. We want politicians to speak for us because they want what we want, they hope like we hope, and they will act as responsibly as we would. In the end, though, we just want our politicians to meet our needs, bend our government to our will. “Say ‘the devil is my savior’ and I won’t pay no mind” as long as we get our healthcare, as long as we get the repo men outta my front yard, as long as we get the hurricane survivors outta their FEMA trailers, as long as I get a job worthy of my qualifications, and as long as my daughters get a new softball field with bright lights for night games.
Poor politicians—damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Demanding “authenticity,” ironically we encourage politicians to tell us what we want to hear whether they truly believe it or not.
Politicians, considered literally, do not lead. They represent. They stand for us. Standing for and leading ain’t nowhere near the same thing. So, I wonder, can a guy outgrow his inner politician and emerge as a leader? Instead of articulating all that we always already believed, can our would-be President articulate our ideals and show us how he will lead us to their fulfillment?
Watch me give with one hand and dangle with the other: I agree that Michelle and Barack Obama embody perfect fulfillment of the American promise; their lives exemplify all that we wish, want, and need for ourselves and our children.
Now, will the Obamas lead us to America’s Promised Land?
© 2008 Kieryn Graham for Tent City Networks
]]>Reflection all by itself soothes my troubled spirit and calms my twirling-like-a-banshee mind. “Conscientious” reflection allows lots of latitude for my relentless questions; and, when I get some provisional answers, I feel—yes, that’s right, I feel—they mean something. Although the Catholic woman of me probably has deviated from or flat-out broken every Church rule, the good Catholic schoolgirl of me still strictly follows her catechism, examining everything in light of conscience, making “rigorous inquisition” through my soul, fervently praying or least happily chatting with The Great Author at every opportunity, and pretty much standing firm in my unorthodox faith. You can see why my brain twirls like a banshee and occasionally overheats; imagine the gazllions of farenheits to which my little spirit soars.
Although I obviously study and “deconstruct” politics, I honestly can claim, “I don’t do politics.” I follow my conscience’s dictates. Works for me.
Now quoting no less an authority than Erik Erikson, pretty much the Big Daddy of everything we think and surmise about “identity,” “Meaning it” comes from combining “the most exquisite sublimation and liberated craftsmanship.” Let that one sit and ramify in your holiday weekend. Think about it: not just any “exquisite sublimation,” which would mean working your whole self, right down to your tumpty-toes, to redirect your whole self into your thought and expression. Your ordinary “exquisite sublimation” would set the standards pretty high; but “the most exquisite…” sets the standard at Gold Medal or just keep walkin’ The One, the Singular, Unique, Nonpareil—one of those great SAT words ya hardly ever see in Nature—Erikson’s demonstrative article, the “the” that directs pointer man to this One, and only this One, puts the gun to the head and the pedal to the metal. “The most exquisite sublimation” demands that you take every thought, every feeling, every transient notion, and the fire of every little synapse, gathering their energy and force behind your expression, and you manifest all that overdrive in your very best words.
So, yeah, here’s me in my sundrenched backyard, tasty beverage within arm’s reach, and a fresh pack of Pall Malls cherry-popped just for the occasion, putting my whole exquisite self into the words representing all I think and feel about this week’s historic events.
What? Like that’s difficult?
Barack Obama has himself some mighty fine taste in women.
C’mon, regardless of your politics, even if you’re a depraved and often-raving racist pig, still you must admit that Michelle stands apart from most women, standing single on the strength of her intelligence, courage, determination, principles, integrity, and general attractiveness, which includes both personal magnetism and unmistakable good looks.
Also regardless of all that stuff I listed earlier, you must admit that she stood under the kind of pressure that would waffle most women and all the bois; she endured that agonizing pressure as she ascended the stage on…what was it? Tuesday night? The point is the pressure, not the day. And most burdensome or forceful or whatever physics-correct unit you choose to measure the pressure, the one that hit harder than almost all the others combined: “She must be ‘authentic’.”
When you first heard the pundits press the point, pounding it home with their little jackhammers, you probably thought, like I did, “Okay, so she’s gotta keep it real. The folks’ll know if she’s fakin’…or the pundits will tell us.”
Of course, on the surface of it, that premium on keepin’ it real was exactly what everybody had in mind; but if that’s all they had in mind, that’s what they would have said. When the big kids choose a word like “authentic,” they’re diggin’ in the mother lode of meaning-laden words, and they’re grabbin’ one behemoth chunk.
When we say “authentic,” we drag-in psychology, literature, rhetoric, homiletics, and all that other multi-disciplinary stuff we love to love so much. And when the big kids assert, “She must be authentic,” they’re not just setting a standard; they’re also setting up a condition: If Michelle speaks truthfully here, introducing herself and her husband honestly and accurately with all of America and God Himself watching in primetime, then we probably will forgive and forget two ginormous rookie mistakes—the one about “this is the first time in my adult life I have felt proud of my country,” and that other one about worshipping for all those years with The Reverend Jeremiah.
“No pressure here, Michelle,” we lie so bad. You have a shot at total redemption and perfect pitch, all of it worthy of a ten-point bounce in the polls; or you can…well, you don’t really have any other choices. “But really, no pressure; just go up there and have a good time.”
Yes, “authentic” stands for all of that stuff…and more.
When the big kids demand “authenticity,” they’re insisting that Michelle show perfect correspondence among character, thought, value and choice, speech, action. In other words, when Michelle speaks authentically, she will manifest the perfect congruence between the interior-invisible of her and the external-perfectly transparent of her words and actions.
Her development and delivery proved Michelle understood exactly what hung in the balance; and, honestly, it was way more important that she hit it right into the audience’s mitts than that she launch it out of the park. Remember that, when you catch the ball, you get your mitt on it, and then you squeeze it, making sure you have it completely in your possession and under your control. Michelle’s words had to hit every man, woman, and child right in the place where he or she could clutch and hold on.
If Michelle spoke authentically, then every listener would find something with which to identify.
The speech’s substance proved that Michelle knew where and how to aim and fire.
But wait! There’s more. When the big kids demand authenticity, they expect us to distinguish between “the real deal” and something that seems “sincere.” “Authentic” is the real plaid Van’s, the genuine Roxy surfgear you got at the factory outlets; “sincere” is the excellent knock-offs which so sorely tempted you at the swap-meet.
Sincerity demands saying whatever serves your self-interest and creating the illusion that you really mean it. Authentic will radiate from the very depths of your soul; sincere will have soul.
Remember when Polonius advised Laertes, “To thine own self be true, and it shall follow as the night the day, that thou cans’t not be false to any man”? Polonius counseled sincerity, urging that every speech and act would be weighed and measured against self-interest; and, no, there would be no falsehood, because a single selfish standard would inform all Laertes did and said. Because Laertes was a pretty good kid, his authentic self, left to its own devices and natural inclinations, probably would have spoken and chosen a little less politically or selfishly. Knowing his kid, Polonius stood firm in his advocacy for intrepid selfishness. We all know where Polonius ended-up. So much for sincerity.
In real life, you will find no one more sincere than the salesguy who, holding your eyes in his and resting his strong hand reassuringly on your shoulder, insists, “Of course, this is an excellent value. I have one myself, and I love it.” Salesguy reassures you ever-so-sincerely as you ponder a Hyundai. Then, when you roll-up in your brand new Mustang ragtop, you will find no one more authentic than your teen-age daughter who effuses, even against all her desire to remain cool and aloof, “that is sooooo wicked cool!”
Michelle’s authenticity had to reassure us of her husband’s.
When Michelle proved herself trustworthy, then we could believe her declaration, “He is that good.” C’mon, if you’ve been somewhat reluctant to jump on The Love Train, you’ll have to admit that your reluctance came from your suspicion, “No one can be that good. When’s the bubble gonna break? When’s the mask gonna fall? When’s the MLK gonna evaporate and the Malcolm X show-through?”
Michelle had to get up there in front of God and everyone, proving, ‘I’m a good and decent woman, and I believe this man is for real. If I can, you can, too’.
If she had said just that much, we probably would have been okay with it, doncha think?
To be continued…
© 2008 Kieryn Graham for Tent City Networks
]]>No matter what we decide, though, we’ll always have one more question.
How many questions do we have exactly? you need to know. Infinity…plus one. Always just one more than we have answers.
Once upon a time, I imagined I wanted to become an attorney, and I fed my imagination with books, television shows, and movies about attorneys. Couldn’t get enough of that lawyer stuff. I confess, now, and on the condition that you won’t tell anyone, I think I liked lawyering because of the clothes—so dignified, so powerful, so damned proper and so totally expensive. Now, in the era of Law and Order, I’m satisfied, thank you; in the old days we didn’t enjoy quite such an embarrassment of riches. I really liked Scott Turrow’s One-L, his journal of his first year at Harvard Law School; are we surprised he returned to writing? Probably stumbled over that one more question, doncha think? And I really-really-really loved the original Paper Chase, the one with Lindsay Wagner and John Houseman as Kingsfield, the Contracts Professor. On the first day of class, Kingsfield strides, authoritatively of course, into class, and announces, “You come here with heads filled with mush, and I teach you to think like a lawyer.” Kingsfield says it as if thinking like a lawyer is a good thing; and he goes on to justify, “We teach by the Socratic method. Question and answer; question and answer. My questions spin the tiny tumblers of your mind, showing you the vast complex of…,” well Kingsfield, naturally, says something about law, but I have my own version of the sentence’s end. When I complete Kingsfield’s soliloquy, I insist, “The questions spin the tiny tumblers of our minds, showing us how to open-up the vault where they keep the secrets to the human condition.”
Always one more question. Now, really, how hard can that be?
today: pundit?
Pundit (noun)—(1)a well-dressed, ostensibly smart and immensely strategic person, who appears on television and instructs you in the delicate business of political decision-making; (2)a well-connected political operative experienced in peeling the skin off the opposition, who now appears on television to simplify overwhelmingly complex issues, reducing them to the least common denominator for the sake of the viewers’ cognitive efficiency—i.e. “dummies it down for ya”
I wanna be a pundit. Looks like fun. Where do I apply, or how do I get recruited for that?
I’ll happily sit on my stool all perky and bright, telling people what I think about just about everything without the least regard for whether or not I’m right. That is what a pundit does, isn’t it? And I’m ready—got my outfits picked-out and everything.
But, of course, before we cue my Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers theme-song, which I won’t deny I liberally borrowed from Hilary—“She Was an American Girl,” sing it with me–I have a few questions and concerns.
Does anyone ever check the pundits for the accuracy of their predictions, the factual foundations of their opinions, the genuine practicality of their suggestions? Does anyone really hold the pundits responsible for what they say? Does anyone check the logic that guides the pundits’ assertions? Does anyone ever filter-out the bias, screen-out the self-interest, measure the value-per-minute? Does anyone ever suspect that we’re paying these blazer-clad, over-educated, longwindedly inarticulate bozos to pontificate about and lay siege to the obvious? Don’t you suspect that, if we stripped away all the multi-syllables, political jargon, and jingo-journalistic hyperbole, each pundit’s message would come-out, “Vote for the guy I like just because I like him”?
Not that I’m skeptical, you understand. Just curious.
Watching the pundits, I get the very strong feeling that they’re just like PTA Moms, except these guys get to be on television with Wolf Blitzer, while the PTA Moms have to spread the word and wisdom through the parking lots—grassroots guerillas. If a PTA MOM dropped a little political punditry on me, I’d think it over. I would. Because, unlike Wolfie’s cronies, the PTA Moms have earned their authority, and they command our respect: they know how to do important things like fold fitted sheets and apply mascara to their lower lashes—you try that, Paul Begala. If the situation and circumstance demand, PTA Moms will wear pantyhose even in the August heat, subordinating their personal comfort to the needs of the cause; do you see David Gergen doing that? And the PTA Moms always will bring treats for after your on-camera evisceration.
Hey, you schedule a panel of PTA Moms, and I’ll show-up draped in bunting.
Look at it from another perspective: Ann Coulter is a pundette (the feminine of “pundit,” of course). Just let that sit in your brain and ramify for a while. Ann Coulter, the self-same woman who called the 9-11 widows “broads” and accused them of exploiting their grief for their own personal gain, is a pundette. Talk about the power of selling it with sex! Annie markets her bigotry and paranoia in the cutest little black dresses and the highest heels I’ve ever seen. Like the PTA Moms, she knows how to thicken the lower lashes. Ann Coulter does the pundette routine for mega-bucks, tossing around her big blonde hair and shakin’ her groove thing, so how hard can it really be?
I really think I can do this pundette thing.
Watch.
Here’s me in my ever-so-professional outfit, sitting primly and properly on my little stool with my little headset on—got it to work with my hair, and everything. OK, so go ahead. Ask me a question.
“Kieryn,” you willingly inquire, “what is the most important issue facing the nation today?”
Good one, I think, nodding and giving my wry little smile—a signature pundette move. “Restoration of the American middle class,” I asseverate (which is, of course, a pundette word). “Do you remember a movie called Grand Canyon?” I seem to digress, but I will get to the point by the end of my “full 90 seconds.”
“The movie starred Kevin Klein and Steve Martin as a couple of yuppies stranded in East LA in the very dark of dark and stormy night, and it played our upper-middle class fears like a cello, reaching the conclusion, pundit style, ‘The gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown to be a Grand Canyon, and out of that Grand Canyon of despair has come some of the greatest violence this country ever has known’. At least, that’s a close paraphrase. The movie focused on the consequences of destroying the solid American middle class. I’m looking for the candidate who can go to the causes of that great Grand Canyon. I’m looking for the candidate who can dam-up the River of Despair that carves that big ol’ canyon.
“So,” I continue, now that I have my momentum going and my lipstick lubricating my lips, “I want to see the candidate who won’t just ameliorate (another pundette word) the energy crisis, but jump on Boone Pickens’s bandwagon and get busy fixing it. I wanna see the candidate who understands that the loss of our manufacturing base pulled the rug and the floor right out from under American workers, who were the undisputed champions of productivity and quality. Why don’t we make stuff in this country any more? When they outsourced the Radio Flyer wagon, that’s when I started taking it personally. And I want the candidate who will see and address the connections among energy, ecology, and the destruction of American manufacturing; they all went to hell together. And, hey, when was the last time the candidates read The Grapes of Wrath? Devastation of the American family farm tore apart the foundations of our system, so that with the rug and floor gone, the foundations torn-up, we’re down to bare dirt, and I want a guy who can show us how to start over and lead us as we do it.
“Most of all,” I nod my head and shake my ringlets, really warming to my subject, “I want the candidate who will recognize that the American middle class and upward social mobility absolutely and non-negotiably depend on the quality of public education. No Child Left Behind, my ass! (you can say that on t.v. now) Our average workers cannot read their employee manuals—not in English and not in their native tongues. Our average workers can’t do the fractions or make the measurements to reach the tolerances high-tech products require. I wanna see the candidate who will grab the Tree of Knowledge and shake it until the dead weight falls out and the knowledge flourishes.
“When we can run our mighty factories on clean energy, putting our people back to work, and when small farmers can compete with agri-corporations, tilling their own land for their own profit, then we can get busy rebuilding our infrastructure. Are they ever gonna fix or finish the freeways in LA?”
See! Aren’t I good?! I got metaphors and rhetoric and all that cool on-air stuff.
Where do I apply?
I must confess, though, I probably won’t get called for an interview. In the same way that I cannot run for office, because I devoted my Berkeley days to banned books and moral turpitude, I will get disqualified from punditry, because I have more questions than I have answers. I’m not sure that I really can answer my own questions, and I’m not totally sure that I want to try. Although it’s really easy to play “the wise one,” I’m not sure it’s all that wise. I know me: The more certain I sound, the more I’m probably wrong. The more authoritatively I say it, the more you can feel sure I’m making it up. If, however, I say something oracular or sphinx-like, you can take that to the bank. Punditry doesn’t allow a lotta room for intuition, and I am way more intuitive than I am smart.
In the end, even if they do invite me for a well-deserved session under the headphones and before the microphones, I’ll probably have to decline. They won’t let me wear flip-flops. And if they’re not gonna let me wear my little red flip-flops I got at Target for $1.99 (no self-respecting pundette admits she adores Target), then I’ll stay here, keep asking my questions, and trust you to think for yourself.
© 2008 Kieryn Graham for Tent City Networks.
]]>