Help me understand the infatuation with Obama

[ntalwar]

I agree but the way people are talking they expect stuff over night.

Some stuff will happen overnight - e..g suspension of Bush's executive orders.

 

[BVS]

The BBC must be asking the wrong Americans then. The way people hit out on the forum says enough.

I want real examples... Specifics!!!

"The way people hit out on the forum..."

Explain what you mean? I'm not familiar with the term "hit out"

 

[vaz02]

I say blabla about an event Obama is assoicated with and its " BOOO HIIISSs OMFg dont dare attack him... " you get the jist, im too drunk to quote.

 

[martha]

I im too drunk to quote.

Do you spend a majority of your time drunk?

Or only when you're trying to post intelligent things and failing?

 

[deep]

I say blabla about an event Obama is assoicated with and its " BOOO HIIISSs OMFg dont dare attack him... " you get the jist, im too drunk to quote.

I get your jist

it seems like some people feel every post must be rebutted or challenged?

most times, I just read and move on
and only reply when I feel the need arise

some seem to have a "take no prisoners" attitude.

 

[VintagePunk]

im too drunk to quote.

That explains a lot. Because, dude? You are being kind of obnoxious. Let the folks celebrate their day, you don't need to piss on it every two minutes. I'm sure there'll be lots of opportunity for criticism later.

 

[vaz02]

Do you spend a majority of your time drunk?

Or only when you're trying to post intelligent things and failing?

Im a British Student. Understand wordly things

Look back at anything i have said about Obama and you will understand the hit backs. Also check BBC news out for a bit, people think he's the second coming. Just because i dont lick Obama's bum people think i dislike the guy or im " right wing " im very very very liberal.

 

[pgv]

Im a British Student. Understand wordly things

Look back at anything i have said about Obama and you will understand the hit backs. Also check BBC news out for a bit, people think he's the second coming. Just because i dont lick Obama's bum people think i dislike the guy or im " right wing " im very very very liberal.

I'm a British student, and I don't spend all of my time drunk

I don't think people see him as the second coming - they just really, really want change and assume he'll bring it. And for the most part I think he'll deliver. I do think the world media has heaped a hell of alot of pressure onto his shoulders though and he's going to have such a hard job living up to these expectations. I feel sorry for the man. But at the end of the day, I trust him more than my Prime Minister

 

[BVS]

I say blabla about an event Obama is assoicated with and its " BOOO HIIISSs OMFg dont dare attack him... " you get the jist, im too drunk to quote.

I honestly don't think people defending Obama = they expect things overnight.

I'm not sure where this correlation is coming from, it seems like a handful of detractors started this "they think he's the Messian and expect the world to change overnight" and then anyone who doesn't like him jumped on this boat. And now they bought into the Rush Limbaugh mentality. But then when you ask where are these people who expect this miraculous change, they can't answer you.

 

[deep]

I'm a British student, and I don't spend all of my time drunk

disappointing,
I had a different image

partygirl

 

[phillyfan26]

I am 18 years old. I am probably one of the most cynical young people in the United States of America. Certainly, part of this is my own personality, a character flaw I need to work on and improve upon with maturity. But, in a sense, can you blame me for being cynical? I have lived in a world in which the economy has gotten worse every year since I began to have an understanding of it, where we've been at war for nearly six years for reasons that were made up by a conspiring few, where our president lacked the intelligence or the self-confidence to do what was right and instead handed his office off to the selfish and greedy. Since I was ten years old, I've watched the worst of American politics on an almost daily basis, courtesy of the Bush Administration.

What do I see in Barack Obama? First of all, I see an intelligent man. Someone who's willing to think about what the hell is going on. A person who comes to his own conclusions based on research and thought. A person who will think before he speaks and think before he acts.

Secondly, I see a liberal. I think conservative politics in the United States, for the most part, has become a parody of itself. They lack logical arguments to defend almost any of their viewpoints (abortion, gay rights), spit at anything non-religious. An alternative to that is finally here.

Those two points alone should be enough. I also see a little bit of hope, though my cynicism prevents me from believing Obama can accomplish all that much in our horrid political climate, where reaction times are extremely slow and the processes that are necessary work at speeds that are unacceptable (unless, of course, you're talking about declaring a war).

I'm not infatuated as much as I'm relieved that I can move on. Maybe four or eight years from now I won't be so cynical, courtesy of President Obama.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Secondly, I see a liberal. I think conservative politics in the United States, for the most part, has become a parody of itself. They lack logical arguments to defend almost any of their viewpoints (abortion, gay rights), spit at anything non-religious. An alternative to that is finally here.

And this is exactly why there has to be a secular right in America; leaping on board anti-intellectual campaigns (intelligent design) with base politicians (Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee etc.) looses college educated voters; and rather than try to expand the base, by appealing to smart voters with free markets and free minds, the strategists have gone along trying to push a culture war narrative.

Change will not come, and its never going to; it isn't cynicism, it is the nature of the political system.

 

[pgv]

disappointing,
I had a different image

partygirl

I enjoy a bit of irony from time to time

 

[U2isthebest]

I enjoy a bit of irony from time to time

*cue Alanis Morissette*

 

[pgv]

*cue Alanis Morissette*

It's like rain... on your inauguration day

 

[A_Wanderer]

Christopher Hitchens giving a rather light beatdown in The Atlantic, or rather a solid enough review that doesn't descend into hagiographic language

I HAVE A SMALL wish of my own in this season of public and private Utopias. It is that the emergence—or should I say ascendance?—of Barack Hussein Obama will allow the reentry into circulation of an old linguistic coinage. Exploited perhaps to greatest effect by James Baldwin, the word I have in mind is cat. Some of you will be old enough to remember it in real time, before the lugubrious and nerve-racking days when people never knew from one moment to the next what expression would put them in the wrong: the days of Negro and colored and black and African American and people of color. After all of this strenuous and heated and boring discourse, does not the very mien of our new president suggest something lithe and laid-back, agile but rested, cool but not too cool? A “cat” also, in jazz vernacular, can be a white person, just as Obama, in some non–Plessy v. Ferguson ways, can be. I think it might be rather nice to have a feline for president, even if only after enduring so many dogs. (Think, for one thing, of the kitten-like grace of those daughters.) The metaphor also puts us in mind of a useful cliché, which is that cats have nine lives—and an ability to land noiselessly and painlessly on their feet.

Toward the beginning of his second book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama displays the modesty that is one of his many engaging qualities, attributing his victory in his very first U.S. Senate race (all the way back in 2004) to “my almost spooky good fortune.” This understates matters to a huge degree. The front-runner in the original contest for the Democratic nomination in that race, a man named Blair Hull, who had spent $28.7 million of his own money, was hit by news reports that his second wife had sought a protection order during an ugly divorce some years before. Not only did his commanding lead in the polls evaporate, but he had already lost the advice and services of the gifted political consultant David Axelrod, who joined the Obama camp. Meanwhile, the Republican primary had resulted in a victory for the personable Jack Ryan, whose early campaign showed distinct promise. Ryan was also to be unhorsed by earlier divorce accusations from his former wife, the actress Jeri Ryan, who accused the GOP standard-bearer of forcing her to go to S&M clubs and have sex in public. (You know how that upsets the family-values constituency.) Obliged to find another candidate at short notice, the Illinois GOP made the appalling and condescending mistake of selecting Alan Keyes, a highly volatile and extremely right-wing black man who had run for office almost everywhere but Illinois, and who promptly decided to accuse Obama of being insufficiently African American because none of his ancestors had been slaves! In the course of the campaign, for good measure, Obama was chosen to give the keynote address at the Democratic convention, with, as he sweetly phrases it, “seventeen minutes of unfiltered, uninterrupted air-time on national television.”

Nor does this exhaust the story of his luck—the quality that, you will remember, was considered by Napoleon to be the most essential ingredient of good generalship. Hillary Clinton, when seeking an avenue back into national politics, might have tried to return by way of her native Illinois. But that eventuality was precluded by the offer, from a senior member of the Black Caucus, of an uncontested nomination in New York. John Edwards’s marital difficulties might have come to light a little earlier, but as it happened, he stayed in the 2008 race long enough to beat Clinton into third place in the Iowa caucuses, thus dealing a blow to her campaign from which it, and she, never entirely recovered. Finally, it was hard to avoid the suspicion, in the closing weeks of last October, that several of McCain’s advisers must at the very least have been subconsciously working for an Obama victory. On the right, where febrile talk of Obama’s “Marxism” is still to be heard, the rage and frustration reminds me of the way some on the left used to talk about Ronald Reagan in the age of “Teflon”: a politician seemingly immune from consequences and benefiting even from his own mistakes. (The locus classicus here would be the now-famous Philadelphia address on race and racism, which allowed Obama to turn the dross of his connection with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright into the gold of “the healing process.”)

Cool Cat - The Atlantic (January/February 2009)

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I'm more interested in what he can accomplish at president. America is in a shambles.

Well of course that too, but as a person he's so much more interesting than our usual WAS(M)P, nothing against WAS (M)Ps but we are not a country of wasp (m)s..I also think that his background has shaped who he is as a politician, hopefully for the better. Or at least that's what I want to think. I also hope that one day soon people will be able to discuss an infatuation with a female President.

 

[financeguy]

A different perspective, from a right wing English journalist.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The one person who hasn't bought into all the 'Messiah' hype is Obama himself. That's why he COULD be truly great | Mail Online

The one person who hasn't bought into all the 'Messiah' hype is Obama himself. That's why he COULD be truly great
Last updated at 8:12 AM on 21st January 2009
Comments (101) Add to My Stories For weeks, the Right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been calling it the ‘immaculate inauguration’. And yesterday, it came to pass.

In the event, the speech didn’t live up to the pre-match hype. But, then again, nothing on Earth could have consummated the stratospheric level of hysteria surrounding Barack Obama’s installation as 44th President of the United States of America.

That’s not to detract from the historic significance of the occasion. This was not a day for cynicism. As Obama himself acknowledged, within living memory a man like him wouldn’t even have been able to get served in a restaurant in Washington, let alone ascend to the highest office in the land.

Back in November, after his election victory over John McCain, I expressed the fear that Obama could turn out to be America’s Tony Blair. The build-up to the inauguration only served to intensify those reservations — a worrying tendency for grandstanding and rock star idolatry.
Superficially, the similarities are there. But Obama appears to be a more serious character than Blair.

Primarily, he doesn’t seem to share Blair’s desperation to be loved. Blair was like a puppy — constantly seeking approval — always wanting to sit on your lap and lick your face.

Obama is more aloof. He’d like you to like him, but frankly, if you don’t, he’s cool with that, too.

 

[A stor]

Finance Guy,

Rush Limbaugh is a kook. He was playing a song called "Barrack the Magic Negro" on his radio show. I don't have to tell you, how racist this song was.