David Sirota pretty much sums up the way I feel today. It’s funny, yesterday I was teaching my English class to a group of pensioners here in DK. The lesson was centered around the election, duh. To map out where Obama stands politically, I drew a left/right axis with all the major Danish parties. I had the class set the parties where they thought the parties should be situated. I then mapped a handful of US politicians onto the Danish system. Obama is squarely aligned with the current ruling coalition here, a center-right neo-liberal party. It puts into perspective just how far right-wing the reactionary Republican party has become. So an Obama victory would be a huge step towards rational government and represents the only current possibility for a more just and humane America. No, I didn’t drink the cool aide. But I too want to believe.
One of the many interesting aspects of American politics are the ways popular cultural narratives are manifested, especially as deliberate campaign constructions.
This post explores the current brouhaha over Barack Obama’s alleged “elitist” remarks through the lens of the cowboy cultural narrative, both as campaign rhetoric and visual media representation.
In The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, R.W.B. Lewis coined the term “American Adam” in reference to the cowboy and noted, “It is the birth of an archetypal, still finely individualized character, which [D.H.] Lawrence identifies as ‘the essential American soul…an isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man’” (104). Lewis claimed that the archetype – the American Adam – was “birth[ed] on American soil” and in the American imagination the late nineteenth/turn of the century cowboy came to be perceived as a uniquely American creation. Hence, the mythological construction of the cowboy, built on the foundation of the medieval English knight, was a crucial element in the creation of nationalist sentiment in post-Civil War America. (Moskowitz, 2006)More »
Obama and America’s Racial Stalemate: A Counter-wedge to the Southern Strategy
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
Obama has just delivered a speech (which he wrote himself) for the history books. I won’t go into a full analysis but like any memorable speech from the American scene, his included the themes of; American exceptionalism, generational progress, religious freedom and tolerance, and of course, founding myths of American democracy. More »
Something I’ve been thinking about but just never got around to writing about is the use of visual media in these presidential campaigns. Much has already been written about the explosion of internet based communications this cycle, from blogging to user created video. One of things I had looked at early on were the candidates’ front page web presence, especially their logos. Now the field has narrowed to 3 remaining candidates so I missed my chance at a grand comparative visual analysis of all the campaign websites.
C’est la vie. More »
April 8, there will be a special primary election for California’s 12th Congressional District, which has become vacant after Tom Lantos passed away last week.
Within days, a draft Lawrence Lessig campaign was set up by Harvard professorJohn Palfrey.
Ars Technica reported;
Legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who has become an academic celebrity for his innovative work on cyberlaw and intellectual property in the digital age, made headlines late last year when he announced that he would be shifting his scholarly focus to the study of political corruption. But now a burgeoning online movement is urging the Stanford professor to tackle the problem head-on: they are seeking to draft Lessig to run for Congress, in a special election, scheduled for April 8, to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who succumbed to cancer last week.
Here’s his announcement video. Anyone familiar with Lessig is familiar with his “powerpoint” and speaking style. This is definitely not the typical political campaign message, but it will no doubt appeal to a sizable portion of Democratic primary voters in his district.
At this point it’s not certaint that he will enter the race. Furthermore, his chances against a popular and well-known politician like Jackie Speier would seem fairly insurmountable.
But this district, spanning parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties represents one of the most IT tech savvy districts in the nation. Lessig is also a staunch supporter of Barack Obama’s campaign and there has been much speculation that Lessig would play a role in an Obama administration. It will be interesting to see if and how these two races intersect. IT and communications policy, while mundane to the average voter, will be a major issue in the years to come. Obama, for example, has placed IT policy as a top priority for his administration. He’s outlined a very progressive policy (progressive being quite subjective) which can be read here.
Whether or not Lessig enters the race or wins the seat, this demonstrates the increasingly dominant role of not only internet technologies in US politics but of the very active online culture behind those technologies. Lessig, with his dedicated support of open copyright and “free culture” represents the technocratic neo-progressivism which has become a powerful constituency within the emerging new Democratic coalition. Like Carl Pedersen suggests, 2008 may ultimately turn out to be a total referendum on the last 30 years of Conservative free market ideology. Communications and copyright are just a few of the many fronts in what could turn out to become a generational political realignment.
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One of the many interesting aspects of American politics are the ways popular cultural narratives are manifested, especially as deliberate campaign constructions.
