Surface Analysis of Obama Announcement Preview

The eve of the anticipated day has come. I just got an e-mail from Barack Obama's campaign committee telling me to go to this link for a special video message. (Yay)

http://www.barackobama.com/preview/

I was excited to see what the promise of Obama had in store for us all, but again, there was a curious feeling, one that furrowed my eyebrows and got my head in a tilt while I clicked on "Play."

He looks tired. It's expected of all people campaigning for any highly publicized role, especially President, to spend "150%" on the role, to rally the people, to exude confidence and utmost determination, friendliness and understanding. All while trying to spar and elude the viciousness and unprecedented attacks from the opposition and its minions (we all know what I'm referring to), and to look good while doing it, goddammit! In other words, it's known that they'll be exhausted in the process.

So why does it shock me so to see a paler, hesitating, soft-spoken, slightly thinner Obama than I was expecting? It really does look like he's gotten the air knocked out of him with all the uh-'s, and the absence of, well, passion!

"uh- Obviously, uh- I'm extraordinarily excited about ... uh- the possibilities of this campaign..."

Did you notice that he didn't smile or look excited through the whole thing? Did you notice that he got slower and slower as the video went on?

I wonder if he trying to be serious-and-determined, or if he wasn't feeling-it, or if he was just nervous? I'm worried. Clinton can get away with layers and layers of foundation and makeup to round out her features, but she has always been consistent with the strength and confidence behind her stance and voice. She emits infallibility, especially through times when even the strongest women were susceptible to running over their husband three times with their Mercedes... or driving from Texas to Florida non-stop while wearing a diaper...

Surely Obama's team could have done a better job in preparing for his special and very significant rallying video with a little more makeup to warm his appearance, a suit jacket to give him more bearing and presence, a scripted and practiced dialog to convey confidence and security, and a more upright head posture so he doesn't look so lax and ... tired.

Not that I'm being picky or anything, but I want him to mean it all the time! It's not bedtime yet! Well anyway, I'm not going to go into a rage about this man. We'll see how he does tomorrow.

Revenge vs. Rationale

Oh boy, boys and girls, and the faux-madrassah story continues with a direct response from the Obama committee against Fox News. What's more, it's actually a pretty redeeming feel-good story, that is, until you address the nagging in your gut.

So, the Washington Post is reporting that due to Fox's irresponsible and illegitimate mud slinging concerning Obama's past, the Obama camp is "freezing out" all Fox reporters and producers, declining them access to speak with the senator or to participate in following his presidential campaign route. Revenge, sweet and simple.

While the actual truth of the matter is as dependable as "unnamed media sources" are, this does seem like a deliberate retaliation on the part of the presidential candidate if Fox reporters are whining about feeling like they're "in the freezer" and that the other people at Fox who didn't do anything against him are now the ones who are bearing the brunt of the snub.

Now I do have sympathy for the struggling new journalists at Fox who might naively believe that their station practices true unbiased journalism, and that by Obama sharing his stories with them, everything they report would be conveyed by Fox's broadcasters in the way that Obama and the journalists themselves intended it, without all the spinning, the skewing, the condescending tone of voice, the raised eyebrows of the broadcasters. This is not obviously not reality, and Obama's group is intelligent enough to suspect otherwise.

However, the question is, although it feels good now to admonish Fox for what they've done by giving them the silent treatment, what good will it do in the long run? Fox caters to a third of the American news-watching population (34% of Republicans, 20% of Democrats in a Pew Research Center study), more than any other single news station, leaving us to ponder the worse(r) of evils:

1. If that large slice of the population does not get their daily fix of Obama-vibes, albeit spun in a negative light, will they all lose interest in his persona?
2. But if they did hear skewed commentary on Obama, would they be more likely not to vote for him?
3. Would they really vote for Obama anyway, seeing that they regularly watch Fox, the neoconservative station?
4. Would it balance out favors for Obama to make a personal appearance in their states and be featured in their local news instead?

On a higher level, is it really right for Obama to turn his back on Fox? Though it feels justly validating, it is what it is: antagonism, which is ultimately a negative trait for a legislator to hold. Drawing that implication out, would he continue to ignore Fox if he got elected president? Would he hold out on talking to groups that actively dislike him? We have to remember that while Fox did actively attempt to discredit him, they did not skew his own words out of turn, which is what they did with the Hillary campaign. That may be a significant distinction.

I hoped that Obama would have been the bigger man by directly addressing the issue of Fox's childish reporting behavior with a completely mature (and fully publicized) response, perhaps even on Fox News itself, to clarify the issues. Not this childish counter-bullying (as far as I can tell, did I miss his statements?), which may be construed as hostile and irresponsible itself. But we shall inevitably see what ensues as a result. Will Hillary join in?? How long will it last?

Perhaps the only good thing about this news line is that we all now know what a madrassah is...

Go Dems, part II: "Barry"!

By now, we all may have heard about Fox News' anti-Muslim Obama "smear campaign" (what else can we expect from these guys nowadays). Started by Insight, a conservative magazine published by the Washington Times, without a proper source or background check (I guess Insight's reports are based solely on, well, insight rather than fact), it was claimed that [1] Barack Obama had studied at an Islamic madrassah in Indonesia, which translates as "school" in Arabic, but in current times implies a location for ideological and political training grounds with the purpose of spreading hatred and violence against the Western world (in the Islamic fundamentalist tradition). The newscasters on Fox and Friends also repeatedly made an issue of the fact that [2] Obama was raised Muslim for the first 10 years of his life, and that his Muslim father gave him the middle name, "Hussein." As if his conversion to Christianity and living it the majority of his life meant nothing.

Not only targeting Obama's reputation, Fox chose to include an additional, indirect, smear on Hillary Clinton by referencing Insight magazine's "insight" that [3] it was the Clinton campaign committee's idea to research Obama's background which produced this "secret" information. Fox went further to attribute these hostile intentions on the suspicion that the Clinton campaign felt financially threatened by his running.

It was indeed discovered by CNN, after investigating the claims by going directly to Obama's school in Jakarta, Indonesia, that [1] the whole madrassah story was fake: the school-in-question that he attended 40 years ago was a public elementary school (and not a madrassah) which follows a national curriculum, and where his classmates called him "Barry." In other words, it is not an Islamic school, doesn't focus on religion, and in fact doesn't give preference to one religion or another. [3] It was also revealed that Clinton's campaign had no connection to the false allegations, and that both Obama and Clinton campaign groups were outraged by the reports.

I want to comment on the truth of [2], that Obama was initially raised Muslim - and I want to parallel it to my own experience in Japan. Living in a foreign country for an extended period of time, sustained by daily interaction with the native people is a true cultural and human learning experience. At first, there definitely is that culture shock and rebellion, but live there long enough and it eventually results in an innate understanding of a distinct set of basic beliefs and perceptions of how the world functions. As a child, I suspect that Obama would have absorbed the legitimate perspective of a Muslim culture, and upon his residing in the U.S. also absorb the equally legitimate perspective of the American culture.

Ever since the start of the Iraq War, and further beyond, there has been a need for politicians who understand the true concept of "new" terms such as "globalism" and "internationalism." Specifically, in this case, not just how U.S. citizens view and react to the Muslim community, but also how the Muslim community views and reacts to the U.S. in all its meanings and implications. There is an obvious imbalance in this regard, where the current administration views foreign relations as an "Us-Them" paradigm, rather than the much more civil "We."

I fully believe that Barry Obama's unique cultural experience and understanding of the Muslim world would serve as a clear paradigm shift which will benefit the U.S.; he would be one of the few able to relate to "those people over there whom we are fighting" on a humanistic level, and even more, to empathize with their fundamental needs and bring that back to a practical level in the form of the education of U.S. citizens and our democratic politics. Isn't that what we are trying to create over there, anyway? It's ironic that our idea of democracy is based on the needs and goals of the people being governed, yet we are trying to build a democracy in the Middle East for people we don't understand. Gotta love the logic!