Last night I was blessed to join host Chris Lydon, demographer/pollster Brad Coker and the New Republic's Peter Beinart on Open Source Radio, a highly Internet interactive public radio show from WGBH-Boston. Check the show's web page; podcast should be available by week's end.
The meat was Barack Obama as avatar for a generational political shift. Among other things I contributed this "compare and contrast" on announcement videos:
HILARY:
She’s restoring the “American promise” from her comfy, tasteful
suburban couch by the terrace garden door, her traditional family
photos in the background.
“I grew up in a middle class family…in the middle of America… and we grew up on that promise.”
“While I can’t reach everyone’s living room, I can try.”
Read:”While I can’t be Oprah, I can put almost as much money behind
projecting this reasonable yet tough, responsible Mom image. And I do
have a few friends who are or have been in high places.”
I
find it very telling that she found it necessary to remind us that
she’s a daughter of middle-class, middle America. Clearly she sees a
need to distance herself from representing electric blue New York. But
I wonder if she won’t be setting up a “middle America” versus “next
America” competition with Obama in the process. This is clearly a much
more difficult hand for her to play.
OBAMA (funny, but calling him Barack just doesn’t feel right):
There’s
a much lower context to his video: he’s .not necessarily a dad or
especially male/fatherly; no obvious class/race/gender signifiers.
The
only culture context offered is a modern cool: open collar shirt (you
could imagine it not even being tucked in) cool background colors
(ice-blueish shirt versus Hilary buried in warm earth tones). The only
thing warm is his mocha skin.
Net effect: he looks warm against the cool, somewhere near the edge,
while Hilary looks relatively cold (though putting great effort into
sounding warm) deep inside the warmth of her suburban living room.
Obama
necessarily focuses more on his motivation (read: his qualification)
than his background, of which he says nothing. He’s responding to a
“hunger” for a different kind of politics, especially the “smallness”
of our politics, what with all the big money that’s “gumming things up.”
Read: I’m an outsider looking to connect with all of you who feel
outside of the money/power/ agenda that still dominates Washington, and
the institutional memory that keeps us going around in the same basic
circle, no matter who is driving the car.
Though
it seems unnecessary to say, it must be pointed out: even running on
two separate browser screens, he REALLY makes Hilary look old. As
unseemly as it may become, once they get on the same screen every
night, popular media will have an awfully hard time ignoring this
unstated context. This could very well be about his youth versus the
feminist politics of aging, rather than race or gender per se.
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