Barack Obama: Darling of the White Bourgeoisie
The media-manipulated kids
and the misinformed, deluded ‘progressives’
were persuaded by his vague banalities
and his corporate-crafted Telescreen imagery
They falsely believe that he is some sort of
left or populist and antiwar candidate
Two days before the great Caucasian Caucus in Iowa,
one unusually forthcoming Obama and self-critical supporter
(the Obamanists were by far and away
the least open to conversation and reflection)
did tell me something I already knew:
That Obama is a way for liberal and moderate whites
to “pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced”
Obama’s race encouraged a lot of “progressives”
not to do their homework on him
or on the U.S. political culture he reflects
Like the white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer and ally Oprah Winfrey, Obama expresses and capitalizes on whites’ partial transcendence of “level-one” state-of-mind racism.At the same time, he reassures them he will honor their refusal acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” state-of-being” - societal and institutional – racism in American life.
Barack Obama is a Great White Hope. He is perfectly suited and crafted to wrap establishment corporate politics and the related American Empire Project in rebel’s clothing.
He advances the use of race (albeit in a new and “post-Civil Rights” kind of way) to advance the top-down business-class agenda.
Obama Is a "Good [Bourgeois & Right-Acting] Black" [Original]
No doubt, a record number of disproportionately middle-class and white Democrats are going to the the polling stations in New Hampshire right now to proclaim “the king is dead, long live the king.”
The deceased sovereign is the elitist corporate-imperial neoliberalism of the 1990s, represented by the “experience” and “expertise” of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The living monarch is the elitist corporate-imperial neoliberalism and racial accommodationism of Barack Obama, who claims to represent the goals of “unity,” “change,” and “hope.”
How many of the Obama know this was what theyre voting for I cannot honestly say. It's certainly a minority. But consciousness aside, objective reality is harsh: plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Obama is a master triangulator and class-race accommodator in the insidious corporate-neoliberal and militaristic Clinton-DLC mode.
I also learned that he was being richly rewarded for his careful, cautious, and even “deeply conservative” politics and rhetoric with more than $80 million (just $10 million behind Hillary) in largely corporate-funded campaign financing.
He has the support of much of the Democratic Party’s imperial foreign policy establishment and (perhaps most significant of all) astonishing and unprecedented levels of dominant (corporate) media love.
As in Iowa, So in New Hampshire
According to the New York Post, Obama spent more than $9 million on television ads in Iowa - the most of any candidate in the state. The second-place finisher, labor-"populist" Edwards, spent just $3.2 million.
Obama got 38 percent of the state's Democratic Party delegates, meaning that he spent $236,842 per delegate percentage point. Edwards got 30 percent of the state's Democratic Party delegates, meaning that he spent $106,667 per delegate percentage point.
Apparently, the much more well-funded Obama campaign spent considerably more than the Edwards campaign (which has raised around $30 million) on getting its expensively consultant-crafted message out across the corporate media.
For what it’s worth, the third place Clinton campaign (the most well-funded campaign at $90 million) came in with highest priced television bill for the results it got in Iowa.
Spending $7.2 million to get 29 percent of the delegates (barely behind Edwards), it invested more than $240,000 in ads per delegate percentage point.
As anyone from Iowa with a functioning television can tell you, the state's voters were simply bombarded with Obama commercials.
It seems pretty obvious that money and consultants (the crafters of political "message") mattered a great deal as far as the super-wealthy Obama campaign was concerned.
The BaRockstar received enormous media attention given during national and news broadcasts and press accounts and endorsements.
Throughout the Caucus campaign, Obama was given an astonishing and unmatched level of positive and lengthy media coverage.
This reflected (i) corporate media's deep disdain for anything that even slightly hints of populism and (ii) that media's deep approval of Obama's message of reconciliation across class, regional, racial, partisan and ideological lines.
Also worth noting, the Obama campaign’s superior financial resources allowed it to pour millions of dollars into the expensive operation called “data mining” – the generation and use of complex micro-targeted survey and marketing data to identify likely supporters and to expand the universe of likely caucus-goers.
It is a chillingly effective tool in advancing the basic purpose of corporate-crafted elections: marketing candidate brand names (“Hope,” “Unity,” “Change”) to purchasers/voters and contributors/investors.
The Great White Hope
A radical correspondent of mine sent the following message after the inevitable data-mined Obama returns came in from Iowa:
“That’s a shame about Obama. The media-manipulated kids and the misinformed and deluded ‘progressives’ were persuaded by his vague banalities and his corporate-crafted Telescreen imagery.”
Sure, but it’s more complicated. There is a remarkable amount of false progressive consciousness, misinformation, and laziness (failure to do basic homework) about the Obama phenomenon.
Many of his supporters falsely believe that he is some sort of left or populist and antiwar candidate.
Such ignorance is naturally encouraged by the well-funded Obama campaign and is especially widespread among younger voters, who turned out in record numbers for the Iowa caucus.
And some of the college kids in my precinct and town liked Obama pretty much for the same reasons they like a Michael Jordan or a Jamie Fox: because “he’s cool” and it strikes them as vaguely transgressive to like a technically black personality.
Still, a significant amount of support came from people who sense rather well that Obama is a faux-progressive preserver of race and class privilege.
And they love that about him. They’re not deluded at all. He helps them feel good about being white and well-off. His promise of illusory change and pretend transformation is exactly what they are about.
They have big houses, nice careers, and creeping concerns about all the poor black people that are starting to show up on the east side of Iowa city.
Many of those truly disadvantaged blacks are refugees from the urban corporate-neoliberal racism of “global Chicago,” whose ruling (Richard M.] Daley regime has pushed poor African-Americans out of “global Chicago” and propelled Obama onto the national stage.
Obama Gets the "Anti-Racist" Racist Vote
According to New York Times writer Kirk Johnson today (I am writing on Sunday, January 6), the lesson of Obama’s victory in Iowa is that “race didn’t matter”.
Not true. In my experience during the Iowa campaign (going back to the summer), race mattered a great deal: it made many liberal and moderate whites excessively reluctant to take a hard and honest look at Obama’s corporate connections, imperial pronouncements, and general conservatism.
It encouraged them to exaggerate how progressive he was and to identify any criticism of the BaRockstar phenomenon as racism.
Two days before the great Caucasian Caucus, one unusually forthcoming Obama and self-critical supporter (the Obamanists were by far and away the least open to conversation and reflection) did tell me something I already knew:
That Obama is a way for liberal and moderate whites to “pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced.”
Obama’s race encouraged a lot of “progressives” not to do their homework on him or on the U.S. political culture he reflects.
Of course, it’s all premised on Obama being a "good [bourgeois and right-acting] black" – one who promises not to actually confront white supremacy in any meaningful way.
Like the white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer and ally Oprah Winfrey, Obama expresses and capitalizes on whites’ partial transcendence of “level-one” state-of-mind racism.
At the same time, he reassures them he will honor their refusal acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” state-of-being” - societal and institutional – racism in American life.
Barack Obama is a Great White Hope. He is perfectly suited and crafted to wrap establishment corporate politics and the related American Empire Project in rebel’s clothing.
He advances the use of race (albeit in a new and “post-Civil Rights” kind of way) to advance the top-down business-class agenda.
Just caught up with this from Melanie Phillips , comparing the Obama &
Princess Diana phenomena -
‘Wait a minute,’ she said, ‘what is the substance here? What, as famously was said years ago, where's the beef? You know, where is the reality?’
Well, look at how much Mitt Romney spent in IA, estimates are around $16
mill.. that's amost 2 times that of the Obama spend..