Thomas Sowell Agrees With Me

About the real Obama


Sowell writes in his article "A Post-Racial President?":

An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.

This is what I wrote in my post "Obama's Expressions":

[H]ere's more of the true Obama coming out to the open in unexpected ways. Video footage can only conceal so much of him, thanks to gestures and expressions.

I.e. his actions.

Like Clockwork: Update On Mercer III

Idiot is as idiot writes



From the "pundit" that discreetly (without directly referring to me) called me an idiot once - and I have reason to believe she did it again - here is a truly idiotic post.

Never mind that her post is an incoherent mess of deriding Gates, reprimanding Sgt. Crowley, and talking about racism. What exactly is her point - and where is she going with all this, really?

Here is, I believe, the pertinent excerpt:

At this stage [while still in Gates's home], I think the officer ought to have walked away. Just done the gentlemanly thing and bowed out. But when Gates followed Crowley out cussing, pulling rank and threatening him, the officer cuffed the professor for disorderly conduct. At this point, the officer, who so far had done his duty, lost it and gave in to oneupmanship [sic].

a. Crowley did walk away.

b. The officer did not give in to one-upmanship. If Mercer had carefully watched the interview of Crowley after the incident, and properly read the police report that she links to on her blog, she should have realized that there was no one-upmanship on Crowley's part. Gates was simply demonstrating disorderly behavior.

c. There is no indication whatsoever that Crowley "lost it."

I understand now, after reading the comments section on her blog, that this is all to do with "The State" and "Property Rights" and other paranoid libertarian views.

So, I was right, though confused for quite a while, that I was dealing with an odd character when I got that strange email. I wish she had called me "idiot" earlier, and I would have figured out this libertarian mess that so many so-called conservative writers (or writers who use conservative venues because no-one else will publish them) call writing.

Obama's Expressions

He just can't run away from those

I did a quick, rough recording of Obama's speech
directly from the computer, and edited out most
of it except for these short 13 seconds.
Images are indeed worth a thousand words.
I've tried to analyze them. But, maybe it's
enough just to watch.

I was viewing this short video from ABC of Obama's pseudo-apology to Sgt. Crowley, and found each sentence in those short six minutes irritating enough to warrant a rebuttal, but I will leave it all to this 13-second visual segment. About four minutes into the speech, Obama says:

The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that [Obama shrugs his shoulders, nods his head sideways, mouths "you know"] race is still [does a twisting motion with his right hand with a grimace on his face] a troubling aspect of our society...

I don't know how to adequately analyze these facial expressions and body movements. My best shot is that it's as though Obama is saying: "Well, we know that we'll never really get rid of racism, as long as those evil racists are around. And I can't quite get a handle on this racism thing, but it sure would go away if the culprits wanted it to go away. I mean, don’t they get it that they’re racists?"

Anyway, here's more of the true Obama coming out to the open in unexpected ways. Video footage can only conceal so much of him, thanks to gestures and expressions.

We Know that Obama Is Not a Nice Guy

And any "nice guy" traits are questionable


I will venture to say that we know that Obama is not a nice guy.

I say this because:

- He threw is grandmother, who brought him up during his teenage years, "under the bus."

- Rather than protect his wife when pressured to produce her Princeton thesis, he allowed the media to access it. He must have known it would undergo scrutiny. Wasn't it enough that Michelle’s thesis professors put her on the spot, without the whole country (and world) doing the same decades later? Even Hillary declined to have her thesis made public.

- He sat for twenty years in Wright's church, and lied about not hearing the vicious sermons Wright preached. It is bad enough that he lied, but it is just as bad or worse the kind of bitterness and antagonism he must hold towards America, having been privy to those sermons.

- When put on a sudden spot, like in this interview, he loses all his charm and goodwill, and resorts to bad feelings based on false statistics and manufactured grudges.

- This person thinks that he has a hidden misogynistic personality. I tend to agree.

- He is a manipulator, as I posted here. He lets his wife make outrageous statements, as though by proxy for him, never denounces what she says, but lets her get all the flack. And when Malia Obama wears a politically loaded peacenik t-shirt while in Moscow, looking ungainly and unattractive, he (and his wife) let her. Again, I'm deducing that he's letting Malia play out his political views, once again showing his manipulative side.

- Probably the most revelatory is his public persona, which he camouflaged and hid from us for much of his campaign, which he then started to slowly unravel as his presidency progressed. For example, he never mentioned his middle name, but then clearly made it a part of his identity early on in his presidency. This would qualify any other politician (or person) as a liar. So, are liars nice guys?

- Finally, I do think the personal is the political. What a person does in public (and as a public person) reflects on his personality.

On the other had, we may think he is a nice guy because:

- He always talks about how much he loves his daughters.

But:

Many not-so-nice people have strong emotional attachments to people close to them.

- He appears to have a long and successful marriage with Michelle.

But:

As much as I hate getting into people’s marital affairs, we don’t know what goes on in their home. People have written about his stubborn pursuit of his political career, which had Michelle frustrated at being left behind with their children in Chicago while he was away in Washington, causing years of tension in their house.

- He appears charming and affable.

But:

He has shown an inability to hold spontaneous press conferences, getting his Speaker of the House to cover for him. Is he afraid of not appearing charming and friendly when asked difficult questions?

He may smile a lot, but then there are moments when we see his grimacing face, which suggests that all that smiling may just be a front.

- He seems to have good manners (I remember when he pulled Hillary’s chair out for her during one of their debates).

But:

Pulling the chair out for Hillary may have been what his grandma (now under the bus) taught him, and was a knee-jerk reaction.

- He takes Michelle out on dates.

But:

One particular date he had with his wife came at an extraordinary expense, and a choreography of helicopters and airplanes, all for dinner and theatre in New York. If he were a genuinely nice person, surely he would have scrapped this at a time when people were losing their jobs and a recession was looming in the horizon?

On another date, while in the Prague, he ignored or neglected protocol in a foreign land and preferred to pass the time at a restaurant with his wife instead. My theory on that was that Michelle didn't handle the trip that well (remember her fashion disasters?), and needed buttering up.

I don’t mean to be facetious, but someone once told me that Stalin was quite possibly a nice person (according to his private friends), yet look what he did to his country.

I understand people defending Obama’s personal character; it is never good to gossip since there is really so much we don’t know. But, there is a lot we do know, and perhaps we should base our decisions on that instead. That is after all what we are called to do:

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

I will stick to my long-time analysis that Obama is not as nice as he makes out. Charming, yes, although even that is losing ground with many people.

Actually, there is one theory that he is simply a narcissist. I tend to agree with that, which explains so much of his posturing and charming persona. And narcissists definitely are not nice people.

Graveyard Where Emmitt Till Is Buried Has Been Desecrated

Premonition of things to come

Emmitt Till's murder catapulted America into the civil rights movement. Now, more than fifty years later, we are seeing the fruits of that movement. The despicable incident involving the Harvard professor Henry Gates who, despite his prominent position and privileged life, found it within himself to yell "racism” when a white policeman arrested him for disorderly conduct, is testament to this "progress."

The event has been covered extensively these past few days.

I just want to point out the uncanny news of three gravediggers and the cemetery manager at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip Illinois, where Till is buried, that were charged with removing bodies from graves, and re-selling the emptied plots. Their charge occurred only ten days before the Gates story. Although Till's grave remained unharmed, his original casket, which was glass-covered so that, according to his mother, "the world would see what they've done to my boy," was found rotting in a nearby shed. It had been given to the cemetery to be displayed in a mausoleum.

The four that were charged with this desecration are all black. This includes the former manager, who had been entrusted with the memorial fund for the mausoleum, but who police now believe pocketed the money.

It is almost as though this incident, quiet yet devastating to the family members who had graves desecrated, was a premonition of the events to come.

The Talent of Pop Artists

Going to waste


I posted early this morning on pop star Mika's new song "We are golden." Mostly, it was a negative view of the lyrics.

[Click here to listen to Mika's "We are golden"].

I like the song a lot. There is a fullness about it. As I say in the post: "This particular song is big, orchestral, cosmic even."

There are many talents around in the arts. Pop music generates its own brand of talents, however much the highbrow elites deride them. Like I said in my last post, pop culture is an extension (or a modern version) of folk culture. We have to take it seriously, and even nurture it. This is the same with "Hollywood" films, where there are many directors who are using long-earned and learned skills and techniques in filmmaking, which if we totally dismiss, will result in a completely barren artistic world.

I think part of the problem is that people don't know how to do beautiful art anymore. And if they do it, they have to infuse it with repelling decadence. A little like the rose scene in Chéri, where Michelle Pfeiffer's character, Léa, bends down to smell a beautiful pale pink rose, only to find it disintegrating in her hands.

So, the question is: how do we get to do beautiful art once more? And not only that, meaningful art as well, which is equally important, since Mika's problem is his profound nihilism.

I would venture to say that we, older veterans (and our mentors too), owe these younger artists an explanation (which will force us to search our own intentions as well) as to why art has turned this corner and is staring into the abyss. We also need the courage of our convictions, and return to beauty once again.

Mika and his ilk are only following what they see. They are, after all, being true to themselves and their surroundings.

Notes on Pop Culture: From Paradise to Dystopia

In just forty years

Pop singer Mika looks like he could
be one of the scavenger youths from
Doris Lessings Memoirs of a survivor.

I think pop culture is a watered down version of folk culture, and that pop culture, as we know it, has a degenerative, decadent characteristic to it, whereas folk culture is more uplifting.

Still, what pop culture does, besides give us the culture of our time and hopefully our locale, is some kind of collective psychological barometer as to where our culture is going.

I recently came across this very poppy pop song titled "We are golden" composed and sung by a young man called Mika. Apparently, he is quite a pop phenomenon. He studied music at the Royal College of Music in England before writing his own songs.

Since I equate pop songs with folk songs, I take them seriously. This particular song is big, orchestral, cosmic even. But it is really uncanny too, because of the lyrics.

Now, thanks to the web, I was able to find a line of Mika’s song in Joni Mitchell’s "Woodstock" with precisely those same lines – "we are golden."

Here is part of the lyrics from Mika’s song ("we are golden" is part of the refrain):

I was a boy at an open door
Why you staring
Do you still think that you know?
Looking for treasure
In the things that you threw
Like a magpie
I live for glitter, not you

We are not what you think we are
We are golden, we are golden
(We are not what you think we are
We are golden, we are golden)

Here is part of Joni Mitchell’s "Woodstock" – again "we are golden" is part of the refrain.

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm 
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

I knew of Mitchell’s song, but had forgotten it.

I think Mika’s song is about dystopia, the end of the world, the end of everything, whereas Mitchell’s is about leaving earth to return to paradise. Mika has given up on earth and heaven; Joni still dreams of heaven.

Mitchell’s song was written 1969; Mika’s in 2009. This is the progress our culture has made in the last forty years. Although the vestiges of this profound nihilism are to be found in Mitchell’s song, it has a ring of hope to it. In Mika’s there is an unabashed abandon. The song sounds optimistic, but it is just a wild frenzy of the moment. Let’s sing ourselves to our deaths, he seems to be saying.

What happened in these last forty years to bring forth a Mika? Why couldn’t Mitchell’s song have steered us (and her) towards another, better, path?

Mika’s characters, all those Golden Ones, remind me of course of Hitler’s golden youth. But Doris Lessing, in her 1974 dark novel Memoirs of a Survivor, writes about confident youth taking over a world that has caved in on itself. The grown-ups, the adults, who caused this destruction, are no longer in the picture. Instead, "Lord of the Flies" style, young teenagers are running the show, vandalizing and tormenting the adults as they scavenge through garbage bins for shiny things.

Lessing's prophecy is coming true, at least in Mika's songs.