The Politics of Representation/Representational Politics
By Truthteller on March 15, 2008 at 3:43 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Race, Race Card, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
I shall demonstrate elsewhere that what is often called the black soul is white man’s artifact.
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Are these representations products of shared beliefs, or were they orchestrated by David Axelrod, whose Southern and African-American Strategies relied heavily upon Michelle Obama and Jeremiah Wright?
I quote the New Yorker:
Earlier on the day that Obama visited the nursery school, she addressed a congregation at the Pee Dee Union Baptist Church, in Cheraw, a hamlet of about six thousand known as “The Prettiest Town in Dixie.” The church’s makeshift gravel parking lot, next to the Pee Dee Ice and Fuel Company and bounded by train tracks, was full. After an invocation by the Reverend Jerry Corbett and an introduction by the mayor of Cheraw, Obama came to the pulpit. “You all got up bright and early just for me?” she asked the mostly elderly, almost all-black crowd. “Yes!” they roared. Obama continued, “On behalf of my church home and my pastor, Reverend Wright, I bring greetings.”
Obama opened with some reminiscing. “My people are from South Carolina,” she said. “I don’t know if y’all knew that. . . . In fact, my brother and I came down last week for a mini family reunion at my grandparents’ church, because they retired back down here, and before their death they were living here, attending an A.M.E. Baptist church in Georgetown.”
Obama was playing to her audience–later she riffed on “those relatives who have plastic on the furniture” and reminded the churchgoers to get “ten other triflin’ people in your life” out of bed and down to the polls on Saturday. Her appearances at the church, and many like it, were a key point of strategy in a state that would be the first real test of whether or not Barack could attract significant numbers of black voters. “In South Carolina in particular, because she had family from there, it made a lot of sense for her to speak in the African-American community,” David Axelrod said.
A Caucasian male named David Axelrod mobilizes identifications and votes within the African-American community for the African-American candidate whose representations and actions he coordinates, manufactures and controls. Who is the bamboozler, and who are the bamboozled?
White civilization and European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro. I shall demonstrate elsewhere that what is often called the black soul is white man’s artifact.
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
(small, medium and large sizes; for both dogs and cats)
+ 
Is the ploy by the DNC a “Draft Gore” movement at the convention? Pelosi and Dean seem to be certain they don’t want Clinton as the nominee, and Obama may well be toxic by that time (and neither will have enough delegates for nomination).
A stalemated convention, and then the wooden white knight rides to the rescue.
Is that their plan?
Do you think Axelrod has any clue what he is doing?
I don’t.
I think he took Rove’s template, tried to apply it to the democrats, and it’s blowing up in his face, as he was unable to configure ALL the resultant contingencies.
Just like Bush, and the RNC. I would say, overall the divide and conquer is falling apart. They spend more time putting out fires, avoiding the truth of greater losses, in a futile attempt to avoid failure.
They don’t understand why something appeared to succeed, when it really didn’t.
Simon:
Actually, I think that Axelrod knew exactly what he was doing. But it got out of control. Obama’s whole candidacy was predilected upon 2 things: 1) Using an ovehyped speech to get the support of the radical left anti-war fringe (basically “Chardonnay Liberals” wallowing in self-inflicted white guilt) and 2) Using what I assume he planned to be limited race baiting to break the hold that the Clinton’s had on black loyalty. Axelrod knew that Obama couldn’t secure the nomintion without gaining the overwhelming support of both factions. And to do it he was more than willing to destroy the reputation of both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the process. It was an incredibly cynical but effective strategy.
The problem is that he did his job too well. He underestimated the impact of MSNBC (especially the out of control Olbermann) and blogoshere Hillary bashing and the resulting backlash among Clinton’s other key demographics - women and Hispanics, and to a lesser extent, white boomer males such as myself who don’t take kindly to being vilified as racists for every impure non-messiah worshipping thought that crosses our minds. I suspect that Axelrod probably realized the problem he created a while back and wanted to put the race baiting and Hillary bashing genie back in the bottle. But by that time it was too late. The whole narrative became sort of a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Unstoppable once it started.
And the Democratic Party may be permanently crippled as a result. Which, the more I think about it, may not actually be such a bad thing in the long run. Drastic changes need to take place if this party (or what emerges from the ashes of it) is ever to be consistently meaningful on a national level again. It’s a clear sign of a tremendous problem when people overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic message on every issue yet barely favor electing a Democratic candidate. But what to do about that is a rant for another time….
Simon,
OBama and Axelrod knew exactly what they were doing.
If the goal was to lose…lol
I think they THOUGHT they knew what they were doing, but like Rove, they were unable to understand the weaknesses in their plan.
It’s like shock and awe, they BOMBARD with garbage, but they don’t understand the larger contingencies, in terms of effect.
Rove did not achieve his permanent republican majority, the country is truly suffering, IS NOT ideologically aligned.
Same with Iraq, they did not intend for this chaos,
and they didn’t foresee former allies turning to our enemies, theoretically, to restore order.
So they lose control, in the long run.
Michelle Obama proved why Barack should drop from the race in her speech, by saying “as a role model, if you cannot run your own house, you certainly cannot run the Whitehouse”!
She forget that Hillary forgave Bill, that requires a strong person to do! Something Michelle doesn’t seem to have the capability of doing based on her injection of race into the campaign, what sort of role model will Michelle be?
Michelle forget that if you cannot buy your own house without the aide of a slumlord and dirty money provider, then you shouldn’t even be in a house, let alone the Whitehouse!
Oh how the self proclaimed blessed fall when they open the lid to a Pandora’s Box!
Regardless of whether Obama actually heard any one of the offensive sermons identified so far, the question remains: did Obama know what Rev. Wright’s views were which lead to these sermons? In other words, did Obama know Rev. Wright had such ideas and when did Obama know it? Are we to believe Obama had no idea Rev. Wright has held such incendiary beliefs - e.g.,that the U.S. government created HIV? Obama attended this church for 20 years (and apparently gave it lots of money) but never got the sense from Wright himself or from another member of the church how the church leader thought? C’mon. Surely we are not expected to believe Obama had no idea what Wright thought about 9/11, race, the U.S. government, etc.
Wright himself said Obama told him he couldn’t be at his presidential run announcement because he was controversial so I think that says it all.
Josh Marshall (who was for the war before he was against it) is worried about a big drop in Obama’s polling numbers in the last couple of days.
No, I won’t link to that site.
EIGHT points in 48 hours. That is huge.
Axelrod is using target marketing techniques. I have blogged extensively about that.
Putting the logos on children, and passing out “free merchandise” like placards is a way to “brand” the logo. He is “the logo” now. If you see it, you immediately associate the name.
It isn’t different than the gimmicks corp America uses say at coffee places or fast food chains.
It costs very little to print up a run of stuff like this, and it reinforces the “instabrand”
A quick grasp of this in the web is to go to a few major newspaper sites or the big blogs and notice how he sometimes has the banner ad at the top plus several side ads, plus all the google ads.
Name recognition, branding, target marketing.
Thank you for your post, as I was reading I was thinking “and what the hell does this (axelrod’s MO) have to do with a successful US government, ie branding, selling candidates as if they’re coca cola, as opposed to offering men and women capable of RUNNING a superpower.
Axelrod has NO CLUE, none, at all, and probably doesn’t even care.
I think the same is true about Rove and Bush, when crunch time comes, they fall apart, because they’re not qualified. And I wonder if that contributes to the unreality of it, posers as leaders, posers as President? They simply cannot grasp the scope of the job, or understand it’s implications.
Same with Cheney…
I truly think Clinton can do the job, and looking back, Bill Clinton must have had some truly phenomenal people around him, to have done as well as he did.
Valentine, have you seen this video by Flineo?
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/03/08/only-for-those-who-see-through-it/
If not, you must. It’s all about Axelrod’s company and strategy.
I met Flineo in here because of you two!
Flineo is telling the truth in those films, in a way to make others understand. I’ve put two of his films up but, they aren’t getting as much traffic as they could from a bigger place.
The one on “forgotten ones in Chicago” is the one that the world needs to see the most. I cried when I watched it here for the first time. Mainstream media is Oprahfying him, pap to a proletariat unwilling to look past the McBrand.
He has done something at the FEC which makes it not “open right now” — I question whether our government knows or understands his fundraising via the web target marketing. The blog at Riverdaughter or http://www.savagepolitics.com are two to join with. Riverdaughter used to be part of DailyK, but she is getting a big following. As far as I know these are the only places in the web telling the truth the way we see it.
I’m quite afraid Larry and Susan about what we might see should he not…given what the churches have been preaching, also as I recall he used a threatening sort of tone about that. I saw what he did to Alice Palmer and last night on SNL that same tone was noticed in the comment “Black is the New President, bitch.”
It must be VERY bad economically in the North and the South. I thought the Civil Rights era had made greater strides than they have. It’s a tragic thing for our country in this day and age.
Katrina was the capper. The truth of the matter is I think we are facing a French Revolution, redux very soon here, and that will destroy all the good done since the Kennedy era. It makes me cry. Wright’s speech had a truth in it, and that anger should have been reported on by the Press for years. In Flineo we see the truth. To turn on one’s own people? Those Rezko apartments?
God.
If white Americans of our generation had seen these truths? Where is Jimmy Carter? Our childhoods were full of goodwill towards our fellow men. What destroyed that dream?
Rich non-ethical Baby Boomers in big places without any heart.
We have to prepare a safe place for the PTSD that is going to be coming home. Our country has never seen what this generation is going to experience.
Vietnam pales by comparison, Larry.
I grew up in the era of The Peace Corps. We wanted to save the world, and feed the world. Now
dictators rule, from the corporate boardrooms to countries.
Also– I can’t remember if I shared this link with you but it gave me great scholarly insight into something I was unaware of as relates to the video/religious aspects of things– there is an editorial from NYT and a rebuttal to that editorial that shed great light–the first piece is the edit–at the bottom in blue is a link to the rebuttal. It’s a site as well, overall, which gives greater insight into contemporary thought and scholarship.
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/gates22.htm
I hate to feel like I’m piling on here, but I guess this is an issue, as no bigotry is acceptable, esp that with it’s roots in hate.
It also appears for men like Farrakhan, and Wright, gays are also a target.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CTG/is_2_17/ai_85590926
This has to do with AIDS in the African American community, I thought it offered an interesting take.
Too bad for Josh Marshall. He and Markos at DailyKos have told so many Hilary-hate lies and encouraged so much resentment in the Democratic base that if obama’s numbers do go down, they have only themselves to blame.
Like my Army captain Dad taught me: You know where you can find sympathy? In the dictionary, between snot and syphillis.
Wah wah Josh. YOU did this to the party with your Obama-or-nothing crap.
Mary,
I have been amazed at how Josh lost his way.
From a reasonable, objective liberal blog it has morphed into an Obama site of one sided information of skewed and biased Hillary Hate. Talking Points has joined DKos and HuffingtonPost,Buzzflash, and Alterman in trashing Hillary on a daily basis.
But TalkingPoints is more disappointing than others as TPM has done really fine investigative reporting and added to truth in the political blogosphere. Josh’s work has filtered down to the MSM, & won his recent award, the equivalent of the Pulitzer for his blog.
Instead I have been reading heavily slanted Obama posts that exclude truthful data that doesn’t flatter Obama. Pushing disinformation and harming Hillary has been employed on a daily basis.
Josh knows full well about Rezko and Reverend Wright as I [and I'm sure others] have written and supplied documentation regarding his backstory & contradictions, and weeks ago wrote to him about the toxic and racist Reverend Wright and his Farrakhan philosophy , details, etc. Josh never ran anything but the most benign apologies and excuses for Obama’s involvement that stressed how unimportant Obama’s ties to Wright were, and continues to do the same now as he keeps selling Obama in TPM.
I expected this from Alterman and HuffingtonPost, as Arianna Huffington has done this before in 2000 as she trashed Al Gore on a daily basis in MSM , and slogged Ralph Nader.She kept telling us that Gore and Bush were alike and only Nader could restore our givernment, blah, blah.
Now I see Josh Marshall who I’ve respected as an objective observer interested in truth, reborn into a member of Camp Obama.
Obama is now covered with the frantic racism and hysterical black anger directed against whites, and our “Goddamned America” that his friend and mentor informs us. Obama’s ties to the extreme left, complete with the odor of anarchisim and violence from Ayers to Wright stands apart from his opportunism and dishonesty regarding all of his dealings and takings from Rezko.
So we see now that Obama is just a politician.
But he is also a Black Separatist and liar who would have us believe the nonesense that in 20 years his friend and advisor never expressed to him any of the damaging screed we can see in Rev. Wrights videos of hate.
That Obama would have us believe this irrational story is all part of his inherent contempt for us. So far he has been able to hoodwink his followers into cult/sermonizing and gained their trust.
I wonder how they will view him now. How Jews will view him now. And how anyone with a grain of intelligence can expect him to win against McCain when even more of this sludge comes out.
We really must find more videos, sermons,dates of church attendance from Chicago Sun Times and Tribune, and am sure we will learn even more news about this fallen “hero”.
Obama should fold his tent. TPM should be ignored.
And we shpuld all listen carefully to Reverend Wright’s preaching to learn what Obama really thinks. Being a member for 20 years to a church who extrudes this garbage shows the kind of bad judgement that is Obama’s resume.
Marshall’s emotional attachments to stories get the better of him.
During the U.S. attorney firings, I sent him e-mails warning him that the U.S. Attorney in Seattle was a die-hard Republican. I sent him remarks from a speech in which that attorney, though fired by the Bush White House, still was true to the Republican party’s more extreme elements.
He blew me off.
I know why: It didn’t fit with his storyline. He was totally focused on LIONIZING these U.S. attorneys who’d been fired, and he wouldn’t let the slightest DOUBT get in the way of his storyline.
I supplied him with an “inconvenient truth.” He wanted nothing to do with the truth. He was utterly consumed by his mission.
That is NOT journalism.
And he still has a column on The Hill:
He actually believes it.
Michelle apparently is not old enough to realize that words like that are remembered and payback is hell.
First of all Hillary was the victim and she handled it her way. A lot of us have a distinct respect for experience.
Those os us older folks know what it is regarding getting back up and moving forward. So if Obama wins, I think the frame that Taylor framed ” McCain Democrats” will come into beeing.
The arogance of the Obama folks will have a impact - we shall see how much.
The endless hits from Michelle Obama:
What an arrogant, righteous, fate-tempting stooopid thing to say. The maturity of these two people leaves so much to be desired.
Something tells me these two, after losing this primary, are going to become the next Jim and Tammy Faye.
Opening a religious based theme park in South Carolina?
Black Heritage(Park) USA..(sorry)
Or will both spend time in prison?
Which, according to the Rev Wright, is also “Black Heritage (Park) USA.”
Why are black women - who are likely to raise children without a man - impressed by this prima dona?
What a slap in the face to women to blame them for a man’s actions!
Especially stupid argument for an attorney.
Michelle Belle’s sense of entitlement matches the arrogance and narcissism of her husband’s.
She has also said on NBC some weeks ago that she “would probably not vote for Hillary if she was nominated”. “I have trouble with her ideas”.
AF, “fate-tempting” is the perfect word describing Michelle’s words. I’ve often said that Michelle Obama does not have the maturity to be First Lady. If she did, she’d realize that the minute you open your mouth in criticism of someone else’s children, spouse, etc.—Lo and behold, karmic retribution does its dirty work and you discover your own child did something far worse than the kid next door, and your spouse is much more of an ass than you ever imagined. I learned a long time ago to keep my big mouth shut—just in family matters, not in politics—which is why the readers here have to suffer through all of my rants.
But how could she not know this, she’s 44 years old? Has she lived in a bubble? Guess so.
FWIW, but I think he has a point, the concluding paragraphs of Charles Krauthammer’s March 14 column in the WaPo:
I don’t know, Susan, bigots are always finding others to blame, and republican bigots use “the politics of identity” to hold minorities back, they just crouch in being “PC” language, when it actually is, very deliberately, a part of their southern strategy.
I have to say I think he’s full of shit.
I think much of the blame instead goes to the republicans like Krauthammer, for stifling, and baiting, the discussion. If we had been truly able to pass an ERA, truly enabled affirmative action would we be in a a better place?
Maybe, there are always problems, but at least it would be progress.
And the republicans baited the southern strategy for years, just like Obama, to achieve power. They’re the main cause of the racial divide we are currently experiencing.
Not addressing poverty? New Orleans?
I bet most of us would be SHOCKED if we knew how Dick Cheney really felt about AA’s.
Who took that out of the equation, was it a deliberate move on behalf of the republicans?
Yes, it was.
History is repeating.
Race and the Risky Game of Claiming Icons
Joseph Lane - January 28th, 2008
In the 1860s, two terribly oppressed groups turned against each other in a desperate struggle to see which one would seize something that both clearly needed and completely deserved. It is quite likely that the division of the suffrage movements in the 1860s cost both dearly. Black men inherited a franchise that was soon rendered meaningless by racist mobs who controlled much of the country, and white women waited fifty years during which the respective fears of the two groups became the pretense for the oppression of both by southern white males.
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2008/01/race-and-the-risky-game-of-claiming-icons/
the more i hear michelle obama the more i become convinced that this woman lacks empathy for anyone who might be standing in her way to get what she thinks belongs to her. i think it goes beyond being self centered or even selfish … this personality defect could truly be pathological. furthermore, i would guess she has never experienced the cleansing and healing feelings of being able to forgive a person.
really, this is quite sad.
One gem from Michelle Obama’s greatest hits was her talking to the working class in Ohio how hard life is, what with the $10 grand per year she pays for her girls’ camp and ballet lessons.
Does the woman have a clue?
Look closely - very closely - at the very last frame of the Jeremiah Wright clip posted above.
The last frame is also the first frame before the clip begins.
Before the clip begins, you can see the person shaking other people’s hands.
At the end of the clip, you can see a partial view of another person standing in the background, scoping the area out, which appears to be a Secret Service agent standing behind the person in front.
Is that the Barack Obama shaking people’s hands?
I have been posting the video of Michelle Obama personally attacking Hillary in that hideous fashion for months, it happened before the Iowa caucuses. This is what began the process for me of knowing I would never support obama and that he obviously wasn’t what he said he was, considering his wife could be so trashy.
he can’t win in November will footage like this. It’ll be too easy for McCain. TOO EASY.