When Obama Does It Repeatedly It Is a Strategy [Updated]
By Larry Johnson on September 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM in Barack Obama, Current Affairs
Looks like most of the media has bought off on the nonsense that Barack Obama’s lame attempt to paint Sarah Palin as a pig wearing lip stick was simply an inadvertent, unintentional poor choice of words. BULLSHIT!! Let’s give Obama and Axelrod credit–they play the double entendre verbal nuance game very well. They kicked Hillary’s ass with it and, can you blame them, they thought they could do it to McCain and Palin.
Let’s start with Barack’s record of using music and language to convey a subliminal and an overt message.
Back in January, the New York Post reported:
PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Barack Obama claims to run a clean campaign, but someone in his camp took a swipe at Hillary Clinton through the candidate’s theme song.
As Obama and his wife, Michelle, strolled triumphantly into his victory party in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 3, Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” was blaring. In it, Jay raps, “I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.”
Some listeners took it as a not-so-sly reference to Hillary.
But wait. Does Barack really listen to Jay Z? Yes he does, so says the Washington Post’s Teresa Wiltz:
Perhaps this is what the Funkmeister — that other Clinton — meant when he sang about painting the White House black: There’s Barack Obama, fresh from Wednesday’s debate dust-up, beleaguered but still standing, acknowledging that he’s taken some hits from his opponent, some mighty hits, but you know, it’s okay, because that’s politics. Ultimately, you’ve got to . . .
And then he — pay attention now — brushes the dirt off his shoulders. Repeatedly.
The crowd leaps to its feet, applauding and laughing.
Talk about a major Jay-Z move. People, we’re talking about a seminal moment in the campaign, the merging of politics and pop culture: in which a presidential candidate — a self-confessed hip-hop head and Jay-Z fan — references a rap hit and a dance move.
Within hours, there were video mash-ups on the Web depicting Obama dusting himself off as Jay-Z urges, “If you feelin’ like a pimp . . . go and brush your shoulders off. . . . Get that dirt off your shoulder.” (In one mash-up, the heads of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos roll off the Illinois senator’s broad shoulders.) . . . .
So for the initiated, a primer in dirt shakeology is in order here: To brush one’s shoulders off, according to the Urban Dictionary, is to engage in the act of “shaking them haters off. In other words it means to brush off negative energy of statements made about you.”
So was Obama’s action a deliberate Jay-Z reference?
Yesterday, Obama’s campaign spokesman, Tommy Vietor, would say only this: “He has some Jay-Z on his iPod.”
Here’s the video:
Then there was Barack scratching his face with his middle finger. A seemingly innocuous move until you realize it is part of the same Jay-Z meme. Laluchasigue, aA writer at NoQuarter, explained the meaning last April. He wrote:
So what is the hype about? What did Jay-Z actually say that captivated Barack Obama? Here is the hook and first verse to the new theme song of Obama ‘08:
[Chorus: Jay-Z]
If you feelin’ like a pimp nigga, go and brush your shoulders off
Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off
Niggaz is crazy baby, don’t forget that boy told you
Get, that, dirt off your shoulder[Verse One]
I probably owe it to y’all, probably to be locked by the force
Tryin to hustle some things, that go with the Porsche
Feelin no remorse, feelin like my hand was forced
Middle finger to the law, nigga grippin ma balls
Stab the ladies they love me, from the bleachers they screamin
All the ballers is bouncin, they like the way I be leanin
All the rappers be hatin, off the track that I’m makin
But all the hustlers they love it just to see one of us make it
Came from the bottom the bottom, to the Top of the Pops
Nigga London, Japan and I’m straight off the block
Like a running back, get it man, I’m straight off the block
I can run it back nigga cause I’m straight with the Roc
=Obama hasn’t flipped a “middle finga to the law” but to Hillary instead (his godfather Tony Rezko and possible financial angel Nadmi Auchi were the ones flicking off the law). He got his clock cleaned in a debate about his closest associates, his domestic policy proposals and national security credentials, but after a quick, not-so-subliminal reference to Jay-Hova, Obama’s back to “feelin’ like a pimp.”
But don’t blame Obama if you don’t like his reaction. He’s never responsible. George Stephanopoulos and ABC forced him to behave like a wannabe American gangster.
Jay-Z is not some drugged out gangsta. He is smart and clever and caters to fans with meanings woven into his songs that the average person won’t comprehend or recognize. And Barack knows that.
Besides relying on Jay-Z, Barack also used more conventional sexist language to poke and prod Hillary. Remember these?
“You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out.”
“You know, over the last several weeks since she fell behind, she’s resorted to what’s called ‘kitchen sink’ strategies. . . . She’s got the kitchen sink flying, and the china flying, and the, you know, the buffet is coming at me.”
How about commenting on Hillary’s “periods?”:
Nah, nothing sexist there. Just an inadvertent slip up. Right?
So Barack now wants us to believe he is completely undisciplined? That he says things without thinking that his words might have consequences? As I pointed out in an earlier post he has built his campaign around the notion that words do matter. Let there be no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing and is now trying to play the aggrieved victim. Boy, talk about thin skinned.
by Ronald Scott
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