Barack Obama and the Rebirth of Cool

Watching the news these days is eerie. No other word for it. For example: McCain is at a rally where a confused supporter declares, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and...He’s an Arab.” McCain is forced to correct her, saying, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent man.” Then he must, to the audible booing of the crowd, defend Obama’s character, and say that an Obama presidency is “nothing to be afraid of.” But the crowd doesn’t want to hear it. It’s like a scene in a movie just before the mutiny where the roaring, angry sailors run over the short, ineffective captain and seize control of the ship.

The comments that have been coming out of McCain-Palin supporters at rallies this past week are appalling, as the campaign, and Governor Palin in particular, have fanned the flames of anti-Obama sentiment, xenophobia, and seething racism with reckless abandon, even as the economy is crumbling all around us and our nation is at war. Such an act, as Republican Frank Shaeffer expostulated, is “deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore potentially instigating violence.”

How did this happen? Is this, as some pundits have mused, because these are the only supporters the Republican ticket has left? In any case, the comments that have been coming out of audiences at these rallies over the past week: “Terrorist!” “Treason!” “Kill him!” “Bomb Obama!” have been enough to turn the blood cold in my veins.

I find myself caught between 1) utter revulsion and yes, fear, the combination of which manifests itself as a slightly unhealthy desire to shun the TV and online news and listen to Broadway show tunes all day while reading fashion magazines, and 2) a macabre fascination with the convoluted racial politics that snake through this entire, weird, time-travel-back-to-the-60s unnerving reality that makes me desperate to dissect how we got here in the first place.

The bizarre twist to the 60s throwback vibe, however, is the strange fact that the McCain-Palin campaign must resort to pitching Barack as a Muslim/terrorist/danger to the country because they know they can not effectively smear him as a black man. Consider the smears that emerged around McCain’s own campaign in 2004, those insinuations about his adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget (whom Cindy heroically scooped up from an orphanage in Dhaka and bundled off to one of the McMansions, kind of like “oh, look at this cute puppy I saved from the gutter”). Anyway, the Republicans smeared McCain by suggesting that Bridget was McCain’s black love child. For crying out loud. But: how can he similarly smear Obama by casting aspersions on his race/blackness? Truth is, there are lot of ways he could do it, by portraying Obama as a philandering, lazy, irresponsible, thieving, law-evading, scary black man. Except that Obama himself, whom more and more Americans have gotten to know over the past two years, does not make any of those accusations particularly believable.

And this I find super fascinating. Let’s dig deeper.

After the second presidential debate, the commentary was pretty revealing. Everyone seemed to agree that Obama was “a cool customer,” the “better performer,” the one who “looked more presidential.” Cool especially is a word that has been used often in connection to Obama throughout his entire campaign, and it holds so many meanings. First of all, staying cool is paramount for Obama, no two ways about it, because in this country people are scared of black men. We are taught to believe that all black men are angry and violent. Obama has to stay perpetually cool in order to refute the “angry black man” stereotype. And he has. He’s kept it cool. And that is one of the few positive images in circulation about African-American males: the cool black man.

It’s a persona that has its roots in the jazz style of saxophonist Lester Young and trumpeter Miles Davis, with a parallel vein running through Hollywood’s bloodline in the legacy of actors Sidney Poitier to Denzel Washington to Will Smith. Let’s talk about Lester, since it all really started with him. He was the first jazz musician to regularly wear sunglasses during indoor performances, and a pioneer in his understated refusal to respond to white audiences’ desire to see black performers get "hot,” wild, and out of control (read: savage). He burst on the scene in the late 1930s, and really made his mark musically in the mid 1940s, when Southern blacks were moving north in unprecedented numbers, and when black men were necessarily forging a new identity that would make sense within an urban context. Scholar Nelson George writes: “Many Southern boys now wise to the concrete jungle started to move with a fluid, no-sweat attitude everyone called ‘cool.’ Cool came to define a certain sartorial elegance, smooth charm and self-possession that in the hurly-burly of the city suggested a dude that controlled not only himself but his environment” (Elevating the Game, p. 62).

It’s interesting to think of the particular brand of (similar?) challenges faced by black men of Barack’s generation as they began to move in larger numbers than ever before into elite academic institutions like Harvard, and the survival strategies such men (and women) had to develop in order to function within that intellectual maze. I think their strategies probably had something to do with coolness, and something similar to the jazz musician’s superhuman work ethic (as a young musician Lester Young often practiced for 7 hours a day), in order to combat all those minstrel-tinged expectations. Tulane professor Joel Dinerstein writes, “Young’s soaring saxophone style was “cool” because he generated excitement without getting excited; he stayed cool” (“Lester Young and the Birth of Cool,” p. 250). Dinerstein also notes, as did Jack Kerouac, that unlike the typical jazzer’s posture of holding the horn high in the air (high-testosterone phallic implications pretty clear here, right?), Lester Young held the horn down low in front of him. And it’s not that he wasn’t sexy. Billie Holliday was crazy about him, and gave him a nickname that stuck for life: “Prez”...as in President of all Saxophone Players. Muy interesante.

For Obama, at this juncture in history, an especially useful function of coolness is that historically, (white) Americans have associated it with good performers, and (white) Americans tend to think that black people should be good performers. So Obama’s persona is mapping out in perfect alignment with one of the few positive images available to black men in this country. And what’s more, “coolness” is something that Americans of all stripes have long (fetishized?) sought to emulate. It is super marketable. Perhaps the defining feature of cool is that it’s something other people want to get close to, whether by adopting it themselves, or being in the circle of the one who embodies it. And so, on a number of levels, the mythology around black people is working in Obama’s favor. Who knew?

This is why the Republicans have no choice but to brand him a terrorist. (We’ll talk another time about the super-scary way their rhetoric seamlessly links “Arab” and “terrorist.”) Barack’s blackness is an asset. Okay, don’t get all Geraldine Ferraro on me here...The way Barack Obama is able to use his blackness to his advantage, almost without anyone noticing, that is the real asset to him and to his campaign. It encourages me to realize that in this race there are battles being fought on many levels that most of us are not even aware of, and that even as jeering racists devolve into waving Barack monkey dolls and uttering incendiary threats, Senator Obama has the fortitude and the cool to sail through the melee and make sure this country gets its act together.

Palin & Hijab

When I first heard about the McCain campaign’s protectiveness of Sarah Palin, and their cloaking her in mystery in response to the alleged lack of “deference” shown by the media, I thought—this is crazy, she’s being swathed in hijab. Metaphorically.

I am no expert on Muslim culture, or the attire of Muslim women, but I recently read the fascinating novel Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea. This is a book that has been called, albeit somewhat misleadingly, "Sex and the City" set in a major Saudi metropolis, and it’s a window into the life of (seriously upper-class) young women in a nation that is governed strictly by Islamic doctrine. What’s super-interesting is that despite what you would think, these girls are definitely body-image-obsessed fashionistas...Did you know that nowadays there are major high fashion designers creating hijab clothing? Awash in the sea of U.S.-generated anti-Arabic propaganda, I seriously had no idea about this. (For more info: high fashion hjiab). There are kind of two levels to this thing, one is the growing trend toward less traditional, more haute couture or hip hijab clothing, and the other is the fact that underneath the drape of an abaya over-garment, plenty of Muslim women are decked out in tank tops and jeans, minidresses and razor-sharp stilettos. That’s because hijab only has to be worn outside the home and in the presence of non-family member males. So there are all these really important women’s spaces, where no men are present, where the abayas come off and the latest fashion trends are in full view. It’s these all-women spaces that really interest me.

There is a common perception among Americans and Europeans that women who wear hijab are oppressed and forced to do so. I live in a neighborhood that is home to many Pakistani and Bengali women who wear the veil, and there have been times, say in August, where I’ve seen women on the subway platform wearing what looks like a sweltering outfit, and it can be hard for me to understand the logic behind it all. But there are lots of Muslim women who say it’s their choice to wear hijab (interesting to find the liberal feminists’ preferred vocabulary in a way that seems to rub against the very tenets of liberal feminism...more on this below). I will say that the burqa (outfit with the veil that covers the entire face) is intense, and admittedly hard for me to relate to from an American perspective. But I think it’s important not to extract one element of an entire society and demand that it change without taking into consideration that entire context and the role of women on a variety of levels within that society, in order to avoid just spouting stereotypic generalizations. It’s one thing to be mandated by law to wear a certain kind of clothing, and it’s another to opt to wear it in a context where you will certainly stand out.

Some women who wear hijab, even outside the Arabic world, say that they feel freer in their loose-fitting clothing, they feel like they are safer from the judgments of others, especially male others, and that they feel more confident of being assessed for their intellect and behavior than for their appearance alone. From this perspective, trotting around all day in a bikini like those perkily interchangeable reality show girls we all have to endure is not a sign of freedom at all but is in fact its own form of oppression. Not to trivialize an experience that, for many, comes from a deep faith decision (It cannot be easy to wear hijab in the U.S. in these times. Come on.) but I imagine it’s kind of like how I feel safer and more powerful when I’m wearing my sunglasses, and why I’m reluctant to put them away even though I know it’s fall and I honestly don’t need them anymore.

Another reason women cite for wearing the hijab is that it makes them recognizably Muslim. It’s an affirmation of spiritual and cultural identity. I can also imagine that one would feel seriously amazing identifying with the women who wear these gorgeous outfits.

So here’s the thing. At first I was raging: I can’t believe this, they are cloaking Sarah Palin in this oppressive burqa, what kind of madness is this, how can they suggest that the American media viewership is lustful (“not-deferential”) and that we all have to be protected from actually knowing this woman for our own good, yada yada...and doesn’t that presume that the American public is male, is considering her from a male gaze anyways, and how jacked up is that?

But what this rage doesn’t take into consideration is the fact that so many (white) American women are responding so strongly to Sarah Palin. There is a women-only community that she is invoking, even with her “modesty” in shielding herself from the presumed invasiveness of the media. Women look at her and think: “I know her, her experience is similar to mine, we share the same space...she’s the quintessential working-class white woman: she popped out a baby and went back to work three days later, she is no-nonsense enough to juggle work and family life without complaining, she doesn’t hold a Hillary-style Ivy League degree, she goes to church every Sunday and believes in the same God I do.” So that, even if the McCain campaign does presume a male gaze, what both they and the Democrats probably have not considered is the power encapsulated in these all-women spaces. These take-off-the-modest-clothing, chill-with-the-other-hockey-moms spaces. Just because conservative women don’t embrace liberal feminism doesn’t mean they don’t understand themselves as defined by all-women spaces or sectors of the community. And it doesn’t mean that they hesitate to appropriate feminist tactics when it comes to activism on behalf of conservative causes. It turns out I can’t entirely blame those good old boys for secreting Sarah away and indoctrinating her into McBushRovian political strategy. She signed up for it herself, and I’m sure there are other women within the “safe” sphere of the McCain campaign community, like Nancy Pfotenhauer, former president of the conservative Independent Women's Forum and current senior policy adviser for that campaign, who are standing side-by-side with her in conservative feminist solidarity.

As political science scholar Ronnee Schreiber, author of Righting Feminism, points out: “It is a huge mistake to think of conservative women as pawns of right-wing men who will matter little in this election.”


More stuff on this topic:
Ronnee Schreiber on Palin’s appeal to women
Rajaaa Alsanea (author of Girls of Riyadh) on Valentine’s Day
All-women beach trends in Egypt
France denies citizenship to a burqa-wearing woman

Dear Hillary Supporter

The day after I put up my first blog post, a friend sent me this note:

I was a big Hillary supporter. I won’t go into all the reasons I really like her since she’s campaign history. But I will admit that I am still a bit wounded by the fact that she was not selected as the Democratic nominee. Because of this I have not been able to fully embrace Barack Obama as enthusiastically as our party’s nominee. Of course I will be voting for Barack, but I would love to do it without feeling like I’m just voting on party lines. Unfortunately, the few Hillary supporters I do know are saying that they will not be voting at all – eek! Will you address why you love him so much? What is it about him that inspired your allegiance? Speak to the former Hillary supporters and convince us!!

I’m honored at the request. Here’s my best shot...

Dear Hillary Supporter,

I will not insult your intelligence or your passion for your candidate by saying all the usual consolation prize stuff like “She will always be a great leader for our country,” or “We’re all proud of Hillary” yada yada. Let’s cut to the chase: This is a moment of serious crisis for our country. The outcome of this election will decide the trajectory of our country—and the world—for the next several decades. I’m not trying to be scary or apocalyptic but this oil lovefest thing we have going on is completely not sustainable, and the situation will not be cured by our wolfing down all resources within easy reach because we couldn’t find a way to live that was better for the planet. What kind of a world do we want our kids (the ones we might have someday if we can afford it), or our family and friends’ kids to grow up in? I’m serious. Bush’s cowboy approach to handling foreign policy has proved stupidly cavalier and crazy costly in terms of both our military resources and cold hard cash. Lots of other countries in the rest of the world, including the people we are trying to buy all this oil from, are not happy with us and they are not going to get any happier if John McCain is elected and continues the policies that got us into the hole we’re in now.

If, for some reason, you fundamentally disagree with me and think that McCain will be able to heal our broken national economy, restructure our energy use so we are not dependent on fast-disappearing resources, provide affordable healthcare to all Americans, sort out the mess we have made in Iraq, deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan in a way that actually secures our safety, and repair our reputation in the eyes of the world...then I think you should vote for him. But stand up and be counted! You will not want to look back twenty, thirty years from now and have to say “I could have helped my country move in a different direction and I chose not to do anything.” Your reasons for supporting Hillary are no doubt deeply held, carefully considered, and emotionally charged. But please recognize the damage you do by laying down your right to vote in the presidential election. Do not let your frustration make a victim out of you.

You’ve probably heard this Gandhi quote: "We must be the change we wish to see." If you feel that Hillary was wronged, that the system screwed her, or that Barack is an inexperienced upstart, you are entitled to your opinion and I will not try to argue you out of it here. But what can you do to make the system better? What can we do to make our politics less sexist, less controlled by the manipulations of mass media and the few puppeteers behind it? Your opinion and ideas are valid and if you silence yourself we will all be poorer because of it. Only you know what frustrates you and what you wish was different about this country. Tell people what you think. Argue for the changes that you want to see.

This, actually, is what I like about Barack Obama enough to have woken up out of my pretty-much-never-watched-the-news-before stupor and engage in this key moment in our political history: Suddenly, because of Barack’s words and example, I feel like the things I say and do actually matter in the political scheme of things. I feel like I can be a part of helping to make this country better, instead of just complaining about what annoys me about America. There have always been things I wished would happen in our country, things that, given the current political climate, sounded so ludicrous and unattainable that I would just get pissed off and basically bang my head against a wall. For example, feeling like there’s no WAY we’re going to get equal pay for women in a country that can deliver the jacked-up Supreme Court ruling we saw last year. Well, now I feel challenged to dream bigger, because Barack had the nerve to do something that seemed just as ludicrous if not more: make a competitive case for his presidency despite his weird name, non-old-boys-club background, and Washington newcomer status, all the while fighting a slew of smear rumors about his un-Americanness. By tuning in and staying tuned in, I feel empowered to hold our politicians and lawmakers accountable for their words and actions. Even just by saying what I think, I can have an impact on those around me. For the first time in my life I realize just how valuable it is that I have a vote to cast.

And let’s talk about how the Republicans have been making serious hay of Barack’s background as a community organizer. This was really not a smart move on their part. You know what a community organizer does? Gets out on the streets and goes to the places where people have been forgotten, those “not so nice” city blocks and overlooked rural towns, and knocks on doors and creates events to wake people up from their apathy and sense of helplessness and get them motivated to take action to improve their own surroundings. The women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and the labor movement were all built by organizers who fought a battle on the ground to get people in power to change the way things were being run. When you piss off community organizers, or, the community of organizers that makes up Barack’s base, you just inspire them (us) to work harder. And to donate $10 million dollars to Barack's campaign, in small contributions, during the 24-hour period following Sarah Palin’s speech last week.

“Change from the ground up” is not an empty slogan, it’s a mission statement. The way the Obama campaign is being run, like an organizing movement, is completely different from how political campaigns are traditionally run in this country, and certainly departs from McCain’s approach. The Obama campaign, operating in all fifty states, has the largest full-time paid staff in the history of American political campaigns—three times the size of the McCain campaign’s staff—with more than 2 million volunteers, most of whom have never worked on a political campaign before in their lives. Barack Obama is not where he is today just because he can make a pretty good speech and tug at people’s heartstrings. He is a very, very smart man, and, as his campaign demonstrates, an excellent administrator. And he has new ideas about how to approach the age-old notion of democracy. Here’s a fresh take: In a democratic nation, everyone should be involved in our collective decision-making, not just those with the biggest pocketbooks or the most connections to those in power.

I support Barack Obama for our next president because I believe his policies are clear-sighted and far-thinking, short on quick fixes, and long on careful planning for the future. I believe he has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisors and partners whose input strengthens and clarifies his own good judgment. I believe that he has the rare gift of being able to listen to people he doesn’t agree with or even like and find ways to incorporate their ideas in order to serve the country’s best interests. I believe, too, that he’s a clever politician, a talented mediator, and tough enough to have not only survived his time in Washington with a clear sense of self but to have forged alliances with some of our most respected leaders on both sides of the aisle. And I believe he will never forget that there are plenty of people out there who are just dying to “put him in his place” and undercut his intelligence, his patience, his faith, and his courage, and that this knowledge will always keep him humble.

So those are my thoughts. And if you’ve just joined the Hope train, please don’t think you have a second-class ticket. Hype is hype, that’s all, and you can always catch the speeches and media clips you missed on youtube should you so desire (I’ve linked to some of my top picks below). There’s nothing anyone can do to reign in the viral spread of internet and mass media buzz around Obama and his impressive rhetoric (though I will say that I am very proud of the fact that, in distinct opposition to McCain, Barack writes his own speeches and books. By himself.) But I'm betting the hype will fade over time; anyone who’s in the Obama camp just to catch a feel-good turn of phrase is going to be in for a real surprise when the guy gets into office and starts shaking things up with an administration that asks every American to do her part. Maybe for you all the hype is a real turnoff, or maybe it just seems like there’s a party going on that you’re not sure you’re invited to. Well, for the record, you’re officially invited to the party on the Hope train, I’m inviting you now, and you don’t have to wear an Obama button if you don’t want to. You should come check it out: www.barackobama.com.



Here are some Obama-related links I recommend:
Barack giving a town hall speech today (Terra Haute, IN: 9/6/08)

Barack’s speech accepting the DNC’s nomination (Denver, CO; 8/28/08)

Barack speaking about the value of community organizing (York, PA; 9/4/08)

Barack’s “A More Perfect Union Speech” (Philadelphia, PA; 3/18/08)

An early version of Barack’s campaign speech (DNC Meeting; Fall 2007)

Barack’s take on the war back in 2002 (TV interview; 11/15/02)

Barack’s youtube favorites page

Barack dancing on the Ellen DeGeneres show (October 2007)

Barack’s keynote speech at the 2004 DNC Convention

“Yes We Can” song by will.i.am (February 2008)

Sarah Palin and Real Americanness

What a riot of emotions I find myself sorting through after watching Sarah Palin's speech tonight accepting her Vice Presidential nomination on the Republican ticket. I wound up watching it hunched over my laptop on my on again, off again internet connection on a live feed from CNN, because Venus and Serena Williams' quarterfinals match at the U.S. Open was taking center stage in the apartment where I live, and my staunchly pro-Obama boyfriend refused to tune into the Palin Power speech because he didn't want to increase the Republicans' ratings.

But I was curious, maybe it's a kind of anthropologist's curiosity: who are these strange tribespeople who gather in the red states, and can't stand Obama and Biden, my favorite politicians ever? Not that I've ever really followed politics prior to this moment in my life, which is what is so weird about all this. It's like I'm stuck in a reality television show and I can't get out. But more than that, as a woman, I'm curious about how Sarah Palin's presence in this election affects politics, affects the way the political games are played. My very first response to hearing who McCain had picked for his VP was a sense of triumph: the only way the Republican presidential nominee could even conceive of approaching Obama's hold on the electorate was by resorting to picking a woman for his ticket. That's kind of exciting, right?

And in spite of myself I kind of like her. It feels like high treason to admit it. She's very charismatic, she manages to wade through boilerplate speechwriting and still sound like a regular person you might meet in the town where you grew up. As CNN's Campbell Brown said over and over again: "She was very relatable." I enjoy the fact that the commentators don't know how to wrap their commentary around the fact that she's kind of overwhelmingly maternal and yet super snarky. It had seemed like the Republican party wanted to paint her like some kind of a victim, of the media, of the liberal media, but she kind of hopped right out of victim status, as any woman worth her salt would. So I appreciate that.

But what is probably the most deeply upsetting thing I have experienced in this entire campaign—and I have watched more speeches by politicians and pundits alike than I thought was humanly possible since the primaries began…what kind of shook me from the ground up was the comments of Republican women afterward, on the convention floor, about why they liked her speech, saying things like: "Because she's an American woman," "She's lived what we've lived," essentially "She's one of us," "She's a true American, unlike those Obama imposters."

My life story is in some ways very similar to Barack Obama's. My mother is white American, my father is African. I have a funny name. I did well in school and went to Harvard. I can relate to a lot of different kinds of people, even Sarah Palin. But it is upsetting to have it thrown in my face that to many Americans, I will never really be an American. I don't look all-American; read: white. I will spend my entire life spelling out my name in M-as-in-Marys and S-as-in-Sams. White people will not look at me and know that half of my ancestors look a lot like their ancestors. Which I've been brought up not to care about, and it's a critical defense mechanism, embracing the one-drop rule. One drop of black blood in your family tree, and forget about being all-American. And overlook the (controversial) fact (should I even go here?) that, like Barack, not being descended from American slaves on my black side, I don't have a family history that has been indoctrinated into and beaten down by the racist mentalities of this country generation after generation. So I feel more entitled (elitist?) than some Americans think I should.

But it felt very clear to me tonight that, however much I might look at Sarah Palin and think—I know where you come from, I can relate, I've been to Wasilla, That's where my grandmother lives, I know how this conservative Christian thing works, I get the rural small town thing. Well, however much I might feel these things, I feel fairly certain that if she saw me on the street, she would write me off in a hot second as someone with no connection to her own experience. And why should I care? Her politics are wretched. She's against abortion even in the cases of rape and incest. She's against putting the polar bear on the endangered species list for crying out loud. I don't need her approval. But it is painful to know that there is a large percentage of this country's population for whom my story will never be as "American" as their own, who think I have less claim to America than they do, and by extension no right to define the cultural/political terms of my own life in the nation of my birth. I really don't know how Barack wakes up in the morning and goes out there every day with a smile, knowing full well (genius that he is) that the real game is to convince his fellow Americans that he, too, is really an American with a capital A.