Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up?

"!  Son of a turd-farmer...grandson of a goat ball licker..."

John Stewart
The Daily Show

can anyone fill in the beginning of this line?  I am struggling to 
remember the made-up name he gave before that line.  hillarious.

--------------

<snip>
"While it's possible (maybe even probable) that Obama will sacrifice his 
principles to ambition in the long-run, he can at least say that he had 
some principles to begin with, unlike Harold Ford, Hillary Clinton, Bill 
Richardson, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and many of the other people being 
touted as possible presidential candidates in the future."
</snip>

Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up?
by Justin Felux
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 2, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Felux0802.htm

The adjective of choice appears to be "electrifying" when it comes to 
descriptions of Illinois State Senator Barack Obama's keynote address 
before the Democratic National Convention.  Obama is clearly a rising 
star in the Democratic Party.  His political skill can be demonstrated 
by the fact that his speech not only received nearly universal praise 
from liberals, but also from conservatives such as David Brooks, Andrew 
Sullivan, and Rush Limbaugh, among others.  With his former opponent 
embroiled in an interesting sex scandal, he is expected to win the race 
for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, which would make him only the 
third black Senator since Reconstruction.  Many are already anointing 
him the first black president, even though the nation still knows very 
little about him.

Was Obama's speech worth getting excited about?  In my opinion, no.  I 
say this as someone who has been and continues to be a strong supporter 
of his.  I agree with the assessment of Obama's fellow Chicagoan, Paul 
Street, who recently wrote, "The world view enunciated in Obama's 
address comes from a very different, bourgeois-individualist and 
national-narcissist moral and ideological space."  Street goes on to 
list many of the absurdities promoted by Obama in his big moment. 
However, he neglects the passage I found most offensive, in which Obama 
echoed Bill Cosby and denounced "the slander that says a black youth 
with a book is acting white."

Contrary to popular myth, there is no rampant anti-intellectualism in 
the black community.  Anti-intellectualism has been part of American 
culture from the very beginning and is just as prevalent among whites as 
it is among blacks, if not more so (See Richard Hofstadter's classic 
work, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life).  By singling out black 
anti-intellectualism, Obama is only helping to reinforce the racist 
stereotypes that many whites have about black educational habits.  Obama 
should ignore popular myths and talk about the real problems black 
Americans face in education:  inequitable school funding, biased 
tracking and standardized tests, disproportionate representation in 
special education, ethnocentric curriculum, disparate disciplinary 
treatment, and poor teacher quality.

Obama (a former community activist and civil rights lawyer) has an 
interesting past.  He is the product of a liaison between a Kenyan goat 
herder and a white woman from Kansas.  He was born in Hawaii and spent 
part of his childhood living in Indonesia with his Muslim stepfather. 
He has all the same ingredients that make Colin Powell a media darling 
and even more:  light skin, great speaking ability, charisma, good 
looks, and youth.  Add to that the fact that he gave an overtly 
conservative speech in front of a bunch of Democrats and it's no wonder 
the media is fawning over him.  Newsday hailed him as a "New New 
Democrat."  A gushing Fox News pundit described him as a "centrist, DLC 
Democrat."  Air America Radio's Randi Rhodes described his politics as 
"straight down the middle."  As an Obama supporter, I'm not sure how to 
react.  This doesn't sound like the same Barack Obama who bitterly 
denounced the war in Iraq, saying "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm 
opposed to dumb wars."  Was this the same Barack Obama who gave the 
right-wing DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) the cold shoulder after 
The Black Commentator alerted him to the fact that they were claiming 
him as one of their own?

The Barack Obama I chose to support was a progressive and wasn't afraid 
to admit it.  Progressive organizations such as the Planned Parenthood 
Council, the Illinois Environmental Council, the National Association of 
Social Workers, and Citizen Action Illinois have all given him a perfect 
rating of 100.  He has been given high ratings by organized labor and 
has received the endorsement of the National Organization for Women and 
the Illinois Farm Bureau.  Perhaps even more impressive are the low 
ratings given to him by right-wing organizations.  The National Rifle 
Association gave him an F rating whereas Illinois Citizens for Handgun 
Control gave him an A.  He has received the admirable rating of "zero" 
from National Taxpayers United and the Federation for Right to Life.  He 
has received low and moderate ratings from the Chamber of Commerce and 
Manufacturer's Association.  Clearly, Obama hasn't had any qualms about 
standing up to powerful right-wing and private interest groups in the past.

His progressive legislative accomplishments in just seven years rival 
those of legislators who have been in office for decades.  He passed a 
law requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in 
capital cases.  He has also sponsored legislation requiring police 
officers to record the race, age, and gender of individuals they stop in 
order to document the level of racial profiling.  His accomplishments as 
a member of the Committees on Health & Human Services are too numerous 
to list here, but they include sponsoring legislation for universal 
health care and an additional $4,000,000 in funds for AIDS prevention in 
minority communities.  His record on civil rights, education, trade, the 
environment, the economy, and campaign finance reform is almost 
everything a progressive Democrat could hope for (especially from a U.S. 
Senate candidate).  Obama has been an especially strong defender of 
women's rights.  In addition to protecting the right to an abortion, he 
is a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and helped pass the Right 
to Breastfeed Act and the Equal Pay Act.  He has also passed or 
sponsored numerous laws to protect victims of domestic violence.

You would never know any of this by listening to his convention speech. 
  In the National Review Online, Roger Clegg pointed out that his speech 
could have just as easily been given at the Republican convention.  That 
may be an exaggeration, but not by much.  However, I don't believe that 
Obama has compromised his principles yet.  In order to win a statewide 
election, he must appeal to a broad base of voters.  His feel-good and 
conservative rhetoric is probably an attempt to achieve that end.  He 
spoke very frankly about this in his dialogue with the Black 
Commentator, saying that "My job, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate ... 
[is] to persuade as many people as I can, across the ideological 
spectrum, that my vision of the future is compatible with their values, 
and can make their lives a little bit better ... To some, this approach 
may appear naïve; to others, it may appear that I’m headed down a path 
of dangerous compromise.  All I can tell you is that in my twenty years 
as an organizer, civil rights lawyer, and state senator, I’ve always 
trusted my moral compass, and have thus far avoided compromising my core 
values for the sake of ambition or expedience."

Few politicians would speak this frankly.  When presented with a 
question about their own personal integrity, most would repeat some 
platitudes about how devoted they are to the public interest.  Note that 
Obama said he has not been compromised "thus far," which implies he may 
be in the future.  His response strikes me as honest.  In the Senate, he 
will obviously face enormous pressure from interest groups, his Senate 
colleagues, party leadership, big business, and other centers of power. 
  The Senate is one of the most elitist and racist institutions in the 
entire country.  Obama may share the fate of the last black Senator from 
Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun, who faced extreme scrutiny and stiff of 
opposition which eventually drove her out of office.  Despite her many 
flaws, Moseley-Braun was still semi-decent by U.S. Senate standards. 
Will Obama risk bringing his decency with him to the U.S. Senate?  I'm 
willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Another reason to support Obama's ascent is the fact that he seems to 
have effectively displaced Tennessee's Harold Ford as the party's most 
promising rising star.  Ford gave the keynote address to the DNC in the 
year 2000, and was similarly hailed as the party's future.  It is 
well-known that both Ford and Obama have national ambitions.  If one of 
these two is to become the first black president, we should pray that it 
is Obama.  Harold Ford is known for grandstanding against the 
progressive wing of the Democratic Party and his slavish devotion to the 
right-wing agenda of the DLC.  The DLC Democrats are the direct 
ideological descendants of the "Dixiecrats" of the Jim Crow era.  They 
see black people as a corrupting "special interest group" within the 
Democratic Party.  While it's possible (maybe even probable) that Obama 
will sacrifice his principles to ambition in the long-run, he can at 
least say that he had some principles to begin with, unlike Harold Ford, 
Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and many of 
the other people being touted as possible presidential candidates in the 
future.

Justin Felux is a writer and activist based in San Antonio, Texas.  He 
can be reached at [email protected]
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