In this week’s NYRB, Zadie Smith takes a look at Obama’s linguistic camouflage, arising from precisely an inability to blend in:
“When your multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin – well anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues.”
Besides presenting one of the finest usages of “neither...nor...” I’ve ever come across, Smith employs Cary Grant (that Dream City reference), Shakespeare, an old Obama-like British politician named Halifax, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalian, Frank O’Hara, and her own experience as a child of mixed race to look at the necessity of that doubled speech in today’s political world, which should reverberate not of pandering but of the strong empathetic impulse needed in trying times. It makes my first and potentially last pick of the week. (Who knows, in this economy, if literacy won’t be laid off?)
The reported demise of Obama’s rhetoric, lapped up before the stimulas package passed, falls in line with what will surely be a pattern for the rest of Obama’s administration: his inadequacy. To say that his attempts at conciliation are failing, that his words are failing, is to descry him as a failure. Because those are the values he was elected on, because it was something different and the alternative is the absence of compromise and inspiration. In short, an obviation of hope in hard times. Obama has already become metaphor, and every act short of complete success since January 20th will be construed as evidence of his unsubstantiated hype. Smith anticipates as much, practically making a claim that the sensitivity that made Obama a strong writer and candidate may find no companionship on the stage of world leadership.
He may yet be one of the most successful presidents we’ve elected, but there will be constant disenchantment on the left and contention from the right regarding his policies. And hardly anyone is actually propping up the center. Of course there isn’t much to do there anyway, it’s a place between places, a political identity that looks forward with a rear view mirror, and an individualism neither now nor ever. It is in so many ways like Obama himself, that Zadie Smith’s hopes and fears may well become all too vindicated.
“When your multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin – well anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues.”
Besides presenting one of the finest usages of “neither...nor...” I’ve ever come across, Smith employs Cary Grant (that Dream City reference), Shakespeare, an old Obama-like British politician named Halifax, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalian, Frank O’Hara, and her own experience as a child of mixed race to look at the necessity of that doubled speech in today’s political world, which should reverberate not of pandering but of the strong empathetic impulse needed in trying times. It makes my first and potentially last pick of the week. (Who knows, in this economy, if literacy won’t be laid off?)
The reported demise of Obama’s rhetoric, lapped up before the stimulas package passed, falls in line with what will surely be a pattern for the rest of Obama’s administration: his inadequacy. To say that his attempts at conciliation are failing, that his words are failing, is to descry him as a failure. Because those are the values he was elected on, because it was something different and the alternative is the absence of compromise and inspiration. In short, an obviation of hope in hard times. Obama has already become metaphor, and every act short of complete success since January 20th will be construed as evidence of his unsubstantiated hype. Smith anticipates as much, practically making a claim that the sensitivity that made Obama a strong writer and candidate may find no companionship on the stage of world leadership.
He may yet be one of the most successful presidents we’ve elected, but there will be constant disenchantment on the left and contention from the right regarding his policies. And hardly anyone is actually propping up the center. Of course there isn’t much to do there anyway, it’s a place between places, a political identity that looks forward with a rear view mirror, and an individualism neither now nor ever. It is in so many ways like Obama himself, that Zadie Smith’s hopes and fears may well become all too vindicated.
3 comments:
This is the drawback to Obama's change campaign (a campaign that he himself ipso facto embodies):
If you run a campaign based on change and powerful rhetoric about restoring America and changing the way things are done, you have set the bar incredibly high for yourself (something Obama had to do in order to get elected). However, he automatically sets himself up for failure because change, as far as politics is concerned, is an incredibly slow process.
I think the Obama legacy will be defined by whether the people have patience to sit through a process that in these times of instant gratification, will take a lot longer than most people want.
Yeah, and the irony is that the younger generation that rallied to his support early and through his campaign will probably be the first to get disaffected. The Reagan Democrats who became Obama Republicans (or something) are the ones that are probably more patient, having heard from more than their share of travelling medicine men. Whereas our generation is mostly engaged in the political process for the first time, through no fault of our own, just turned out that way.
This is a young love for us, not to be cynical, but we know how young love ends up: drunk textin. Our puny political hearts break easier.
hahahaha! good one
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