[BretLudwig]

Writer-Politicians

"I bought the latest book by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), A Time to Fight. It
has a lot of good things in it, but the prose style is mediocre, and
downright terrible when compared to Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope,
which was published at about the same time in their Senate careers. I was
wondering if Webb's prose is usually mediocre, or did he rush this out
without polishing the prose because he's being paid by the taxpayers to be
a Senator, not a writer working for his own profit?
Also, Greg Ransom has found another reporter who went to Hawaii (it's a
tough job, but somebody has got to do it) to interview Obama's prep school
classmates. They've tracked down the third black student at Punahou, and
like the second (who was also half Japanese), he says:

"Peterson and other buddies say Obama never spoke of the turmoil he
revealed in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," in which he wrote about
wrestling with his racial identity and using drugs €” including marijuana
and cocaine €” to "push questions of who I was out of my mind.""

Similarly, the Los Angeles Times reported back in March:

Obama appears to know the value of striking such contrasts. When he
wrote his memoir, which he invokes on the campaign trail as the key to his
thinking, he used literary devices to create several characters that were
quick to see racial injustice. In the narrative, they serve as his foils.

Some of Obamas friends who appear as composite characters with
fictional names said he gave them far sharper and more militant attitudes
than they recall having.

Kakugawa, identified in the book as €œRay,€� the resentful black
high school friend, is a part Japanese, part Native American former
classmate who says he was nowhere near as angry as the character Obama
portrays.

€œIt makes me a very bitter person,€� Kakugawa said. €œI wasnt
that bitter.€�

The same is true for a Chicago activist who encountered Obama in his
years as a community organizer.

The activist is identified in the book as €œRafiq al-Shabazz,€� a
Nation of Islam follower who encouraged Obama to challenge the citys
white power structure rather than work within it.

Obama writes of working with €œRafiq€� to open a job training
center, but recoiling when his more militant colleague railed against
whites. €œRafiq€� told Obama that, growing up in the projects, €œId
soaked up all the poison the white man feeds us.€�

But black nationalist teachings €œcontradicted the morality my mother
had taught me,€� Obama wrote.

Activist Salim Al Nurridin says Obamas description fits him in
almost every way €“ except that he was never a black nationalist.

€œI wasnt promoting a black nationalist agenda, and Im not
promoting one now,€� said Al Nurridin, now a Chicago healthcare advocate,
who confirmed in an interview last year that he resembled €œRafiq.€� €œI
think €¦ his interpretation of where I was coming from was probably skewed
by his own position rather than what I was saying.€�

Al Nurridin said he actually agreed with many of Obamas conclusions
about how some aspects of black nationalism could be counterproductive.

€œYou can be for your people without being against other people,€�
Al Nurridin said. €œThe whole idea is to have relationships with all
walks of life.€�

By that time, Obamas way of reacting to outspoken activists was not
a new development.

Obama wrote of being deeply impressed by the autobiography of Malcolm
X, whose €œrepeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry
of his words €¦ promised a new and uncompromising order.€�

In other words, by projecting his own inner racial anger onto real people
who didn't, actually, share it, Obama was doing two things:

A. Allowing himself to express one side of himself, a side that he didn't
actually express to his friends because that might make them not like him,
and they'd at least laugh at how self-pitying he was.

B. Positioning himself to whites as the moderate savior who could keep all
this pent-up black rage roiling the ghettos of Hawaii from blowing up on
them.

In summary, Obama is best perceived as a gifted fiction writer who has
found a more profitable outlet for his talent in politics. He can be
compared to Disraeli, a bestselling novelist before becoming Prime
Minister. He can be contrasted with Gore Vidal, another fictioneer who
felt he deserved to be President. But while Obama has been jet-propelled
by being part black, Vidal was frustrated in his political ambitions by
being homosexual."

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/w...liticians.html

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