He is, however, an uncommonly clever man who has been able to identify and ride a wave of white guilt and black racial animosity to a career in politics. The structure of left-wing academic fashion that made this possible is not one of America's finer intellectual products, but one must concede the cunning of a young man who was able to identify and exploit it all the way to the highest political office in the land. Do not underestimate this individual. The instrument he has learned to play is a loud and powerful one. It might yet serenade him to another four years of office.
It is not only America, but a depressing majority of the Western world, that worships celebrity, which has conferred an inordinate amount of power to the shapers of celebrity; indeed, to be a shaper of celebrity is, in the United States, far more rewarding than to be a shaper of merit. One sees this in celebrity professors who seldom have condescended to teach a class - Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, are you reading this? - and in celebrity media figures who seldom have condescended to research a story themselves - Dan Rather, are you reading? It culminated in the stunning reward of the Nobel Peace Prize to a celebrity whose actual accomplishments accounted for absolutely nothing. Celebrity is not the reward of merit, but its deadly enemy.
Celebrity is, however, both a measure of secular deity and the currency that is placed on its reeking altar. That, I am afraid, is the major failure of Western culture to accommodate itself to modern communications technologies. It may be a fatal one.
” ... has conferred an inordinate amount of power to the shapers of celebrity.”
Great comments!
The instrument he plays is a cobblestone. He’s not brilliant and he’s certainly not uncommonly clever. What he is er was is a lucky, self-aggrandizing, narcissist with an ego driven by a disturbing sense of divine inspiration.
He’s never bothered to build any political capital and squandered whatever goodwill he had by being a complete dick.
Maybe, but maybe you give him too much credit in identifying the trend. Maybe he was just in the "right" place at the "right" time, and profited from those trends unknowingly. He probably actually thinks everybody loves him.
Well thought out and well written Bill