I think the "African American" shtick is starting to get kind of tired, too. Here's the excellent observations of a British writer that someone posted today (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2067390/posts?page=4)
It is that core of experience – of growing up American – which Obama lacks. His problem is not so much that he is an African-American in the modern political sense of being a black American. It is that he is an African-American in the literal sense of being half African and only half American, who spent much of his boyhood abroad and who borrowed a consciously constructed black American identity from the south side of Chicago.
I thought that was a great way of putting it.
Yes, the similarity of approach in these two articles is remarkable. Therefore, I offer my reply to the British piece: This page contains a surprising amount of insights about the reality of this election considering that it was authored by a Brit but the author, whether deliberately or because of this lack of true insight into the American character, misses the ultimate truth about Barak Obama.
First what the author does catch: the author sees that the Southside Chicago persona is an artificial graft onto an inauthentic personality or at least onto an authentically American experience. But he misses the key to Obama's personality when he attributes this to an accident of geography where the culture of America's heartland never rubbed off onto Barak Obama.
The truth, however, is not nearly so pretty. The author is quite correct that Obama contrived his new personality but not to paper over a broader cosmopolitan experience with an American experience rather to disguise a rabidly anti-American worldview with an African American patina.
It is quite clear that Obama has opportunistically allied himself with forces that could help him and then shed them when they were no longer expedient. That is why, for example, he became a member of the Trinity Church and then left the church.
But Obama's real and inherited core is that of a radical leftist, even a Marxist, who knows from his Saul Alinsky training and experience that the radicalism must be disguised and hidden if he is to prosper politically. So, just as she put on and took off the persona offered by the Trinity Church, so he has put on the persona of the reformer who is above race. As his campaign stumbles and he is brought to Bay and so goes over to the attack with the appointment of Joe Biden, that reformer persona has now also been shed. The question is whether he will get to the finish line before the American people can see through the theatrics.
It is not surprising that a leftward leaning writer for a leftward leaning foreign newspaper would fail to see or, more likely, not want to see how these cards were shuffled.
It is that core of experience – of growing up American – which Obama lacks. His problem is not so much that he is an African-American in the modern political sense of being a black American. It is that he is an African-American in the literal sense of being half African and only half American, who spent much of his boyhood abroad and who borrowed a consciously constructed black American identity from the south side of Chicago. I thought that was a great way of putting it.
I read that Telegraph article as well, and I'm glad that I did. As is so often the case, the people making comments afterwards at the Telegraph page were sometimes even more insightful than the author, and they brought up many great points. Although I agree with the author to a point, I also feel that a great deal of the distrust of Obama comes from the fact that his perspective and frame of reference is more that of a EuroSocialist than even a traditional Democrat. If he had constructed his identity more along the lines of traditional Americans and had even got halfway there I think that it would be far less of a problem. The thing is, he's not even really 'trying' to be an American as much as he's trying to be a EuroSocialist, and in this increasingly dangerous world where anyone with an internet connection can see the failure of EuroSocialism, such a stance makes people feel terribly uneasy.
Plus, Obama has come from TRASHY parents....loose mother, it seems, and fathers who had SEVERAL wives.