Ben Joel Stein has a fantastic column in today's Los Angeles Times.
You are embarrassing yourselves. With your "Yes We Can" music video, your "Fired Up, Ready to Go" song, your endless chatter about how he's the first one to inspire you, to make you really feel something -- it's as if you're tacking photos of Barack Obama to your locker, secretly slipping him little notes that read, "Do you like me? Check yes or no." Some of you even cry at his speeches. If I were Obama, and you voted for me, I would so never call you again.
(snipped)
Thing is, I've watched too many movies and read too many novels; I can't root against a person who believes he can change the world. The best we Obamaphiles can do is to refrain from embarrassing ourselves. And I do believe that we can resist making more "We Are the World"-type videos. We can resist crying jags. We can resist, in every dinner argument and every e-mail, the word "inspiration." Yes, we can.
That's just the beginning and the end. The middle is where it's at and you should read the whole thing.
But the thing is, I know. I know that the Will I Am video is overwrought. And that yes, we can sounds like an affirmation straight out of Stuart Smalley's chapbook.
But--and this is the but--Obama is one of those rare forces that transcends cynical instincts. Bring on the weepy videos and inspirational moments. Obama isn't just a candidate, he's an idea. A philosophy. A religion.
Okay, well, maybe not. But how can you say, "let's just set aside his inspirational qualities"? Isn't that a huge part of his appeal? That he might, you know, actually inspire people of all political stripes? That we might get someone in office who can inspire the country to come together?
For the last eight years, we've had a president in office that 49 percent of the country hates. Hates. Bush's approval rating is so low now, in the 20s, that all he's left with are partisans who don't really give a shit what he does as long as he doesn't switch parties. They're the political equivalent of the Raider Nation. He could give Texas back to Mexico and return Alaska to the Russians and his approval rating wouldn't go down.
While Bill Clinton's numbers were much, much better, he too was a divisive force. People hated Bill. Hated. And they hate Hillary even more, she comes with all his baggage, plus much of her own. No matter how competent she may be, another Clinton presidency will mean at least four more years of two sides shouting at each other.
And, so, okay. Obama inspires me to transcend that. And so, yes, I'm an Obamaphile. An Obamaniac.
And I think that's a great thing. Let's keep it up.
