AsianWeek » Clinton and Obama And Costume Politics

Clinton and Obama And Costume Politics

By: Emil Guillermo, Feb 29, 2008

Tags: Emil Amok, Opinion |

Time magazine named me “Person of the Year” in 2006. Of course, that was the year “You” was named “Person of the Year” because of the democratizing trend of cyber-media.

I’ve resisted the honor until this year, when I finally joined the blogosphere. Now, I proudly accept.

In print, I write for those of you who still prefer butter made with a churn. But for the e-friendly, you can see the genesis of my amok-ness on the blog amok.asianweek.com.

Example: When The Drudge Report splashed that photo of Barack Obama on the Internet, I wrote:

“There is no denying that the picture of Barack Obama in a turban is one last desperate attempt in someone’s political bag of tricks (really, it could be Democrat or Republican) intended to polarize and incite the worst in American voters. … This plays well in the mostly white, industrial state of Ohio. …

The native dress photo won’t work with Asian Americans. But it will likely play in places like Ohio, where people salute flags on each other’s lapels. …

The image of Obama in a turban is intended to strike an emotional chord. It may get some people to change their vote, or run to Hillary. Especially, the xenophobic.

But for all the rest, you should be suitably disgusted by the ploy, which I think will backfire and make people even more emboldened in their passion for their change agent of choice: Clinton or Obama.”

I will add now that no one laughed at George Bush and Putin at the 2006 APEC Summit.

Or when Bush was in “costumed diplomacy” with Putin and then Chinese leader Jiang Zemin in 2001. Bush looks like and is a clown (especially in powder blue).

This year, while a turban is just a turban, to some, it’s a symbol of terrorism. And Obama in a turban is an attempt to sow the seeds of racism.

You mitigate that by knowing it’s happening.

Of course, one wonders if a President Obama or Clinton would don the traditional garb on a China visit, now that both of them are on record criticizing China. Obama often refers to factory workers who find jobs and equipment as “shipped off to China,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The same Feb. 27 article quotes Clinton saying the “Bush policies have allowed the Chinese government to become our banker.” She continued: “Today China’s steel comes here, and our jobs go there. We play by the rules, and they manipulate their currency.”

Of course, for China’s most favored nation status de-linked to human rights, we have hubby to thank: President Bill Clinton in 1993.

I guess it wasn’t a co-presidency, really.

Tittering Over Titler and Nader
If you didn’t see the Oscars, Jon Stewart’s joke that closed his monologue was the high point, entertainment-wise: “Barack Hussein Obama. His middle name is the last name of Iraq’s former tyrant. His last name rhymes with ‘Osama.’ That’s not easy to overcome. I think we all remember the ill-fated 1944 presidential campaign of Gaydolph Titler. It’s just a shame. Titler had so many good ideas. He just couldn’t get past the name. And the mustache.”

Isn’t it great the writers strike is over?

I heard the joke around the same time I read that Ralph Nader was going to start a third-party run. Both Democrats and Republicans should be troubled. When a watchdog runs, it keeps everyone honest.

I’ve long said that Obama is a smart guy, but how progressive can you really be in the political class? To rise to the top is a matter of compromise and deal-making. Nader is the most uncompromising person I’ve ever met. Principled to a fault. The kind of anti-politician that really represents change, and who has a record of results fighting uphill all the way.

I think Nader will expose Obama for what he is — a skin-deep change agent, really no different than Hillary. Their Ohio and Texas debates show what happens when two titans from the political class clash. The differences are so minute. It’s like a testy dinner argument. The main course has been ordered. They’re just arguing over the condiments.

Enter Nader. And now, we really have a change agent worthy of the name.

emil@amok.com

Comments

Obamania is really awesome. So many young ones who never bothered to learn anything about politics are now enthusiastically embrace his brand of “changes we can deliever” and they volunteer to campaign for the Savior, the miracle -worker as if the new Messiah is here already.

For those of you who paid some attention to South Korean politics, ex-President Roh’s story was striking similar. Roh, a labour lawyer who never went to college but passed the bar was enormously popular with most young voters who were idealistic and hungry for changes. He won a surprising landslide election to become President. He was not an insider and he was far too idealistic, inexperienced and stepped on too many fat toes. He also annoyed Bush by insisting on continuing the “sunshine policy” he inherited from D J Kim, his predecessor. In less than a year, his rating started to dive, from overwhelming support of the people to miserable scapegoat for everything and anything wrong with Korean government and/or policies.
He became a crippled duck before he became a political lame duck long before the recent election.

Empty promises of “changes we can deliver” is dangerous to believe. US is now in a huge storm in many aspects. There is no time for some novice, no matter how great a genius, to do his experiment. His dream might just turn into our collective nightmare.
Don’t you have enough of all the fallacies of Bush already ?

–O. K. Ngo on Mar 02, 2008
Dear O. K. Ngo
AND Emil:
Er, ah, what can one say?
Other than the fact that, perhaps, you should become a “team,” an “act,” that should engage both an agent AND a p.r. guy or gal who can put the proper spin on the spitball.
Provided you have the cash and the wherewithal, that is.
Emil, Ralph Nader?
C’mon. Yes, he WAS an outsider who called the bluff of the insiders in re “consumer” issues.
But, as a “politician”? Even I am almost as “relevant.” and I’m not remotely “running.” Hell, I can scarce walk.
Sometimes I wonder exactly WHOM you are working FOR?
Apparently for some cause other than.
But, that’s par for fhe political course.
As for Mr. “Ngo,” gee whillikers, a parallel between South Korea today and these benighted states of Amurrika?
God forbid.
But God could care less.
Purely on the basis of those who are fearfully and stridently ANTI-Obcma these days, I am beginning to believe that the man is for real.
As in, why the Hell else would they circle the wagons of reaction AND repression?
This perch predicts:
Texas by at least 10 points?
Ohio by five?
In which case, can even a Rockefeller AND a Kerry be that far off the mark?
Bill, you goofed in Virginia? And, Hillary, SNL is only a “show,” if an occasionally funny one at that.
Frank Eng
P..S.: Besides, with this administration, and Congress and courts, the only possible other way is up. AND out of Iraq and other idiocies.
Change? Small, no doubt, but “change” nonetheless.

–Frank Eng on Mar 03, 2008
http://ynotswim.blogspot.com/2008/03/vote-for-ralph-nader.html

I feel so absurd when Obama campaign uses “Yes we can (change)!” as their slogan. Guess what? Over more than 50 years, Nader has already changed American’s lives, big time! Not only Nader can change, he already did.

I wonder how many people know that:

* Due to Nader, now you have a seat belt to wear in a car;
* Due to Nader, there is an airbag to protect you in case there is a car accident;
* Due to Nader, the food you buy everyday has a label on them;
* Due to Nader, you get a free ticket if you are bumped off an airplane when the airline overbooks your flight…

The list can go on and on.

The choice is very clear, vote for Nader, the man with great integrity, backbone, and passion. If enough people use Nader as a role model and show their own integrity, they won’t waste their votes, because then Nader will be the next president.

–Tony on Mar 03, 2008
P.S.: What Nader HAS accomplished as well, politically that is, is “elect” Dubya in Florida in 2000. Today, it is doubtful he will factor in at all. Dommage.

–Frank Eng on Mar 04, 2008
Tony:
The postscript immediately above was originally appended to a lengthier message my errant fingers deleted, wherein I believe I said:
1: Ralph Nader was the whistle-blower on a cheap American car that was dangerous? way back when.
2: Seatbelts and airbags, in this view, benefit the manufaturers chiefly, us poor traveller if we get to travel that is, are basically served, or killed, by drivers and carmakers and potholes?
3: WHO, among us, read “food labels”? And, if we do make the effort, who can understand the gobbledegook and the expertise underlying?
4: It is the FDA’S job to do what it has failed, signally, to do, and no amount of sloganeering about “toxic” “imports” can gainsay that fact.
5: I can’t afford an airline ticket, even if I wanted to brave the gendarmerie surrounding such effort, which, by the way, today, online, Googlenews?, relates to a story about proposed paid-for driver’s lanes on PUBLIC highways and thoroughfares paid for by communal taxes. What with water being profitably marketed in plastic containers, and gas-pump and heating fuels inexorably costing many of us out, what’s next for the profiteering poobahs? The very air we breathe? Hey, don’t discount same, they’re already hustling and bustling about air pollution all the way from the Gobi. And Olympics Beijing.
6: And hearken to today’s, yesterday’s?, headlines about our Colombian army, well, trained and armed by us at least, at the ready to reduce Hugo Chavez to his proper place, which may, in fact, prove to be just one more idiotic and counterproductive pre-emptive first-strike ploy by a Pentagon and putative leadership in power that continues to betray its juvey and inadequate origins.
And did you note, a couple? days ago, the Chief of Staff’s disavowal of military dictatorship? In claiming that the generals are ready to take “civilian” orders, sir.
If you believe that, then I propose to sell you Manhattan for pemmican, or the Brooklyn Bridge for peanuts.
No, Tony, if that is indeed who you are, Ralph Nader may be sincere, but his “unbending” is about as useful to “democracy” as Dubya is to the New American Century. Make that decade.
And, finally, even if Obama is Billary Lite, at least he still stands, or claims to stand, just two or three degrees to the left, which, to me, is “right.”

–Frank Eng on Mar 04, 2008

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