The Medium is the Message

Since we’re grading on a curve here, we are cautiously optimistic about Obama’s cabinet and advisor picks. But if us raping and pillaging brigands on the right feel this way, we got to figure our friends on the other side of the aisle might feel a little uneasy about all of Obama’s unchange-i-ness so we checked in at the nerve center of the online liberal-Left, Daily Kos and found unrestrained outrage… actually we didn’t. We found some giving of thanks… not for the troops or for this wonderful country of our but thanks that their guy won the election and for the defeat of conservative ideas because, well, they suck! OK, then.

And we did find this article from Kathleen Parker of WaPo who seems to typify the efforts of the journalisti of lowering of the bar of change to help smooth things out for the President-elect. Besides the near pathological obsession many liberals have with making sure the rest of the world “likes us”, which it is implied that that through the sheer awesomeness of Obama is guaranteed to happen, she argues that Obama’s “style” is change in and of itself and specifically with respect to the African-American community.

Again, setting aside specific policies, Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

We heard this line of reasoning during the campaign and we are not entirely disbelieving of it (recall the YouTube video of several black teens “stepping” and rapping off lines like, “because of Obama, I am going to own my own business” and “because of Obama, I am going to go to college” – sorry, no link, can’t find it.). Maybe the mere fact that a black man who exudes a somewhat detached wonkishness and nerdiness and who will be the President of the United States in a couple of months can take a wrecking ball to the notion that getting good grades is “acting white”.

If Bill Clinton can raise the bar for what constitutes as “having sex” for millions of teenagers back in the 90s, lowering the bar for Obama and “change” means he will merely have to serve as a surrogate father to millions of African-American youths who are absent their own father. For the sake of Obama’s apologists and water-carriers in the media, we wish him well.