"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Prime-Time Obama:
Gloriously Boring
Posted 10:16 p.m., Oct. 29, 2008
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It was a snooze.
Tonight's $5 million-or-so prime time infomercial/docudrama/live address by Barack Obama was about as pretty--and dull--as your average episode of "Masterpiece Theater." (With all apologies to my highbrow friends.)
Granted, it was punctuated by some sterling moments: The shot of the elderly black woman trying to straighten her aching arthritic fingers, the description of Obama's mother, the young middle-class mother describing how she has to ration food so her large family can make it from paycheck to paycheck without running out.
It was just the mundane desperation of every day life in middle-class America. Not the stuff of must-see TV.
I watched the thing, tried to concentrate on it. I couldn't.
I mean that in a nice way.
Strategically, Obama hit all the right notes, profiled people from all the right battleground states. (Ohio, Colorado, etc.) His money bought him the best lighting and production values--the outdoor shots reminded me of nothing so much as NBC's "Friday Night Lights" program.
But if you've been paying attention to the election, you didn't learn anything new.
Thing is, this program wasn't about people who've been paying attention. This was about everyone else. The undecided, and the folks who've grown wary because of John McCain's recent characterization of Obama as the reincarnation of Eugene Debs.
And that's why the program was effective. Brilliant, in fact. It was the antithesis of the stem-winder speech that one would expect from your average "radical Marxist" (to borrow today's description from Tom DeLay, on "Hardball with Chris Matthews." "I tagged him as a Marxist months ago," the Hammer boasted).
But DeLay is DeLuded. The Obama reflected in the light of several million television sets in several million American living rooms tonight just wasn't radical at all.
Obama can't be a Marxist. Marxists are, well, exciting. Or at least excitable. The Obama we saw tonight was anything but.
Obama came across, like he usually has, as a steady, sensible, thoughtful guy. The kind of calm fellow you'd want in charge if you were working for a company that was having a bad quarter, or at the front of the line if you were fighting a brush fire that's threatening to surround the crew. Or leading your regiment when it's pinned down by enemy fire.
The kind of guy you might want as president at a time when your economy is swirling the bowl or your nation's foreign affairs are a complete SNAFU. Or both.
Was tonight's informercial effective television? Barely. Ross Perot was a lot more interesting 16 years ago, with his funny ears, his folksy attitude and his charts and graphs. But Ross Perot finished third.
Was it an effective way to demonstrate the innate dullness of Obama's temperament to voters scared witless by the Palin-McCain team's most incendiary claims about Obama's commitment to capitalism and democracy?
Oh yeah. It was gloriously boring that way.
Andrew Sullivan understands exactly what I mean.
"The first black president will only get there by boring a lot of white people. And haven't we had enough drama in the last eight years? Boring is fucking awesome after Bush."
--"Live-Blogging Hofstra,"
Andrew Sullivan
The Atlantic's Daily Dish
Oct. 15, 2008
As I say, gloriously boring.
