Maybe you've heard about the new television ad coming from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. It juxtaposes Sen. Barack Obama's image with those of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, calling him the world's biggest celebrity. Obama certainly doesn't speak, look or act like the blonde celebrities the McCain ad is comparing him to, but the ad has garnered plenty of attention. Yet maybe simply calling Barack Obama the world's biggest celebrity doesn't go far enough. He is not someone we can ignore like a celebrity, the briefly burning star of which can be confined to an isolated and disregarded sphere of the world.
Perhaps it's not Obama's celebrity status that has many people in a frenzy and others in disgust. Of course, there are celebrities who elicit this type of response, but the response to Obama goes beyond the fan-crazed crowds that show up for pop concerts. Maybe our reactions to him are exaggerated because we treat Obama like he is a religious, even Messianic figure, with answers that he doesn't need to explain and expectations that no one will understand if he does.
His plans for issues like health care have been criticized as vague, yet his lofty prose centering on "change" moves crowds to a religious fervor. Candidates have always promised the sort of things that Obama appears to represent, such as change and disruption of the partisan bickering that has plagued American politics, but who has really delivered on these promises? What makes Obama so different and believable that his campaign has become a magnet for contributions from all types of sources?
As a pop-culture phenomenon, Obama has become more than a celebrity and more than a man. In the online magazine Slate, writers have created a dictionary of Obamaisms, or words that combine Obama's name with other words to create some meaning centering on Obama. Obamage, for instance, means "respect or reverence paid to Obama." Then there's Operation Baracki Freedom: "An operation designed to liberate Americans from the yoke of partisan politics. May or may not provide adequate plans for reconstruction." In this way, Obama's name and his actions have become the catch-all answer for problems in the American political sphere.
Obama himself is wary of the connotations his name is accruing. I don't believe for a moment that Obama views himself as a savior of any type. He has spoken of the hard work it will take to achieve the change we envision and has warned against expecting too much, yet much of his campaign's rhetoric stops just short of equating a vote for Obama as a guaranteed cure-all.
In his supposed recent move toward the middle, even devotees criticized his decisions for being
entirely too political. But still others hold to the defense that Obama is an omnisicent figure whose plans and tactics are far beyond our comprehension. Obama's advisors have even insinuated that his worldview is too complex for the average Joe's mind to wrap itself around, reminiscent of the circular "If you don't understand/believe this, then something is wrong with you" argument. That's also what some of his former law students would have us believe, according to a July 30 New York Times article detailing his tenure at the University of Chicago. His talking points in the presidential campaign are not nearly as interesting and complicated as the discussion points he outlined in his classes, they said.
At the risk of sounding cliche, Obama defies categorization within the structured party lines, within racial and class lines and certainly within what many had come to expect from a black candidate. But his undefinable public image is a large part of the reason Obama remains mysterious, more than a candidate, celebrity, or man. No one seems to be able to pin him down, to know what to expect of his views before he explains them completely.
And that is why we are expected to accept Obama on a little bit of faith. Even Obama is asking for it. At the top of Obama's Web site, a highlighted quote states: "I'm asking you to believe."
Wu graduated in the spring with degrees in Plan II and music.
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