June 20, 2008

Obama's latest ad: The Promised Prince

Obama's new 60 second TV spot, entitled "Country I Love," continues his central campaign theme of running for President based on his biography. Unfortunately for Obama, he wrote a 442 page autobiography that shows that much of this commercial is a tendentious distortion of his life story. Fortunately for Obama, the book is too boring to hold anybody's attention.

The new commercial emphasizes his white relatives (Matthew Yglesias says the the title of the ad should be "My Mom's White! And I'm From America!"). It's part of his effort that began in 2004 to promote himself as the promised prince, the long-awaited offspring of a historic marital alliance, who, just as Henry VIII's birth of Lancastrian and Yorkist parents ended the War of the Roses, will end the War of the Races by unifying blacks' and whites' divergent interests in himself.

“I’m Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both.

Huh? He wrote tens of thousands of self-pitying words about how bad his family life was. He only spent one month with his father that he can recall. His mother dumped him twice on her grandparents so she could go back to Indonesia to work on her 1067 page anthropology Ph.D. dissertation on peasant blacksmithing.

I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents.

If he was blessed with such a strong family, why was his mother a "single mom?" Actually, his mother was married about 90% of the time up through his 18th birthday, assuming that you count her bigamous marriage to Barack Sr. as "being married." She just despised her second husband, Lolo, in part for his being too pro-American and too pro-capitalist for her tastes, unlike her beloved pro-socialist first husband (who had abandoned her and little Barack because the New School for Social Research, which had offered a scholarship ample enough to support the three of them, wasn't as prestigious as Harvard -- now that's a strong family!)

We didn’t have much money ...

He attended Hawaii's most famous prep school from 5th grade on and lived mostly in a Honolulu highrise with a fabulous view. But to the extent that it's true that they didn't have much money, it's because he wasn't from a "strong family."

but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.

The Chicago Tribune's article "Mother not just a girl from Kansas" gives a much more accurate picture of her Seattle-area upbringing as a leftist, feminist, and atheist who told her high school friends that marriage and children weren't for her, but surprised them all by getting knocked up at age 17 by a 24-year-old married man. He was from the Third World, so I guess that made it okay.

Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country.

Oh, come on ... His mother married two foreigners and spent most of her adult life in foreign countries. She dumped her son on his grandparents twice because she preferred to live abroad without him than in America with him. His mother angrily refused to attend her Indonesian second husband's business dinners with Americans because, as she shouted, "They are not my people" (italics Obama's). She was shattered to discover Indonesia was no longer the anti-American leftwing state she'd heard about, but was now a pro-American rightwing one.

Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated. It’s what guided me as I worked my way up — taking jobs and loans to make it through college. It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs

His "international business consultant" job he got out of college was actually being a copy editor at a low-rent newsletter sweatshop. (By the way, I've never seen much evidence, pro or con, on whether Obama's quantitative skills come anywhere close to his superlative verbal skills. Anybody know? That might explain why he wasn't snapped up by an investment bank when he graduated from Columbia in booming 1983. Judging from the kind of job he accepted, he would have taken a high-paying Wall Street job if anybody had offered him one.)

and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.

The intended implication here is that he went to Chicago to help steel workers with names like Stan Grabowski. No, he went to politically organize blacks, and only blacks, to build himself a black power base in a city where blacks had just gotten the powerful mayor's office.

That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work,

In the 442 pages of his 1995 Dreams from My Father, there's not a single word of criticism of welfare. The word "welfare" only appears twice (plus once in the 2004 preface), and neither time implies anything bad about it. This book was written at the height of the debate over welfare in the mid-1990s, so the lack of criticism of welfare is intentional.

cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.

This is an extremely accurate depiction of his political emphases!

I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.

Obama has a deep and abiding faith in Obama.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yikes! "Country I Love" sounds like the title of a new Toby Keith CD. I guess the Obama campaign is betting on people believing whatever they see on television.

Perhaps it's to McCain's advantage that he doesn't have several hundred million dollars to throw away -- spares him the temptation to produce TV ads that attempt to establish his street cred.

Anonymous said...

Steve, are you familiar with the Amy Macdonald song, Poison Prince?

Anonymous said...

Good critique. A brutal and damning indictment of Obama, and a well deserved one.

AmericanGoy said...

You know, here's what I figure.

The powers that be noticed (hard not to) that 'W' bush is a complete boob, a step above a village idiot.

He has really damaged the reputation and perception of the USA around the world.

This image needs repairing, and the best PR specialists in the world are on the case.

It was between a woman and a black man - and whoever won, the perceptions of America would be changed just by the virtue of a woman or a black man becoming president.

... Meanwhile, the policies of America will stay the same.

Every time Obama opens his mouth, the 'same old, same old' politics spew out. AIPAC is a great example - his speech at AIPAC was beyond pandering - it was pandering taken to the extreme extreme.

But that is just one example (and one I bring up because that is the focus of my blog). But lately there have been many others - FISA anyone?

Watch the apologists spin it and explain it that "gee, you need to say this BS just to get elected but once elected, THEN...".

Yeah, and I got a bridge in Brooklyn for yah - cheap!


Here's my theory - after 'W' bush, Americans are enamored with a politician who can speak eloquently and in complete, proper English sentences.

Look how far we have fallen - before, we used to say "Don't listen to the politician - look at his actions!".

Or, simpler, "bulls**t walks, money walks".

And now, we are all gaga over a guy because he is a great speaker.

....

Sigh...

Americans - that is the MINIMUM we should demand of our president.

Anonymous said...

Sorry for changing the subject, but you should do a piece on the "pregnancy pact" among high school girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Seventeen girls at Gloucester High have gotten pregnant this year, most of them 15-year-old sophomores, and as far as can be determined they've done so intentionally. It also seems as if a 25-year-old homeless man "serviced" most of the girls.

No word about the race of the girls, though the school is 95% white.

Unknown said...

If Obama"s books are boring, why is Steve Sailer so obsessed with them?

Anonymous said...

I don't know if anyone else is as compulsive about following the links as I am. The link at "low-rent newsletter sweatshop" is worth pursuing. It further reinforces the impression of Obama as a complete phony.

Some weeks ago Steve blogged about how an artist is only considered great if he has a "story." That seems to be the same case in presidential politics. People want soap opera. The Obama narrative managed to beat the Hillary narrative, though just barely. Will the McCain narrative beat the Obama narrative? At this point, who really cares? It appears that from now on it's going to be impossible to get a normal, competent person elected to the presidency. Gotta be high-concept!

Anonymous said...

Oh no! Pajama is a politician! Will he march out of the mountains of Wales flying the Dragon Banner? Only metaphorically.

Anonymous said...

Excellent piece of writing here, Steve Sailer. Amazing stuff. Obama's candidacy is a sham. The entire Obama phenomenon is stagecraft taking to an unprecedented level.

Check out candidate Obama standing behind the brand new and highly Orwellian Obama Seal (Presidential Seal re-engineered) in the photo at Drudge tonight. It's very disturbing. Drudge is leaving the photo up for a reason: the photo is off-the-charts "cult of personality". The E Pluribus Unum has also been reworked.....what a huge mistake by team Obama.

But I am sorry to read that you, Steve, feel Obama has "superlative verbal skills". The fact is that - when Obama is not reading from a teleprompter - his verbal dexterity is chock full of awkward uh's and ah's, and an eruption of non sequiturs and bogus, nonsensical conclusions flow from his mind. Live debate is not Obama's strong suit.

The great shame here is that conservatives - or anybody opposing the radical left - have no one but Sen. John McCain to oppose this weakling Obama. This past week Obama got his assed kicked on the oil drilling issue. Obama is Jimmy Carter redux, but even more self-absorbed.

m said...

If Obama"s books are boring, why is Steve Sailer so obsessed with them?

C'mon "J"...if that is your real name- Steve writes about Obama because he may be the next President....if you're going to be the trolling contrarian (which is fine btw) you have to come up with something better than that, don't you? Maybe not.

Obama is a fascinating dude that I think has a 35% chance to pull one over on the public and get elected. can you imagine this guy beating a POW/war hero/protypical president....aside from the details it's fairly amazing/disturbing....I know my Grandpappy is rolling over in his urn (he wanted cremation-we protested, he was adamant)...fairly funny link to prospective first ladies

http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/a_late_night_quiz_at_no_quarter/

We'll see what happens

Anonymous said...

Sometimes we're asked, "do you want the truth, or a lie that gives you hope?" I guess in Obama we're getting the lie.

Unknown said...

For the most part, I agree w/"American Goy." This is a total fix. But I disagree that previous presidents were all that superior. Most of them weren't that much, except for the first few.

Michael Carr - Veritas Literary said...

All of this is true, yet I still think his background is more common than any of these people:

George HW Bush
Ross Perot
George W. Bush
Al Gore
John Kerry
Hillary Clinton
John McCain

Prior to elective office, only Bill Clinton and Bob Dole came from an environment that was more typically American than these people's experiences. The rest of them were rich, related to famous people/politicians, etc.

Anonymous said...

"KingM said...

All of this is true, yet I still think his background is more common than any of these people:

George HW Bush
Ross Perot
George W. Bush
Al Gore
John Kerry
Hillary Clinton
John McCain

Prior to elective office, only Bill Clinton and Bob Dole came from an environment that was more typically American than these people's experiences. The rest of them were rich, related to famous people/politicians, etc."

Huh? By the time anyone runs for president they - almost by definition - come from an unrepresentative situation (governor, senator, etc.). When he ran for Presdient, Bill Clinton had been a life-long denizen of government and habituee of state-granted power almost all his adult life. Bob Dole, the same.

Now if your talking about upbringing and family background, that's another matter. Then, yes, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were fairly normal. So were Hillary Clinton and Ross Perot, whose fathers were a suburban Chicago businessman, and a Texas cotton broker, respectively.

Obama's upbringly is most emphatically not typical - left-wing perpetual-grad-student, absentee american mother, socialist neer-do-well absentee (and not just absentee, but absentee-for-life, complete AWOL) Kenyan father; raised in Hawaii and Indonesia. Educated at Harvard. Worked as a professional Race-Mau-Mauer in the Chicago ghetto. Yeah, just like Beaver Cleaver.

kurt9 said...

I saw this ad. I have to admit that it is quite brilliant and that, if it was his idea, that he is a brilliant guy. Not brilliant that his policy ideas are good, but brilliant in the sense that he is able to go about getting what he wants.

In other words, he is a brilliant politician.

Anonymous said...

iSteve:

Thanks for reading BHO's books so I don't need to.

J -- lighten up brother! Your saviour is ahead in the pools. Enjoy! It may not last (though I expect it will) which will keep iSteve busy for 4 to 8 years. ;)

Anonymous said...

Housekeeping:
Please add "Baroque O'Blarney" as one of the tags to this piece. I think Barry DOES have a sense of humour.

Anonymous said...

@ carbrolet:

Finally, someone else has noticed Obama's prodigious use of "ahh", "uhh", "umm" in non-rehearsed discourse. His speeches are very effective and brilliantly crafted, from a literary standpoint. But the language of his interviews and debates pale in comparison. (I'm about to talk out of my ass, but oh well.) I think this may be a result of spending so much time as a "community organizer" a.k.a. socialist for inner city blacks and member of his black separatist church. He could not employ his Ivy League speech patterns with these people, for fear of alienating them and also due to them simply not comprehending what he's saying. Thus, his speech became a conglomerate of urban Ebonics slang and the language of the academic elite. Now, as a candidate, he no longer needs to appeal specifically to blacks (they'll vote for him no matter what). He must speak the language of politicians, which is polished and not unlike that spoken at Columbia and Harvard Law. Occasionally, he'll slip, like in one debate, he used the phrase "my brotha" or the fist bump he gave Michelle a few weeks ago. I also heard him on a rap radio station and his speech was much more relaxed and overlayed with a fake blackccent, not unlike that of Alicia Keys.

Anyone else notice this?

Anonymous said...

"kurt said...

.....Not brilliant that his policy ideas are good, but brilliant in the sense that he is able to go about getting what he wants."

i.e., a capable sociopath.

Anonymous said...

Really well written... This one ought to leave a welt.

Bill Grant

Ecgbert said...

Spot on!

I guess the Obama campaign is betting on people believing whatever they see on television.

What's scary is the campaign people are probably right about that.

Anonymous said...

1983 would have been just after Wall Street shed its 70s "rainbow coalition" hiring for strict WASP/Jew (high merit or legacy) polo prestige. I think Michael Lewis made this point in liar's poker. Obama would have been viewed reflexively as an affirmative action baby with a non-qualifying name. Steve, you've proved it; Obama is less than meets the eye. But Bobby Jindal convinces me once and for all that a hispanic looking second generation can rise to the top and contribute.

Anonymous said...

"In other words, he is a brilliant politician."

are you kidding? He doesn't write his own speeches or ads. I doubt he even contributes thought, considering how empty his words are when he's on his own.
Many of the people running the show are ex-Clinton campaigners, and speechwriters (one is a young white guy whose name begins with an "F" but damned if I can remember it. I've been googling. Anyway, O is not brilliant. He's intelligent enough, and as we've seen in the last 8 years, that's more than it takes. Anyway, he won't be running much. The Brzezinski machine, almost the same one that did the Carter administration, wants this extraordinarily compromised individual in office (I won't go into details as they always get deleted.) The embarassingly fawning press--well, what do you expect, all owned by a couple of owned people--writes nothing but fairy tales about him. Camelot my butt. He's half black and seems to identify as African. Let him get them get theirown fairy tales. Camelot belongs to those Europeans to whom he owes so much and acknowledges so little. Leave freakin' Camelot alone. He is no King Arthur and that Mrs. O is no Gwenevere.
That theme might make good non-pc cartoons though.

Unknown said...

You have done a great job of attacking Obama's mom. However, she is not running for president.