FOR SHEER COMIC VALUE...:

President Oxybarama (Spengler, 1/22/09, Asia Times)

United States President Barack Obama "signaled a commitment to pragmatism not just as a governing strategy but as a basic value", according to unintentionally hilarious inauguration dispatch by the New York Times' Washington bureau chief David Sanger. Pragmatism, of course, is not a value, but rather the triumph of expediency over values. To call pragmatism a "basic value" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like "studied ignorance", or "impassioned apathy". Obama had plenty of that today, too.

"[Obama's] appearance on the Capitol steps was so historic that the address became larger than its own language, more imbued with meaning than anything he could say," added Sanger, which is to say that Obama said nothing memorable. Just what was historic?

This half-Luo tribesman from Hawaii whose African father had no connection whatsoever with the West African ancestors of American slaves, was not imbued, but rather hued, with significance. His melanin carried the meaning, which is to say that he was judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character, in a precise reversal of Martin Luther King Jr's famous phrase.

America's African Americans, who have failed to produce a credible leader in the two generations since the Civil Rights Act of 1965, broke America's last color bar, hailed this carpetbagger as a savior. For a generation of white liberals raised on the notion that skin-color aversion is the original sin of American politics, the confusion is understandable. The African Americans in attendance should have known better. In a way, they did. If not for Aretha Franklin, the day would have been a total loss.

...this presidency bids fair to challenge the pratfall-a-second Ford years. Only the UR more or less plays the straight man and his acolytes spew the funny bits.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2009 10:09 AM