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Looking for some information on President Obama’s holiday stay in Hawaii, I came across a special section of the Honolulu Advertiser (it’s one of Hawaii’s two main newspapers-websites) devoted to the Obamas.
It’s clear that the Obama administration had a major hand in putting together the biographical section of this section called "Obama Ohana Comes Home 2009, Hawaii Vacation, December 24-January 3". Before I discuss the substance of the diary, let me register my own bewilderment that a newspaper would put out what appears to be little more than a campaign document for Obama. It’s that bad. Our newspapers really have devolved into public relations arms for various causes; they long ago gave up the vital function our Founding Fathers saw them as providing: ceaseless questioning and vigilance, a check on our government. Instead, reporters/newspapers today just seem to hand out propaganda by various people, no questions asked.
Back to the issue at hand. Please have a look at the following biographical information at the Honolulu Advertiser website–with information, as the Advertiser indicates, provided by the Obama team–and see if you can spot what’s missing:
…Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
College Years
Barak (sic.) earned his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
If you said "the community organizer" stuff is missing, you go to the head of the class. Note that instead of that, we get this: "he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law."
I happen to think that this missing element–the "community organizer"–was very important in the 2008 campaign but is no longer something Obama wants any attention to be paid to. The "community organizer" hat sort of set off Obama from all of the other Democratic candidates running for the presidency.
Hillary and John Edwards, after all, had far more distinguished and accomplished legal careers than Obama. Edwards was a very prominent trial lawyer, one of the best; Hillary had been a state AG and had spent several years with major law firms.
So it looks like the Obama campaign played up the community organizer thing only to set him off from others. For the real difficulty for Obama was not the general election campaign, but for such an unknown (with a very vague record especially on progressive issues) getting the nomination of his party which generally goes to a liberal in the party.
It also turns out according to University of Pennsylvania political scientist, Adolph Reed, Jr. that Obama as a "community organizer" was really only involved in conventional voter registration drives, not, for instance, in efforts to get better housing for minorities, not in job retraining efforts, not in anything related to uplifting the social and economic positions of the poor. Here’s Reed writing on this subject in The Progressive:
It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.
That’s why the "community organizer" thing was always just floated and left out there by his team: ambiguity used again by those surrounding Obama.
What the "community organizer" thing also gave Obama was a certain cachet in liberal-progressive circles. With only a single vote against the Iraq war (and many others in favor of funding it in the Senate and with many others in favor of expanding defense department budgets), Obama had next to nothing to run on as a liberal or progressive. You could almost hear the Obama team invoking "community organizer" as a mantra: he’s not just another politician, he’s not just another lawyer wanting to get higher on the food chain, the man was a community organizer!
Well, now that "community organizer hat" seems to be in the process of being shed by Obama.
There are several likely reasons for this:
1) in Hawaii especially (and I lived there for 10 years) Blacks are not really popular at all (especially in the Asian communities) and their numbers are tiny (mostly confined to the military bases). "Community organizer" screams minority and especially Black American. That is being downplayed now especially in a state where racial harmony is very important and where mixed races are common and accepted.
2) Note the emergence in the biography of Obama as a "civil rights lawyer" even though he spent very little time as a lawyer and has never written a word on law anywhere. But I think that fits in with his much more conservative image now. Community organizer is the kind of title that allows GOP dinosaurs to label Obama a socialist so it has to go.
3) There’s no need for the "community organizer Obama" anymore since that image was essential to getting the Democratic nomination but now the guy is the President and he doesn’t have to worry about that. Indeed, if one looks at Obama’s career, it’s fairly obvious that he used a number of people (especially black ministers in Chicago) to advance his career but jettisoned them as soon as it became politically expedient to do so. In or around 2006, Obama was really pal’in around with Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs. After all, he made the opening speech at the Goldman Sachs-Rubin funded Hamilton Project in April, 2006, and called for free trade, more NAFTA type agreements and cuts in entitlements. He wasn’t interested in building homes for the homeless, in helping the poor, in education for the poverty stricken, in health care for those without it, Obama wanted to make links to those with money because that’s how you win elections in America today.
Here’s how investigative journalist Ken Silverstein described Obama way back in 2006 in a devastating article called "Barack Obama Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine". He ends that article with this:
On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a “player.” The lobbyist added: “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?”
Lot’s of truth in that remark but there WAS value in a "starry-eyed idealist" because Obama needed to sell himself as that to get the Democratic nomination in 2008. The idealism, of course, was dropped as the votes were being counted.
4) Obama’s core identity, very close to Rockefeller Republicanism with its emphasis on favorable treatment to Wall St. and big banks and on an expanding American Empire (and bread and circuses for the masses) has nothing to do with true community organizing. Obama, a closet Rockefeller Republican, mounted a stealth campaign in 2008 and the "community organizer" (along with his single vote against the Iraq War) provided him with convenient cover. Now that the election is over, he can drop this identify and assume a more traditional, and dignified one, of civil rights lawyer (even though that’s false too). I mean look at Obama: does this guy, dressed up to the t’s, without any concern for the poor and minorities look to you like a community organizer?
No way. Stealth campaign. Frank Rich pegged Obama perfectly: "Obama punked us".
28 Comments
From Frank Rich’s column which you quoted…
Thanks for that Jacob. Frank Rich also did a column that focused on Tiger Woods but you could see (especially in the closing paragraphs) that his real target was not so much Woods as Obama. He was talking about how Woods was an empty public relations concoction (and so too was Obama). Rich is one of the best writers around and not only writes elegantly but has penetrating political insights.
Here’s Frank Rich on Tiger Woods and Obama:
Brilliant! That’s putting the knife in in a round about way.
I shake my head these days when I see a blog diary about how Republicans suck.
As your diary makes plain, Republicans in government aren’t the core fucking problem. They’re simply players, as are Dems, in a rigged game. It’s the game that needs to be addressed. Energy expended by progressives for any other purpose is wasted.
I like your diary and the preceding comments. Punked, indeed, with the media’s help.
The Iraq war authorizing vote was in 2002. Obama wasn’t in the US senate until 2004: he only said he would have voted against the war, he didn’t vote because he wasn’t there. I like Frank Lautenberg but when he was asked if he would have voted against the Iraq war had he been in the senate at that time and replied, “Absolutely,” he was full of it. So easy to talk, so much harder to stand up. How many actually put their monies where their mouths were? Obama, I can tell you, was not among them.
As far as the campaign book “Audacity of Hope” is concerned, the phrase that jumped off the page for me was his talking about Reagan’s election:
Order? tidy? well-oiled machinery, crisper salutes? What about the lushness and wildness of Hawaii? What about the peace? Not so much. This is a deeply conservative man who wished to maintain the status quo of elite rule. And he still hasn’t shaken his young boy’s deep love of the toys of war. He now gets to use that crisper salute. His childhood dreams are becoming our nightmares.
I believe that Tiger Woods and Obama have some “identity” issues. This is my own opinion, mind you. Tiger’s issues hurt Tiger, his family and his sponsors (boo hoo) but Obama’s could be catastrophic for the country.
Obama has become a big distraction, especially for the author of this diary. So Obama is another corporate sellout like all of the other Presidents. Should we be surprised? The task at hand is pulling our collective political will out of the Veal Pen so that we can support an organization that isn’t under Obama’s thumb.
Which organization are you referring to?
I’m not referring to a specific organization, just to suggest that we need organizations which aren’t in the Veal Pen, and that getting this is the first order of business.
This diary reminds me of an 11/18/09 TruthDig article by Robert Scheer, cleverly entitled: “Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?”
OK, agreed. I’ve come to view politicians of any label as useful or not useful. The useful ones can stick around as long as and the not useful I’ll try to uproot. Small deviations and disagreements may be tolerated, but bs and betrayals will not be. I don’t care about any of them personally, they’re tools–for good or bad. I assume the same attitudes prevail on their side, the difference being they’ve always been that way and I’m relatively new to the perspective.
Welcome to the “real world” of what Hawaii is like.
You should see The Maui News: nothing but day-old AP stories and local sports.
Some other indicia you might ponder:
*Republican [yes, Republican] Hawaii governor Linda Lingle is “balancing the budget” by cutting education spending — resulting in canceling school for all Fridays for the rest of the school year.
*This brilliant action in a state that arm-wrestles LA, MS and AL for the bottom of the barrel in education rankings.
*In response to Lingle’s cuts to the education budget, corporations and individuals rushed to raise money for . . . . retaining sports. No fund-raising programs for books, libraries, after-school programs, etc. But don’t kill that high school football!!!
*Hawaii’s school system is so bad they can’t even get certified to compete for Obama’s “Race to the Top” dole to public schools.
I don’t believe the part about the Developing Communities Project or Obama just being voter registration drives is correct. I’m from the Southside and familiar with people in the organization and similar organizations and they were doing much more than that.
Remember that scene of him saluting the coffins moving by him in the missle of the night? Crisp, orderly photo-op bullshit. I have come to detest almost everything about this phoney.
I am. During the 2008 election Ron Paul and Ralph Nader came together on a set of principles that most Progs could get behind. They need to do it again because a whole lot more people are convinced of the need for something, anything outside of the BS duopoly that runs this country. Watch Ralph and Ron tell it like it is.
This may be just my particular idiosyncrasy, but I never heard the term “community organizer” until Obama showed up. In my experience the people who do the things he was purported to have done in Chicago before law school are called activists. Of course, if you say you are an activist, people generally ask what you’re an activist for. If you say you’re a community organizer, the expression is such a mouthful that it tends to shut the conversation down. That opens the door for people to project whatever they want onto it.
Hearing more about Obama’s work as a “community organizer” is both enlightening and infuriating, if what’s being said about is accurate. When I learned about him being a “community organizer,” I have to admit that I didn’t do a whole lot of research into the specifics of what he was actually doing and simply assumed that his activities were more oriented towards social services. His background as a “community organizer” was one of his main selling points for me, and to hear that his work may have been misrepresented and amounted to little more than canvassing for votes is really frustrating, even if at this point it shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Thanks for posting this.
I read Rich’s article and agree with everything he said except his statement that race plays no role in the sagas of Woods and Obama. I believe race plays a significant role in both Woods’and Obama’s behavior. Woods does not identify as black. In fact he describes himself as “Cablinasian” — a mixture of Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian. It’s telling that this word begins with “Caucasian.” Similarly, I’ve watched Obama claim pride in being black when addressing a black audience,then jettison long time black associates that he feared they may reflect badly on him. Geitner is in, but Van Jones is out.
Black self-hate runs deep, and it’s particularly complicated in persons of mixed racial ancestry. I’m black and my family is heavily mixed with white. Most look white and many have passed over the years. I attended Ivy league institutions. I know first hand what it takes to succeed in these institutions and it usually involves giving over autonomy, self-pride, and initiative; all viewed as positive attributes in whites but often used to label blacks as “angry” or “uppity.” Race is very much at the core of what this nation is about. Obama and Woods try to run from it—but as we know, you can never out run yourself. IMHO
Very good, but sad, comment. What would you like to see Obama do regarding his mixed race? That’s a serious question, not snark.
How about putting into play some policies that help the inner cities, that deliver on stopping the foreclosures and job losses. How about telling Wall St. to kiss his ass for starters. That’s a start. Minorities have been affected disproportionately in this financial crisis. Obama lives in fear of being accused of being “too black” or favoring minorities. But such programs help everyone , including poor whites. The true facts about his fake community organizing are not surprising in hindsight. The white power structure looks with suspicion on ‘black activists.’ They’ll always prefer a Booker T over over a MLK.
I think its even more important that he wasnt an especially good community organizer OR civil rights lawyer OR law proffesor. His Greatest accomplishments have been getting people to vote for him twice: As president of the Harvard law review and as U.S president. He won both times by kissing the asses of well connected conservative establishment types behind the scenes, while publicly allowing a needed group of votes to make certain assumptions about him. I dont think this is a sinister master plan, by design. I think it is a character defect, on the other hand it might as well be a sinister master plan. the outcome is the same.
I choose to see Obamas race in terms of national history rather than his personal psychology. If he’s “got something to prove” it the fault of history as much as anything else and part of the price we are paying for it.
Hope I’m not too late – but have to respond. Not having heard the term “community organizer” may simply be a function of your age. I’m 60; back in the ’70′s and even early to mid-70′s the term was common, and I still occasionally see it in job postings for certain kinds of non-profit organizations.
It never had a specific, narrow meaning, it depended on the context, but usually included outreach to a community/neighborhood/group, and “organizing” them for a particular purpose. That might be anything from voter registration to opposition to, say, destruction of a neighborhood for urban renewal, closing of a school, hospital, or other institution important to the community, etc., etc.
It was not a rare term, but I’d also bet that my Republican relatives weren’t too familiar with it.
ADC14 wrote:
Excellent comments ADC. Going to your comments, Tiger Woods (who is half Thai) is really DISLIKED in Thailand because the Thai people perceive that he’s really white and disdains his mother’s culture (he speaks no Thai, doesn’t visit the country often, and makes no outreach efforts with his mega millions at all in Thailand). I suspect you’ve hit on something with the racial comparison of Woods and Obama, both from mixed races.
As far as your economic ideas go, they’re excellent. A true jobs creation program would help ALL people not just those of one race. Obama doesn’t want to get the federal government involved in mass project programs, too bad. Obama has done nothing for Black Americas and yet they overwhelmingly supportive of him. I wonder if you could comment on that?
Wigwam, thanks for that link to Digby. I had not read it when I wrote this diary (still haven’t) but I’m going there now!
Brilliant comment, Montanamaven, especially the find from Obama’s writings. Yes, he’s deeply conservative; he had to pretend to be a liberal-progressive to get the Democratic nomination.
Wigwam, I’ve now read the Robert Scheer article but aside from the brilliant title, he doesn’t really explore the “community organizer” thing as I have done nor show how it was vital to Obama’s campaign for the Democratic nomination to presidency. It’s mostly about banking. It would be nice if someone IN CHICAGO could do some investigative work into what Obama really did as a “community organizer”. The only thing I’ve seen comes from Adolph Reed Jr. and he only presents one paragraph on it. It would be nice to see an expose of what Obama did as community organizer.