House of Eratosthenes

One of the most perverse things about Obama is that, when he’s trying to get tough with the opposition, what he says about them is often the best clue to what he’s actually doing, or planning to do.

Case in point—his latest declaration about the Republicans:

…[T]hey’re betting on amnesia. That’s what they’re counting on. They’re counting on that you all forgot. They think that they can run the okey-doke on you. Bamboozle you.

Like many of Obama’s most revealing remarks, these were made at a Democratic fundraiser, this time in Atlanta. And the word “bamboozle” is an especially nice touch, harking back to a famous scene in Spike Lee’s film “Malcolm X,” a reference that would most likely be recognized by a great many people in his Atlanta audience.

I said the speech appears in the film; Malcolm X never actually said the words in real life. But since movies about history have largely become a substitute for history, these cinematic words may be more famous than any the historical figure of Malcolm X actually uttered. The movie context was a speech made by Malcolm in Harlem, on the subject of the white man. Rest assured that Obama is aware of the racial code he’s employing, and what it means to many of the black people in his audience.
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And this is what Obama does—sows the seeds of racial hatred while maintaining a facade of plausible deniability.

[NOTE: Obama has been called on this before, during the 2008 campaign, when he used “bamboozled” and “hoodwinked” repeatedly to describe the actions of opponents.]

Because code words are an essential ingredient when you’re healing an ancient racial divide.

Remember The Sixth Sense when the stepmother is caught on video poisoning the little girl? She says something about not wanting to hear the soup tastes funny, just swallow it anyway. You need to eat it all up to get well again. It’s one of the more jaw-dropping scenes of the film — people want to put off the potty breaks until later. It’s engrossing, and it’s sickening.

Well…that’s pretty much what’s happening here. Racial tension is the disease, Obama is the cure. He’s just our long-awaited living, breathing, medicinal balm. Except when He isn’t.

I think that by using works like bamboozled, he’s telling us (and himself), that votes against him come from people who are stupid. We’re just doo damn dumn to understand his greatness.

Good lord, what a self-absorbed twit we have in the White House now.
- HoundOfDoom | 08/06/2010 @ 07:11
Thank goodness. We can finally put to rest our search for someone who picked a word out of a 31/2 hour movie that was made 18 years ago, and pin him for the crime of using code words to subvert the white race.

He is one horseshittingly bad president, no question about it. But this? Oh, boy. Now that we’ve established that we don’t like being called racists every time we disagree with the guy, WE’RE going to start doing it? I’m rubber and you’re glue? Infinity?

I hope not.
- Andy | 08/06/2010 @ 08:42
That’s a good point Andy, and actually I had that in my head while I was figuring out whether or not to run with this. Eventually I decided it was a legitimate charge NN was making, and I’ll tell you what really swayed me in the end:

If Obama is, in fact, NOT trying to bait a toxic black-on-white racist constituency by repeatedly using this word…and is, in fact, innocently trying to heal the racial divide as He was elected to do…and this is just a misstep and nothing more —

He’s pig-iron stupid. No way of getting around it.

And I don’t think He’s stupid in these matters. He’s spent His life refining His skills here. And it is still downright stupiefying and bedazzling how good He is at it.

He’s innocent, or else He’s guilty…and it’s just really hard for me to accept that He’s innocent.
- mkfreeberg | 08/06/2010 @ 09:24
That’s all well and good, if we are charging him the obligation to use every speech he ever makes as an attempt to heal that racial divide, along with whatever he is actually there to talk about. And then whenever he doesn’t make obvious overtones in that direction, we pore over his words to find a way of accusing him of keeping the divide as wide as ever.

I don’t excuse him from the petty crime of getting a bit too fond of his hip lingo when he is addressing an ethnic audience, in fact I would assert that it is more insulting to the audience than to anyone else. “Hey, fellow black folks, I have to say things like bamboozled and flim-flammed or I’ll lose your attention. I know, ‘cuz I’m (a far superior version of) one of you.” He’s a politician, and a right shady one.

Your point is a good one and well taken, but the last sentence only really works if his only role as President is that of Racial Mediator. Or more accurately, it only works if we first believe that his sole purpose of giving that particular speech was to be either guilty or innocent of racism. So we sit down and listen, and wait for him to say really nice things about white people to his black audience, and when he doesn’t, we shout “racist.”
- Andy | 08/06/2010 @ 09:43
That’s all well and good, if we are charging him the obligation to use every speech he ever makes as an attempt to heal that racial divide, along with whatever he is actually there to talk about. And then whenever he doesn’t make obvious overtones in that direction, we pore over his words to find a way of accusing him of keeping the divide as wide as ever.

Well, when it comes to the economy, the effect He is having could be excused as ineptitude. These businesses are sitting on cash reserves, not daring to hire anyone because they don’t know what’s coming. Is Obama bright enough to catch on to this? Sure, but can you catch on to it when you’ve spent your adult life, in academia as well as outside of it, learning that the business are NEVER to be sympathetic objects…being evil & all. And I could see how the spark would fail to jump the synapse. Wouldn’t bet a lot of money that this is the problem, but it is conceivably possible. When has Obama ever run a business and had to figure out the right moment to do some hiring?

The race relations thing, though…no. He’s been playing the race card like it’s a fine musical instrument. He’s been feeding off jealousy.

The thing you’re missing here is the same thing my late Uncle was missing: Politicians do not solve problems if their previous electoral success was connected with the problem, because their future electoral success will be connected to the same problem. If we already had perfect racial harmony, Obama would not be our President right now. He is a President of stewing resentments. On both sides. I might credit him with having a desire to heal the racial divide, if it were not silly to think he wants to heal it. But it kind of is. There’s so much arguing about it now compared to, say, three years ago. Throughout all that time, Obama has had a better opportunity than just about anyone to reverse course and instigate some genuine healing. He never has. Nominating some ugly white women to the Supreme Court, that’s just about as close as He’s ever come.

Now, I will acknowledge the possibility that this could go into the “dithering” file…along with the plug-the-damn-hole thing. In other words, you could make the point that Obama laziness/inaction does not necessarily preclude an Obama desire for a successful conclusion to something. Like most of the lifetime-professors on the hard left, Obama does seem to have a myopia about observing cause-and-effect and this does get in the way of engineering things. But I think you’re failing to grasp the magnitude of the ignorance that must be visited upon His Holy Head in order for this to be the scenario; He’s just trying to be folksy?

The administrators who hide behind race-based hiring and admission quotas, genuinely ignorant of the resentment they case over the long term, look like geniuses compared to this. Consider the context: Affirmative Action, to a lazy mindset, is supposed to offer some hope for healing wounds. Obama, on the other hand, is making a speech to potential donors at a fundraiser, doing His level best to inspire suspicion and mistrust — any way He possibly can. That’s the subject of the speech. The race angle is just a subtlety, but it’s a subtlety within an overarching theme of those evil Republicans getting ready to fool the innocents…to “bamboozle” them.

I do agree with you that this is not a certainty. But if you’re concerned about being even-handed with both sides, ask yourself this: A Republican does something to solve a problem, and ends up making it worse. He does the same thing again. Then he does it five more times. At some point, you’d start blaming him, because conservatives are supposed to notice A causes B, and learn from it. Unconsciously, I think we start to give liberals a pass on this. We expect them to put their pet theories into force, on the plane of reality, and remain ignorant when practice turns out to be different.

Well…preconceptions excuse only so much. NN hit a bulls-eye. True, I can’t prove it. But that’s the point.
- mkfreeberg | 08/06/2010 @ 11:03
[…] Helps to Be Rich, Too Shakira – Hips Don’t Lie – Wyclef Jean I Made a New Word XL “Bamboozled” “You Were Doing It Wrong” “Evidence and […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/10/2010 @ 06:27

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“Bamboozled”Friday, August 6th, 2010

“Bamboozled”
Friday, August 6th, 2010