Photo by afagen
Important things afoot today, and you can feel it. Never before have so many pundits and political commentators begun columns like this one with the words "never before." I mean, I'm excited too. But did you see the lead story in this morning's NY Times?
Expectations like the kind the above rhetoric illustrates cannot be fulfilled. They just can't. Obama-mania today resembles the sort of consumer fads that gripped North America over, say, the Rubik's Cube or the Hammer dance. How long before the inevitable backlash?
I hope long enough to erase the effects of his predecessor, who haunts us still. Two vestiges of Bush 43 made it to front pages in recent days: The fact that Canadian border services turned back at the border the founder of the Weather Underground, William Ayers, who was due to speak at the University of Toronto Monday night. And the revelation that Omar Khadr placed Maher Arar at an al-Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan.
Both events deserve a giant give-me-a-break. Khadr's placing Arar at the safehouse is clearly an accusation made under the influence of torture, and has as much credibility as any other accusation made during torture. Accusations like Khadr's are the reason torture has a stigma as an interrogation technique: It doesn't work. And the fact that Ayers was turned back at the border is reflective of the grim us-versus-them human-rights-be-damned militancy that trickled down from the White House and evidently pervaded even the ranks of Canada's border services.
Hopefully today marks the end of such tactics. Hopefully. Cripes, I hope Obama doesn't blow it.
"More than any president since he was an infant, Mr. Obama has taken
a place in society that extends beyond political leadership. He is as
much symbol as substance, an icon for the young and a sign of
deliverance for an older generation that never believed a man with his
skin color would ascend those steps to vow to preserve, protect and
defend a Constitution that originally counted a black man as
three-fifths of a person. He is a celebrity president in a
celebrity culture, cooed over for his shirtless physique on the beach
and splashed on the cover of every magazine from Foreign Policy to
People. What his political opponents sought to portray in the campaign
as arrogance is now presented by his aides as comfort with power and
the responsibilities that go along with it."
Expectations like the kind the above rhetoric illustrates cannot be fulfilled. They just can't. Obama-mania today resembles the sort of consumer fads that gripped North America over, say, the Rubik's Cube or the Hammer dance. How long before the inevitable backlash?
I hope long enough to erase the effects of his predecessor, who haunts us still. Two vestiges of Bush 43 made it to front pages in recent days: The fact that Canadian border services turned back at the border the founder of the Weather Underground, William Ayers, who was due to speak at the University of Toronto Monday night. And the revelation that Omar Khadr placed Maher Arar at an al-Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan.
Both events deserve a giant give-me-a-break. Khadr's placing Arar at the safehouse is clearly an accusation made under the influence of torture, and has as much credibility as any other accusation made during torture. Accusations like Khadr's are the reason torture has a stigma as an interrogation technique: It doesn't work. And the fact that Ayers was turned back at the border is reflective of the grim us-versus-them human-rights-be-damned militancy that trickled down from the White House and evidently pervaded even the ranks of Canada's border services.
Hopefully today marks the end of such tactics. Hopefully. Cripes, I hope Obama doesn't blow it.
Comments