Superficial media super-womps

By Joseph Gauger
Collegian Editor
February 20, 2008

At a panel discussion hosted by La Salle’s Political Science Department Feb. 15, Dr. Mary-Ellen Balchunis gave a talk about youth, race and gender in the 2008 presidential race. She pointed out that Oprah Winfrey, who has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president, has a surprising level of influence among voters. Not everyone is well-versed in political issues, she reasoned, and Winfrey has as much influence over the uninitiated in matters of politics as in matters of fashion.

An astonishing amount of airtime in various media is currently devoted to the identity politics being played between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. As usual, the media are averse to legitimate issues; the Oprah level of politics is a better sell for them. Many have asked “whose turn it is,” whether a white woman or a black man is more deserving of sitting in the Oval Office from 2009 to 2013. The idea that there is some sort of minority-representation calculus that might determine that question is insulting to women and African-Americans both. It also seems to operate under the assumption that this coming presidential term will somehow remedy all the mistreatment suffered by one of those two groups in this country’s history, and that it is therefore important to pick the right one.

Surely it is a continuing embarrassment that America has never elected a woman or a racial minority to the presidency, but allowing race and gender to be central concerns in a nominating contest is not a step in the right direction. The quadrennial presidential circus has always had a disturbing tendency to marginalize legitimate issues, even when the choice is between the Yale-educated scions of two white patrician families. This year’s contest has squeezed out almost every policy item and replaced it with the word “change.”

No one would love to see Washington politics radically altered more than I would, but Obama’s proposals for doing so are exasperatingly non-specific. The rhetoric clearly works for him, though, so all the other candidates latched on to it some time ago. In that context it is important to remember that all three surviving candidates are sitting U.S. Senators, members of one of the most pro-Establishment bodies on Earth. If Americans wanted to elect an acolyte of the ossified status quo, they would need to look no further for their candidate than the Senate. Clinton and Obama have convinced their supporters that loosening one of the presidential identity criteria is tantamount to fixing the government. If elected, either will likely do enough to restore confidence in the American government, appointing competent advisors and remedying the most arrogant abuses of the Bush administration. But don’t look for either to fix any problem that existed before the 2000 election.

The most frustrating thing about Obama’s identity politics is how strongly I want to buy into the whole story. I would be ecstatic to see a strongly liberal president dedicated to righting domestic injustice, ending U.S. imperialism and shifting the balance of power away from corporations and toward the American people. Sadly, I know better. The energy and optimism of Obama’s supporters are the building blocks of a genuine grassroots movement. But he has been vetted by the powers-that-be and has received a strong endorsement. The most innovative and ambitious reformer by the standards of the Senate is by no means a revolutionary.

gaugerj1@lasalle.edu