Chronicling trends in entertainment, pop culture, politics, the arts, and the uncategorized et cetera.

Shallow Nation

August 25th, 2008 at 9:07 am

Barack Obama Time Magazine Cover September 1, 2008

Barack Obama Time magazine cover - Democratic convention issue, September 2008

Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama is on the cover of Time Magazine, September 1, 2008, Vol. 172 No. 9, and profiled in a feature article by David Von Drehle, “The Five Faces of Barack Obama,” that poses the question:

“When you look at Barack Obama, what do you see? 1. Black Man; 2. Healer; 3. Novice; 4. Radical; 5. The Future; All of the above.”

Open his book The Audacity of Hope to almost any page and listen. On immigration, for example, Obama first mirrors “the faces of this new America” he has met in the ethnic stew pot of Chicago: “in the Indian markets along Devon Avenue, in the sparkling new mosque in the southwestern suburbs, in an Armenian wedding and a Filipino ball.” Then he pivots to give voice to the “anxieties” of “many blacks” and “as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration,” adding: “Not all of these fears are irrational.” He admits that he knows the “frustration” of needing an interpreter to speak to one’s auto mechanic and in the next breath cherishes the innocent dreams of an immigrant child.

In other words, he hears America singing — and griping, fretting, seething, conniving, hoping, despairing. He can deliver a pitch-perfect expression of the racial anger of many American blacks — as he did in his much discussed speech on race relations earlier this year — and, just as smoothly, unpack the racial irritations gnawing at many whites. To what extent does he share any of those emotions? The doctor never exactly says.

Source: The Five Faces of Barack Obama (The full article is online)

See also Time Magazine interview with Senator Barack Obama: