Writers for Obama...

Yes, I must admit this posting is a bit too late to be considered newsworthy. But since the Clinton-Obama race is still the media's chief attraction I feel that it would be appropriate for me to recall two very different political experiences I had last week: a fundraiser for Barack Obama held in Berkeley, CA. (where I go to school) and the state of the union address:

Two weeks ago I attended an Obama fundraiser Writers for Obama at a cozy Berkeley craftsman house just down the street from my house on Benvenue, where prominent authors such as Michael Chabon (far left), Dave Eggers (2nd from left), and Daniel Handler (middle) all spoke about their support for the candidate and their hope for change. It was a $1000.00 per head fundraiser. Myself (as a reporter) and my roomate Omar (as my photographer) showed up to the home of Linda Schacht and John Gage, the youngest people there amongst an aged crowd of the Berkeley intelligentsia and larger Bay Area intellectual community. Mixing and mingling, I made sure to speak to Michael Chabon, whom I asked at the end of a brief interview, "I don’t want to be amateurish but would you mind taking a picture with me?" He obliged warmly if not enthusiastically. Then I managed to catch Dave Eggers on his way out the door and mentioned that a passage from his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in which he shows up at Chez Panisse restaurant to meet Bill Clinton reminded me of what he said earlier in the evening about Obama’s appeal towards young people. He chuckled and said something about how Obama today is what Bill Clinton represented back in the early 90’s: hope, change, youth, etc.

All in all it was a unique political experience (at least for me) to hear members of the Berkeley community speak about the election in a beautiful old Arts and Crafts style house, sipping wine as the rain came down outside. Later in the evening I typed up an article on the event and went to the Daily Californian office to try and see if they would want to publish the piece. However, according to the bureaucratically regimented by-laws, the paper cannot publish my work unless I am officially a reporter, in other words I am coming in according to their schedule twice a week and reporting on stories they deem fit to print.

Later that week I was watching Bush address an assembled Congress for the last time (it’s about time). I cannot but comment on how staged and plastic the whole affair seems. I don't want to discuss the actual speech for that has been done ad infinitem already, but beyond mere politics, I found it both awing and also eerily sinister. The reactions of each and every congress member: carefully premeditated; the blank countenances of Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney sitting behind him: not daring to let their guard down for fear of making a national fo-pa that would inevitably be replayed again and again on networks, on you-tube, on the Daily Show.
The mechanical smiling and shaking of hands, donors, party members, lobbyists, congressmen, armed forces generals, and supreme court justices…the speech is over and now the pundits can start spinning, away they go, they’re off and running...President Bush as he makes his way out, signing autugraphs for smiling blonde supporters, housewives…and then CNN decides to eavesdrop on what he’s saying...more old white men in suits looking on adoringly as he signs autographs and soaks it all up.
Is it really a State of the Union address? Or is it something entirely different? An exercise in civic rituals, of national pride, of Americanism, of democracy, of republicanism? Is it simply an image, a powerful symbolic drama acted out on Capitol Hill to remind Americans that behind the scandals, dashed hopes, mired economy, battered international image, and tanking consumer confidence there remains a permanent American way: of governance, of ideology, of values. I can’t help but recall cultural theorist Paul Virilio’s assessment of the First Gulf War: ‘It didn’t occur.’ For him the Gulf War, history’s first “clean war,” (as it was billed) was not a war at all. It lacked significant combat between sides and casualties on the allied side. It could be viewed as an exercise in dominance, imperalism, even national pride. But it was not a war. Is it fair to say that the State of the Union, a chance for the president to articulate his hope for salvaging the last year of his office, is not really a State of the Union Adress, but rather a play titled The State of the Union? An exercise in political theater, national identity, return to lost values, etc.
These two events occured in the same week and in the same election season, but it is safe to say that they occupied two entirely different political worlds, and two entirely different national visions.