Yo dawg, I herd you like pop culture, so I put some pop culture in your pop culture so your brain can fucking explode from all the popular you’ve cultured.
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“The Nevermind baby works for the Obama poster guy” sur Kottke (May 5th, 2010) Pour bien saisir la référence à “yo dawg” et comprendre le bon mot de Jason Kottke, un petit tour sur Know Your Meme s’impose. Pour rester avec Kottke dans la logique des poupées gigognes, un de ses derniers tweets dans lequel il parle de son fils Ollie qui va bientôt avoir 3 ans : |
After one short year, Obama’s “hope” motto seems to have slowly morphed into “please go fuck yourself I hate this job you are all assholes.” Not nearly as catchy.
(via deleteyourself)
The way Obama connects to people is the opposite of a Clinton, a Bush, or a Ronald Reagan. Those presidents were all relaters. They bonded with people based on common feelings, experiences, and interests. Reagan did this best through the medium of television. Bush did it best in person and not so well through television. Clinton could do it blindfolded and hanging upside down. But for all three, connecting emotionally was part and parcel of their political skill. As a result, people tended to love them or hate them, sometimes in succession, but without much neutral ground in between. Obama’s coolness and detachment put him in a different category of president that includes Lincoln (on the positive side) and Jimmy Carter (on the negative). His relationship with the world is primarily rational and analytical rather than intuitive or emotional. As he acknowledged in his interview with George Stephanopoulos the day after Scott Brown’s victory, his tendency to focus on substance can make him seem remote and technocratic. So while many people continue to deeply admire him, few come away from any encounter feeling closer to him. He is not warm, he is not loyal, he is not deeply involved with others. His most fervent enthusiasts tend to express love for the ideas he embodies and represents—America transcending its racial history, a fairer and more unified society, rationality, wise decision-making, and so forth—as opposed to for the man himself.
Even this die-hard Internet evangelist acknowledges that the web’s role can sometimes be overstated, or at least misconstrued. The truth is that the Obama campaign was a triumph of integration more than technological innovation. It was the wildly successful marriage of time-tested political strategies and tactics, executed with acumen and discipline, seamlessly combined with cutting-edge technology and tied together with an empowering grassroots message. With a brilliant candidate at the helm. That, in itself, was innovative.
Plouffe and the rest of Obama’s leadership team, wasn’t really interested in grassroots empowerment. Instead, they think they’ve invented a 21st century version of list-building, and to some degree they’re right. (It’s for that reason that I think of the Obama campaign as the first 21st century top-down campaign, while McCain’s was the last 20th century top-down version). For Plouffe, the gigantic Obama email list, its millions of donors and its vibrant online social network were essentially a new kind of top-down broadcast system, one even better than the old TV-dominated system.
Obama baffles observers, I suspect, because he’s an ideologue and a pragmatist all at once. He’s a doctrinaire liberal who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf. He has the policy preferences of a progressive blogger, but the governing style of a seasoned Beltway wheeler-dealer. This is a puzzling combination, for many, because we expect our politicians’ principles to align more neatly with their approach to governing. Our deal-making Machiavels are supposed to be self-conscious “centrists” (think Ben Nelson or Arlen Specter). Our ideological liberals and conservatives are supposed to be more concerned with being right than with being ruthlessly effective. It’s also puzzling because Obama promised exactly the opposite approach while running for the presidency. He campaigned as a postpartisan healer who would change the cynical ways of Washington — as a foe of both back-room deals and ideology-as-usual. But he’s governed as a conventional liberal who believes in the existing system, knows how to work it and accepts the limitations it imposes on him.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us. But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their fundamental faith in human progress — that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey. For if we lose that faith — if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace — then we lose what’s best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass. […] We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
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Allocution de Barack Obama lors de la remise de son prix Nobel de la paix à Oslo (December 10th, 2009) (et des extraits en français sur le site du Monde) Encore une brillante démonstration de la capacité de l’actuel président des Etats-Unis à embrasser la complexité et l’ambivalence du réel et à l’exprimer avec une économie de mots et un sens de la clarté que je trouve proprement remarquable. Ce qui est frappant chez lui, c’est qu’il ne contourne pas l’obstacle, il ne cherche pas à biaiser ou à embrouiller comme tant de mauvais politiciens, mais à l’instar des meilleurs hommes politiques, il aborde bille en tête le sujet brûlant, dont tout le monde bruisse, en l’occurrence quand il déclare d’entrée de jeu : But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars Puis il donne du sens en recourant à la nuance et à l’équilibre : There’s no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time. Cette attitude satisfait doublement son auditoire : non seulement se sent-il traité avec respect - l’orateur n’a pas cherché à l’entourlouper -, mais avec égard puisque l’orateur explique, détaille, argumente avec mesure et intelligence pour dissiper l’incompréhension initiale et remporter la conviction. Le 9 novembre 2008, dans le New York Times, Nicolas D. Kristof remarquait : Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn’t condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level. Dans un article du New Yorker, George Packer cite un ancien conseiller de Bill Clinton qui explique cette appétence pour la complexité par l’histoire même d’Obama :
Au fond ce qui est vraiment exceptionnel chez Barack Obama, ce n’est pas tant son destin pourtant à tous égards singulier, a fortiori quand on le ramène à celui de ses prédécesseurs immédiats, mais c’est sa conscience aiguë des leçons qu’il convient d’en tirer et les trésors de pédagogie qu’il déploie pour promouvoir le dialogue entre les peuples ou expliquer la complexité du monde. |
Il faut se demander ce qu’il y a de cette femme indépendante, courageuse et pleine d’une autorité naturelle dans l’obamanie qui s’est emparée du monde entier durant les élections américaines. La nouveauté que représente Obama réside peut-être moins dans sa peau noire que dans sa capacité profonde à comprendre et à concilier les contraires, que seul peut avoir un homme qui a accepté le modèle et l’autorité d’une femme. Obama est issu d’une génération nouvelle parce qu’il est le fils d’une femme intellectuellement compétente, parce qu’il peut prendre pour modèle sa mère et non son père, parce qu’il est imprégné de valeurs féminines de tolérance et de communion. Obama est le produit de cette femme, il est sa plus grande réussite. Certes, durant la campagne électorale, il valait mieux laisser le souvenir de Stanley Ann à l’écart des feux de la rampe, et raconter l’histoire du petit garçon noir élevé par ses grands-parents dans le Kansas. Mais à présent qu’Obama est président, le moment est enfin venu de rendre hommage à celle qui a inventé ce fils parfait, à celle qui en a pris soin et l’a élevé pour en faire l’icône du monde qui viendra, et qu’elle ne verra pas.