http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c6ac05ce-3b9b-4040-94f0-de31c849692cCool We Can Believe In by Paul Beatty
How Obama is like Jackie Robinson, (early) Al Pacino, and the Fonz, or: Why Geraldine Ferraro is so wrong.
Post Date Thursday, March 14, 2008
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It's a jazz man equipoise that has served him well. When the Clintons accused Obama of being a proponent of Ronald Reagan's ideas and of falsifying his anti-war stance, it was his coolness under fire that allowed his being quoted out of context to become an opportunity for him to recontextualize his ideology and leadership style. It's a cool that permits him to laugh off the slight of a debate moderator asking about Bill Clinton's being the first black president.
"I would have to investigate more Bill's dancing abilities ... before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother," Obama responded.
I finally bought into the hype. "That was cool." I thought. "I bet dude knows how many chambers there are in the Wu Tang."
Nobody--not Sharpton, not Bill Bradley, not Muskie, not Humphrey, not Chisolm, not one of his generation's cool presidential forebears--has ever contemplated using dancing ability as a measuring stick for any damn thing. For me, it was the equivalent to Hillary's New Hampshire diner blues--a sympathetic peek underneath the pancake make-up they both wear incessantly.
It's not so much Barack's blackness that makes him hard to attack so much as it is his unaffected cool, because the state of being f'able is ineffable. How can you find the words to attack something that there are no words for?
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Yet isn't the hero always at his coolest when the outcome is in doubt? When times are toughest and knuckleheads like me are mistaking your passivity for cowardice? Right now Obama is Jackie Robinson circa 1947, standing on third, working the base path, plotting to steal home plate while feigning dumbfoundedness to the slurs hurled from the grandstand and the press box, from opponents and supposed teammates. He's Fonzi facing the Malachi brothers after they've put Pinky Tuscadero out of commission with the infamous Malachi Crunch. He's Toshiro Mifune, hand over the bullet hole in his belly, charging the bandit leader with one last desperate sword thrust. He's Mary J. Blige all day everyday.
Win, lose or dream ticket draw, his coolness will prevail. And if nothing else, it will shame Will Smith from running in 2016.
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