[reprinted from WOID: a journal of visual language]
Tom DeLay, you don't want to go there. I don't mean going to jail, although that's likely the there where you're going next. I mean: you don't want to go where you're going when you say on some right-wing talk show "that unless he proves me wrong, [Obama] is a Marxist."
Tom, do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into? Hours spent over coffee, in the classrooms, at the bar, trying to argue that Obama couldn't be a true Marxist because he's obviously misread the "Fetish-Character of Merchandise" as "Commodity Fetishism?" Does Obama agree with Althusser's position that the later Marx represents an epistemological break with the earlier Marx, and if so, was Althusser wrong? I don't think you're ready for this, Tom: I know there's lots of free time in jail, but it's often hard to get the books you need, never mind the constant interruptions that make it hard to sit down with a good book - that make it hard to sit down at all.
Like your old friend Richard ("I am not a crook!") Nixon, I'm sure you know one can't prove a negative; Obama can't prove he's not a Marxist, except by trying to prove to you he is a Marxist, and failing. Unfortunately, the only people I know who go around asking others to prove they are Marxists are the people who think they're qualified to be Marxists to begin with, and to have Obama prove he's not a Marxist you'd have to prove you are one.
I don't want to discourage you, Tom: if you're secretly yearning to come out as a Marxist and Obama's your excuse, I say go for it! But it's a pretty roundabout way of doing it, like a Family-Values Republican getting himself sent to jail in order to bring out his true self. And besides, the rest of your conversation on the talk-show suggests you've got a long way to go:
HOST: ...It's as if this were a guy who's desperately trying to cover up what seems to be the kind of old school Marxist, radical liberal failed ideology.
DELAY: Absolutely.
Absolutely what? Which part of "old school," "radical," failed," or "ideology" best defines a true Marxist, Tom, and why? Is Stalinism the logical outcome of a Weberian liberal bureaucracy? Can Marxism properly be called an ideology? Can you tell me, Tom? Or do you need time to think?