(Cross-prosed from Obamaism.org)
While I like seeing people support Obama, I was flabbergasted by reading Alice Walker's article in the Guardian yesterday, What our country desperately needs is a leader who loves us: Americans have been treated with contempt for so long that we have become inured to our own society's suffering,
...This photograph made me weep; not only because I love Fidel and the Cuban people, but also because I was envious.
(more madness below)
However poor the Cubans might be, I realised, they cared about each other and they had a leader who loved them. A leader who loved them. Imagine. A leader not afraid to be out in the streets with them, a leader not ashamed to show himself as troubled and humbled as they were. A leader who would not leave them to wonder and worry alone, but would stand with them, walk with them, celebrate with them - whatever the parade might be.
This is what I want for our country, more than anything. I want a leader who can love us. ...
...If we were loved there would be a doctor free of charge, on every block, with time to listen to us. Visiting our schools, I see no one has seriously thought about teaching Americans what to eat, just as no one at the national helm insists that we take sex education seriously and begin to unencumber our planet of the projected hordes (Earth's view) of coming generations She can no longer tolerate. ...
Alice, did Karl Rove pay you to write this?
Because although there are some moderately worthy things elsewhere in the article, the portions above, and other parts, are so deranged, in substance, style, or both, that they look like a bad Saturday Night Live parody of dippy Hollywood/New York cultural elitists who think foreign tyrants like Castro ("now retired", but still...) are cool...and that Barack Obama should be like that!!! (I'm thinking of the "sarcastic" voiceover guy, from last night's SNL parody of McCain ads, saying, "Alice Walker, you are soooooo sane and sensible! Obama must be proud of your support!!")
The broader lesson is that when supporting Obama, or urging any celebrities (or others) you know, it might be good to have solid reasons, e.g., that he was against the war in Iraq before it started, or that he doesn't have "Deranged Deregulator" Phil Gramm as an advisor or best bud, or that he wants universal health care (not for everyone in the universe, pace the SNL skit), etc.: having solid reasons sure beats saying that "We need Castrobama to love us and kiss us on our ouchie boo boos" etc. Even if mentally AWOL AW wouldn't agree.
I remember an old National Review review saying about some of Walker's poetry that she was the worst poet in the English language. I'm not sure I'd go that far about either her poetry or her prose; but seeing that one significant part of "The Color Purple" was when Shug teaches Celie how to, uh, "play with herself", it seems that Alice Walker is doing something close to the same activity by writing her insane purple-prosed paean to Obama (who is not specifically named in the article, thank goodness; but it's clear she's talking about him). Although I will not go on to say that Walker is not only Walker but also something else with the letters w, a, k, e, and r (plus one other letter) that some of the enlightened posters at sites like Daily Kos use as an insult word; I think she's inflicted enough suffering on herself already.