Palin, Obama And The Problem of His Masculinity

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Thursday October 30, 2008 · 3:55 PM PDT

2008/10/30 · 15:55

Barak Obama has a real problem. He needs to start fighting a ferocious battle against Sarah Palin now. With her growing incendiary remarks and devotion to destroying him, he's got to fight back. But she looks like a hockey mom, a soccer mom and a mom you would see walking the aisles of Wal-Mart. Any assault is going to look like abuse, despite the fact that she and John McCain taunt him daily.

She's also a girl-next-door white woman. If Obama gets too vicious with her, you'll hear the outrage and you'll hear what's felt but not voiced: just look at this angry black man attacking one of us. In attacking her, he's attacking me.

They'll brand him as another Jeremiah Wright. Obama is in the predicament every black man faces in this country: how to gauge the desires of whites, how not to offend whites in a way that's perceived as the stereotypical idea that deep down inside every black man, even the charming ones, lies a seething, hate-filled, resentful creature.

Obama came to power precisely because as one who satisfied white criteria, he became a salvific and redemptive hero who existed to appease the conscience of whites: I am not a racist.White women voters will feel violated.

Obama staved this off by, in one respect, threatening to fire anyone on his campaign staff who made an issue of Palin's 17 year old daughter's (Bristol) pregnancy. He feared that his daughters would be dragged into the campaign and he did not want that. But he ought to have made an issue of it. These Pentecostal Evangelicals are rotten hypocrites.

Can you imagine poor Chelsea Clinton had she been in that situation at seventeen?

Obama is in the unfortunate position of tapering his masculine authority just to the level where it won't offend whites. This is perhaps why this man-boy does not sound convincing even when he musters anger. He sounds contrived and unconvincing, unlike, say, when he's talking about hopes and dreams. But back to Palin. How does he take her on aggressively without frightening the sensibilities of the white women he's trying to win over?
Thoughts, ideas? I invite you to comment.

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