Ya think?
An Economy Built to Stall: With a third slowdown in three years, maybe the problem is the policies.
Yes, but the root of the problem is a president who holds office only because of a stem-to-stern united effort by the liberal media to put him there. Obama traded on being our First Black President, but that was never the uniquely important thing about him. We are now discovering that the true breakthrough Obama represents is not his race, but that he is our first post-modern president.
Post-modernism sees our experience of reality as increasingly being a construction based on media images. In our era, "objective" reality is progressively overwhelmed and superseded by versions of reality portrayed in media images. The more that media images come into close coordination and agreement, the more the portrayals and associated narratives found there are accepted as "true." (How could ABC, NPR, CBS, NYT, WaPo, etc. etc. etc. all be wrong?) Traditional categories of analysis -- such as judgments of true or false based on independent empirical evidence -- are replaced by "negotiations" to find consensus about the "truth" of images and the narratives associated with them.
In two (!) autobiographies, Barack Obama (and some helpers, like radical leftist Bill Ayers) presented a carefully constructed narrative as his "life story." The story was -- and was no doubt designed to be -- highly attractive to the liberal media, which quickly stamped it as a "true" account. The story, as a consensus media image, then became the man. Information that might challenge the image, and the constructed reality it now represented, was ignored or explained away.
For example, when the hateful spewings of Rev. Wright -- the pastor of Obama's church, who had married him and Michelle, and who had baptized their children -- became known, the media quickly accepted Obama's claim that he had sat in the pastor's pew for 20 years without ever hearing what Wright was saying. In order to preserve the consensus image of the constructed Obama, the most plausible objective history -- that Obama heard it all and never objected -- had to be negotiated out of the media narrative.
Obama's claim of ignorance about Wright's preaching was preposterous as objective truth, but it was "true" in terms of its consistency with Obama's consensus media image as The One who offered post-racial, post-class Hope and Change for a divided nation. And it was that construction which was finally salvaged as the "true" Obama. The negotiation was difficult, and the salvaging operation was a close call, but the media image of Obama was elected, and we had our first Post-Modern President.
Fortunately for the country, but unfortunately for the Obama presidency, business decision-makers and economic markets do not operate by the "truths" of post-modernist clap-trap. Objective facts are destroying Obama's media narrative, and I really don't see how those facts can be negotiated away, no matter how hard the media try to do that. At some point most will throw in the towel, and then Obama will be truly finished. Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT this morning is highly interesting in that light.
Byron
Yes, but the root of the problem is a president who holds office only because of a stem-to-stern united effort by the liberal media to put him there. Obama traded on being our First Black President, but that was never the uniquely important thing about him. We are now discovering that the true breakthrough Obama represents is not his race, but that he is our first post-modern president.
Post-modernism sees our experience of reality as increasingly being a construction based on media images. In our era, "objective" reality is progressively overwhelmed and superseded by versions of reality portrayed in media images. The more that media images come into close coordination and agreement, the more the portrayals and associated narratives found there are accepted as "true." (How could ABC, NPR, CBS, NYT, WaPo, etc. etc. etc. all be wrong?) Traditional categories of analysis -- such as judgments of true or false based on independent empirical evidence -- are replaced by "negotiations" to find consensus about the "truth" of images and the narratives associated with them.
In two (!) autobiographies, Barack Obama (and some helpers, like radical leftist Bill Ayers) presented a carefully constructed narrative as his "life story." The story was -- and was no doubt designed to be -- highly attractive to the liberal media, which quickly stamped it as a "true" account. The story, as a consensus media image, then became the man. Information that might challenge the image, and the constructed reality it now represented, was ignored or explained away.
For example, when the hateful spewings of Rev. Wright -- the pastor of Obama's church, who had married him and Michelle, and who had baptized their children -- became known, the media quickly accepted Obama's claim that he had sat in the pastor's pew for 20 years without ever hearing what Wright was saying. In order to preserve the consensus image of the constructed Obama, the most plausible objective history -- that Obama heard it all and never objected -- had to be negotiated out of the media narrative.
Obama's claim of ignorance about Wright's preaching was preposterous as objective truth, but it was "true" in terms of its consistency with Obama's consensus media image as The One who offered post-racial, post-class Hope and Change for a divided nation. And it was that construction which was finally salvaged as the "true" Obama. The negotiation was difficult, and the salvaging operation was a close call, but the media image of Obama was elected, and we had our first Post-Modern President.
Fortunately for the country, but unfortunately for the Obama presidency, business decision-makers and economic markets do not operate by the "truths" of post-modernist clap-trap. Objective facts are destroying Obama's media narrative, and I really don't see how those facts can be negotiated away, no matter how hard the media try to do that. At some point most will throw in the towel, and then Obama will be truly finished. Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT this morning is highly interesting in that light.
Byron
posted by Byron | Sunday, June 03, 2012
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