KEEP DESPAIR ALIVE
LABASH, MATT
Casual KEEP DESPAIR ALIVE Some people think cults are creepy. But as a child in the seventies, I rather enjoyed them. Whether Jonestowners, the Children of God, or the Symbionese Liberation...
...I mean I don’t have that too often...
...While the inevitable Baracklash (think backlash) is now in full effect, even among fi ckle media supporters, I’d like to be among the fi rst to fuel the backlash against the backlash...
...MATT LABASH...
...I’m no Baracktard, though I do like the guy...
...Sometimes, the sex isn’t even subtext, as when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said after hearing an Obama speech, “My, I felt this thrill going up my leg...
...It would be like faulting Hillary Clinton for her best qualities— like her rapier wit, slender ankles, and personal warmth...
...I’m a tease, not a monster...
...Not issues, mind you...
...They wait in line for hours to pack agriplexes in the Midwest, acting like squealing tweens whose parents have dropped them off at a Hannah Montana concert...
...To go away...
...He has excellent posture, a Colgate smile, and in his trim black suits always looks like he’s off to some place cooler than a political rally, like to sit in with Cannonball Adderley...
...Obama inspires people to say embarrassing things, such as actress Halle Berry’s statement, “I’ll do whatever he says to do...
...They clap when he blows his nose...
...But I wouldn’t make him pay for my popcorn...
...His legions of moonie-eyed idolaters do have a knack for embarrassing themselves, and the rest of us...
...But Obama and I call it “post-partisanship...
...I came to consider these welcome entertainments...
...But he’s for standing over the rotting carcass of Hillary’s political ambitions, and so am I! Some might call it venal small-mindedness...
...Obama’s name has now achieved such ubiquity, it has caused the online magazine Slate to start its own Encyclopedia Baracktannica, minting new Barackisms like “Barackturne” (“a sleepy, elegant song consisting of Barack Obama’s voice accompanied by strings”) and “Baracklea” (“a spiralshaped cavity in the internal ear that registers only Barack Obama’s voice...
...He causes video vixens, like Obama Girl, to writhe around in Obama panties, cooing lyrics like You’re into border security / Let’s break this border between you and me...
...Back then, we didn’t have cable...
...On the strength of what...
...They sing his gauzy nostrums—Yes we can!—as though the words carried the weight of scripture, when they really sound less like a coherent political philosophy than something Jenny Craig affi nity-groupers would chant before the weekly weigh-in...
...I don’t carry Chris Matthewslike reservoirs of affection...
...Perhaps it’s that other creepy cult leaders, like Oprah Winfrey, have taken up their crosses and followed him...
...As if the Barackcess (think excess) hadn’t gone far enough, now comes “Barackula”—a 10-minute vampire musical in which a young Harvard Law School-attending Obama routs the undead, pulling off snappy dance numbers while singing lines like will be fi ne I’ll be back to normal / keep runnin’ cause those suckers won’t make me immortal...
...Well, a lot actually...
...Perhaps it’s that he refers to his supporters—Obamabots, Baracktards, Obamaphiliacs, whatever we’re supposed to call them—as “believers...
...Plus, I do support Obama on the issue...
...I’m no Pauline Kael, but I get symbolism...
...For Hillary is the one we’ve been waiting for...
...I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear...
...I’ve always regarded Obama as a bit slight for the hype, a garnish in search of an entr?e, a moment in search of momentousness...
...Personally, I’m now suffering from Obamaversion (avoiding people who endlessly make cutesy plays off Obama’s name...
...I believe the vampires are supposed to represent the special interests, politics as usual, and the Clintons...
...I’m against almost everything he stands for, including hope and change (I’m for despair and preserving the status quo...
...They shoot celebritystudded music videos, whose lyrics are direct lifts from Obama speeches...
...We’d go Dutch...
...Many are now charging that there is a new creepy cult leader on the loose, Barack Obama...
...If Obama and I were at the drive-in, I’d probably stop him short of second base, letting him snap my bra through my poodle sweater before I pushed him away so as not to ruin our friendship...
...But attacking him for the slavish support his charisma inspires seems a bit unfair...
...Whether Jonestowners, the Children of God, or the Symbionese Liberation Army, I always waited for the inevitable plot twist, when whatever had attracted the crazy cultists to each other in the fi rst place— the organic vegetables, the neo-Maoist teaching, the group sex—would devolve into the inevitable Kool-Aid suicide/abduction/ bank heist debacle...
Vol. 13 • March 2008 • No. 24
