mconn
10-25-2006, 03:40 PM
So I'm just settling back down into my Hume-watching seat (which is generally lying prone on the carpet drinking a stiff martini through a Crazy Straw) -- having previously leapt to my feet in hilarity when Brit Hume accidentally introduced Mara Liasson as "Mort Kondrake" (I am too easily amused) -- when she said something that would have rocked me back on my heels if they hadn't been pointed ceilingwards.
Talking about Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, jr. (D-IL, 100%), Mara managed to blurt out that he had "a compelling life story."
After I ceased choking and extracted the Crazy Straw from my larynx, I ran to my infallible source, Wikipedia, to see whether there were some extraordinary event in Obama's brief life so far (he's younger than I, another reason he cannot be allowed to win the presidency).
I confess, I was surpised at what an adventurous, danger-filled life he lead, the things those oyster-eyes of his have seen. I learned a great deal I had never known about Obama. I think that after you hear about his disadvantaged upbringing and his sorrows, that you, too, will wish we could give him some sort of prize... other than the presidency, of course, since he's way too liberal and has virtually no experience. And there's that age thing, but I think I already covered that.
Obama was born in war-ravaged Honolulu in 1961 (what did I tell you?) His father was a Harvard economist, while his mother was an anthropologist from Kansas; yet despite this deprivation, Obama has gone on to be one of the most celebrated men of recent history.
He spent his formative years learning, teaching, and defending his ancestral manse from marauding members of the haole tribe, who frequently raided to capture slaves for the Dole Pineapple plantation -- which still grew pineapples, rather the tourists, in those days of yore.
During this period, Obama was described by many as the mainstay of the community, the one to whom everyone turned for advice on minimum wage, military redeployment, and animal husbandry. But then, at age two, tragedy struck: Obama's parents divorced. When Obama was six, his mother packed him off to the jungles of Indonesia, where he excelled in the simple but effective guerilla tactics that would later serve him so well as a statesman.
Rescued at age 10, when his mother returned to sanity and to Hawaii -- deadly though it may be, he still called it home -- he enrolled in the fifth grade.
We skip seven years, thankfully. I don't know if my heartstrings can take much more of this. When next we intersect the Great Man, he has graduated high school and enrolled in a junior college in Los Angeles. But he never forgot his deep, ethinic roots. Many years after leaving, he said:
The irony is that my decision to work in politics, and to pursue such a career in a big Mainland city, in some sense grows out of my Hawaiian upbringing, and the ideal that Hawaii still represents in my mind.
King Kamehameha himself would have been proud of the Kenyan-Kansan-American Obama, spiritual heir to the island majesty.
But such genius could never be satisfied by the cramped confines of Occidental College. Bursting forth, like Minerva from the brow of Zeus -- or was that Athena from the brow of Cicero? -- Obama and his entourage transferred base of operations to the world-renowned Columbia University in New York City (Los Angeles not having been quite liberal enough).
Obama was a pioneer in more ways than two: he took a daring combination major of both political science and international relations, demonstrating the finely honed ability to juggle many more balls than most men can ever dream of handling. I should rephrase that, but I'm under a deadline here.
Surprisingly, considering the manifold difficulties and dangers faced first by the boy, then the man, Obama graduated with a B.A. But he was not content to rush immediately to Harvard Law, as so many other lesser men have done. Nay, Obama knew that the first duty of any man who has clawed his way out of the Honolulu ghetto was to give back to the community.
Thus, rather than yield to his own selfish desires, Obama gave selflessly for a year at Business International Corporation, followed by a four-year stint as a missionary and freedom rider in late 1980s Chicago.
Then he went to Harvard. But you knew we were getting there eventually, didn't you? While at the world's greatest and most liberal law school, Obama became a pioneer once again, becoming the very first ever half-African, half-Kansan, who had grown up in Hawaii, elected president of Harvard Law Review. This is an inspiring "first" that no one can take away from him, no matter what else may happen in his life.
Rounding out this utterly compelling drama of his days before becoming a public servant, when he would devote the rest of his life to generously helping constituents (as all politicans do, that noble breed), I can do no better than simply to quote the great Wikipedia itself, documenting Obama's sweep from triumph to triumph:
On returning to Chicago, Obama supported a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill and Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.
I truly must doff my chapeau and hold it over my heart. It is rare to be touched by such greatness, even in a country as wide and thick as ours.
But Barack Hussein Obama did not rest on his laurels nor sit down on his well-padded plaudits. Rather, he busted his accolades to rise to the high ranks of the state legislature. Alas, Obama was unaware that his life, hitherto untouched by calamity (excepf for his parents' divorce, several screens ago), was about to come crashing down around his well-developed earmarks.
In a devastating blow in 2000, Barack Hussein Obama was informed that he had lost the primary for the Democratic nomination to the United States House of Representatives. His career in ruins, his future shattered, Obama hit the nadir of his life. But it was there, in such adversity, that he showed the true superiority that has marked him as Fate's special star since those bitter, threat-filled days in Honolulu.
Refusing to accept failure, he came back... and in a victory described as "brilliant" by many observers, Obama managed to shepherd a law through the Illinois State Senate that made it mandatory for health insurers to cover routine mammograms. Is there any wonder that such a man should be considered presidential timber?
But as the capstone of his life -- so far! -- he ran for liberal, Democratic senator in a liberal, Democratic state to replace the conservative, Republican Peter Fitzgerald; thus did Obama avenge the shameful evil that Fitzgerald committed by defeating one of the grand dames of American politics, former Sen. Carol Mosley-Braun, in an election that was widely thought to have been corrupt, in that the Chicago dead were deliberately disenfranchised.
In the midst of Obama's historic campaign -- where he achieved yet another pioneering goal, becoming the very first descendent of a Wichita native, and whose middle name happened to be the same as a famous tyrant, ever to be elected senator from Illinois -- Obama was tapped to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention... which was justly famous as the only political convention in modern American history not to give the party's nominee any "bump" whatsoever. But surely that cannot be laid a the doorstop of the keynote speaker!
And here comes Mr. Obama now, having served long in the Senate without even a single investigation, scandal, or night spent in detox to blot his record. Considering his mixed "salt" and "pepper" heritage, which he loses no opportunity to discuss, Obama truly is a man for all seasons.
And I'm sure it is now as clear as kristol what Mara Liasson meant by her understated description of the life of Barack Hussein Obama, with all the drama of a storybook, as simply "compelling."
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2006, at the time of 05:41 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this hissing: http://biglizards.net/mt32/tiddledywink.cgi/1388
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Obama Drama:
» A Man for all Seasons from Joe's Dartblog
Dafydd ab-Hugh is less than wooed by Barack Obama's life story.... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 06:51 AM
» A couple of followups from Wizbang
I just wanted to put up some updates on some other pieces I put up today. First up, on my discussion of Barack Obama, it turns out I beat Dafydd Ab Hugh to the punch -- but while mine was... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 03:53 PM
» Obama-Rama from Blue Crab Boulevard
Barack Obama may well be a very nice man and an honest politician from Illinois. I have lived in that state and understand the politics there far too well to comment any further on that. But aside from the fact that his name would actually no... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 07:02 PM
» Bye-bye, Obama! from Wizbang Politics
In what must be the shortest-lived status as "frontrunner" in political history, Barack Obama just crashed and burned in his feint towards the White House. As any Presidential aspirant worth his Secret Service protection knows, if you can't run with... [Read More]
Talking about Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, jr. (D-IL, 100%), Mara managed to blurt out that he had "a compelling life story."
After I ceased choking and extracted the Crazy Straw from my larynx, I ran to my infallible source, Wikipedia, to see whether there were some extraordinary event in Obama's brief life so far (he's younger than I, another reason he cannot be allowed to win the presidency).
I confess, I was surpised at what an adventurous, danger-filled life he lead, the things those oyster-eyes of his have seen. I learned a great deal I had never known about Obama. I think that after you hear about his disadvantaged upbringing and his sorrows, that you, too, will wish we could give him some sort of prize... other than the presidency, of course, since he's way too liberal and has virtually no experience. And there's that age thing, but I think I already covered that.
Obama was born in war-ravaged Honolulu in 1961 (what did I tell you?) His father was a Harvard economist, while his mother was an anthropologist from Kansas; yet despite this deprivation, Obama has gone on to be one of the most celebrated men of recent history.
He spent his formative years learning, teaching, and defending his ancestral manse from marauding members of the haole tribe, who frequently raided to capture slaves for the Dole Pineapple plantation -- which still grew pineapples, rather the tourists, in those days of yore.
During this period, Obama was described by many as the mainstay of the community, the one to whom everyone turned for advice on minimum wage, military redeployment, and animal husbandry. But then, at age two, tragedy struck: Obama's parents divorced. When Obama was six, his mother packed him off to the jungles of Indonesia, where he excelled in the simple but effective guerilla tactics that would later serve him so well as a statesman.
Rescued at age 10, when his mother returned to sanity and to Hawaii -- deadly though it may be, he still called it home -- he enrolled in the fifth grade.
We skip seven years, thankfully. I don't know if my heartstrings can take much more of this. When next we intersect the Great Man, he has graduated high school and enrolled in a junior college in Los Angeles. But he never forgot his deep, ethinic roots. Many years after leaving, he said:
The irony is that my decision to work in politics, and to pursue such a career in a big Mainland city, in some sense grows out of my Hawaiian upbringing, and the ideal that Hawaii still represents in my mind.
King Kamehameha himself would have been proud of the Kenyan-Kansan-American Obama, spiritual heir to the island majesty.
But such genius could never be satisfied by the cramped confines of Occidental College. Bursting forth, like Minerva from the brow of Zeus -- or was that Athena from the brow of Cicero? -- Obama and his entourage transferred base of operations to the world-renowned Columbia University in New York City (Los Angeles not having been quite liberal enough).
Obama was a pioneer in more ways than two: he took a daring combination major of both political science and international relations, demonstrating the finely honed ability to juggle many more balls than most men can ever dream of handling. I should rephrase that, but I'm under a deadline here.
Surprisingly, considering the manifold difficulties and dangers faced first by the boy, then the man, Obama graduated with a B.A. But he was not content to rush immediately to Harvard Law, as so many other lesser men have done. Nay, Obama knew that the first duty of any man who has clawed his way out of the Honolulu ghetto was to give back to the community.
Thus, rather than yield to his own selfish desires, Obama gave selflessly for a year at Business International Corporation, followed by a four-year stint as a missionary and freedom rider in late 1980s Chicago.
Then he went to Harvard. But you knew we were getting there eventually, didn't you? While at the world's greatest and most liberal law school, Obama became a pioneer once again, becoming the very first ever half-African, half-Kansan, who had grown up in Hawaii, elected president of Harvard Law Review. This is an inspiring "first" that no one can take away from him, no matter what else may happen in his life.
Rounding out this utterly compelling drama of his days before becoming a public servant, when he would devote the rest of his life to generously helping constituents (as all politicans do, that noble breed), I can do no better than simply to quote the great Wikipedia itself, documenting Obama's sweep from triumph to triumph:
On returning to Chicago, Obama supported a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill and Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.
I truly must doff my chapeau and hold it over my heart. It is rare to be touched by such greatness, even in a country as wide and thick as ours.
But Barack Hussein Obama did not rest on his laurels nor sit down on his well-padded plaudits. Rather, he busted his accolades to rise to the high ranks of the state legislature. Alas, Obama was unaware that his life, hitherto untouched by calamity (excepf for his parents' divorce, several screens ago), was about to come crashing down around his well-developed earmarks.
In a devastating blow in 2000, Barack Hussein Obama was informed that he had lost the primary for the Democratic nomination to the United States House of Representatives. His career in ruins, his future shattered, Obama hit the nadir of his life. But it was there, in such adversity, that he showed the true superiority that has marked him as Fate's special star since those bitter, threat-filled days in Honolulu.
Refusing to accept failure, he came back... and in a victory described as "brilliant" by many observers, Obama managed to shepherd a law through the Illinois State Senate that made it mandatory for health insurers to cover routine mammograms. Is there any wonder that such a man should be considered presidential timber?
But as the capstone of his life -- so far! -- he ran for liberal, Democratic senator in a liberal, Democratic state to replace the conservative, Republican Peter Fitzgerald; thus did Obama avenge the shameful evil that Fitzgerald committed by defeating one of the grand dames of American politics, former Sen. Carol Mosley-Braun, in an election that was widely thought to have been corrupt, in that the Chicago dead were deliberately disenfranchised.
In the midst of Obama's historic campaign -- where he achieved yet another pioneering goal, becoming the very first descendent of a Wichita native, and whose middle name happened to be the same as a famous tyrant, ever to be elected senator from Illinois -- Obama was tapped to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention... which was justly famous as the only political convention in modern American history not to give the party's nominee any "bump" whatsoever. But surely that cannot be laid a the doorstop of the keynote speaker!
And here comes Mr. Obama now, having served long in the Senate without even a single investigation, scandal, or night spent in detox to blot his record. Considering his mixed "salt" and "pepper" heritage, which he loses no opportunity to discuss, Obama truly is a man for all seasons.
And I'm sure it is now as clear as kristol what Mara Liasson meant by her understated description of the life of Barack Hussein Obama, with all the drama of a storybook, as simply "compelling."
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 24, 2006, at the time of 05:41 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this hissing: http://biglizards.net/mt32/tiddledywink.cgi/1388
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Obama Drama:
» A Man for all Seasons from Joe's Dartblog
Dafydd ab-Hugh is less than wooed by Barack Obama's life story.... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 06:51 AM
» A couple of followups from Wizbang
I just wanted to put up some updates on some other pieces I put up today. First up, on my discussion of Barack Obama, it turns out I beat Dafydd Ab Hugh to the punch -- but while mine was... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 03:53 PM
» Obama-Rama from Blue Crab Boulevard
Barack Obama may well be a very nice man and an honest politician from Illinois. I have lived in that state and understand the politics there far too well to comment any further on that. But aside from the fact that his name would actually no... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2006 07:02 PM
» Bye-bye, Obama! from Wizbang Politics
In what must be the shortest-lived status as "frontrunner" in political history, Barack Obama just crashed and burned in his feint towards the White House. As any Presidential aspirant worth his Secret Service protection knows, if you can't run with... [Read More]