Ever since Barack Obama entered the Race for the White House, Christopher Hitchens has been exceedingly generous in dishing out free advice, first to Obama the candidate and later to Obama the sitting President. I've sensed a definite touch of white man's burden in the Popinjay's condescending tone towards the Cool Cat, so different from either the Spanish Inquisition attitude taken to Slick Willy or the obsequious and almost feudal reverence shown to the Decider.
On reading Hitch's Fighting Words pieces over the past 18 months, I come away with the distinct impression that he is attempting to play Svengali to Barack's Trilby, or, if you prefer something a bit less sinister, Henry Higgins to Barack's Eliza Doolittle. And on his form so far, I suspect it will only be a matter of time before we catch Christopher boasting that it was his gems of well-aimed advice to the candidate, not to mention the electorate, that got Barack elected. But while we're waiting for that historic moment, let's take a brief trip down memory lane.
Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade? And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson? Would we accept, if Obama's mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president? The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought.
One can't exactly say that Sen. Obama himself panders to questions of skin color. One of the best chapters of his charming autobiography describes the moment when his black Republican opponent in the Illinois Senate race—Alan Keyes—accused him of possessing insufficient negritude because he wasn't the descendant of slaves! Obama's decision to be light-hearted—and perhaps light-skinned—about this was a milestone in itself. But are we not in danger of emulating Keyes' insane mistake every time we bang on about the senator's pigmentation? If you wanted a "black" president or vice president so much, you could long ago have turned out en masse for Angela Davis—also the first woman to be on a national ticket—or for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. So, why didn't you? Could it have been the politics?
By March 24, in Blind Faith, we found Hitch actually admitting to giving Barack unsolicited advice and rebuking him for not distancing himself from his family pastor.
It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.
So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.
On May 5, Michelle Obama came under the spotlight in Are We Getting Two for One? Is Michelle Obama responsible for the Jeremiah Wright fiasco?. After Barack had bowed to pressure, or heeded Hitch's warning, and "cut the ties that bound him to his crackpot mentor", the dogged journalist decided to explore the reasons why Barack had been kneeling and singing in Wright's pews for so long in the first place:
I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama's 1985 thesis at Princeton University. Its title (rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus) is "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be "read" at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language. Anyway, at quite an early stage in the text, Michelle Obama announces that she's much influenced by the definition of black "separationism" offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. I remember poor Stokely Carmichael quite well. After a hideous series of political and personal fiascos, he fled to Africa, renamed himself Kwame Toure after two of West Africa's most repellently failed dictators, and then came briefly back to the United States before electing to die in exile. I last saw him as the warm-up speaker for Louis Farrakhan in Madison Square Garden in 1985, on the evening when Farrakhan made himself famous by warning Jews, "You can't say 'Never Again' to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you're there forever."
After applauding Barack's victory over Hilary Clinton and his deft support of "the surge" in the summer, Hitch was perplexed in September wondering Is Obama Another Dukakis? Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless?. This column is notable in that it shows him sending forth a veritable pyroclastic flow of gratuitous advice for the Obama camp while simultaneously hinting at a personal preference for a Republican victory:
I ran into a rather clever Republican operative at the airport last week, who pointed out to me that this ought by rights to be a Democratic Party year across the board, from the White House to the Congress to the gubernatorial races. But there was a crucial energy leak, and it came from the very top. More people doubted Obama's qualifications for the presidency in September than had told the pollsters they had doubted these credentials in July. "So what he ought to do," smiled this man, "is spend his time closing that gap and less time attacking McCain." Obama's party hacks, increasingly white and even green about the gills, are telling him to do the opposite. I suppose this could even mean that Sarah Palin, down the road, will end up holding the door open for Hillary Clinton. Such joy!
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
”
