As Obama Heads to Middle East and Europe, Let's Talk About U.S. Imperialism
Obama’s Grand Tour: the American Idol-ing of Empire?
July 16, 2008
Just a week before Barack Obama’s highly anticipated first tour of Europe and the Middle East as presidential candidate, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked the Senator about the kinds of experiences that will inform his ability to occupy the most powerful foreign policy position on earth.
“…what is your first memory of a foreign policy event that shaped you, shaped your life?”, asked Zakaria. Obama invoked his childhood memories of Indonesia, where his mother worked for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. And he did so with the poise that will ultimately vanquish the manufactured image of him as the Islamic garb-wearing threat depicted in political cartoons. With facial expressions and body language that made him look like the embodiment of sensitive, flexible yet tough cosmopolitanism, a very pensive and presidential-sounding Obama told Zakaria that he later learned that Indonesia fell victim to “an enormous coup, the military coup in which we learned later that over half-a-million people had probably died.”
Most striking, Obama said, was how “the generals in Indonesia or members of Suharto’s (who led the coup and ruled Indonesia for over 30 years) family were living in lavish mansions, and the sense that government wasn’t always working for the people, but was working for insiders, - not that that didn’t happen in the United States,” he added, “but at least the sense that there was a civil society and rules of law that had to be abided by.” Obama’s interview previewed the kind glamour and intelligence will help CNN reach American Idol in the ratings game while also positioning him to compete in the Great Game of geopolitics.
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July 16, 2008
Just a week before Barack Obama’s highly anticipated first tour of Europe and the Middle East as presidential candidate, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked the Senator about the kinds of experiences that will inform his ability to occupy the most powerful foreign policy position on earth.
“…what is your first memory of a foreign policy event that shaped you, shaped your life?”, asked Zakaria. Obama invoked his childhood memories of Indonesia, where his mother worked for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. And he did so with the poise that will ultimately vanquish the manufactured image of him as the Islamic garb-wearing threat depicted in political cartoons. With facial expressions and body language that made him look like the embodiment of sensitive, flexible yet tough cosmopolitanism, a very pensive and presidential-sounding Obama told Zakaria that he later learned that Indonesia fell victim to “an enormous coup, the military coup in which we learned later that over half-a-million people had probably died.”
Most striking, Obama said, was how “the generals in Indonesia or members of Suharto’s (who led the coup and ruled Indonesia for over 30 years) family were living in lavish mansions, and the sense that government wasn’t always working for the people, but was working for insiders, - not that that didn’t happen in the United States,” he added, “but at least the sense that there was a civil society and rules of law that had to be abided by.” Obama’s interview previewed the kind glamour and intelligence will help CNN reach American Idol in the ratings game while also positioning him to compete in the Great Game of geopolitics.
--MORE--