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Obama’s Fables – Peter Suderman: “Young Obama isn’t Prometheus; he’s Aesop. He brought fables, not fire.”
An excerpt from Peter Suderman’s article at reason.com called, “Obama’s Failed Narrative”:
“When he decides to quit the high-powered, high-paying business
of corporate consulting for the low-paying, low-prestige world of
community activism, Obama writes that “with the benefit of
hindsight, I can construct a certain logic to my decisions, show
how becoming an organizer was part of a larger narrative.” Later,
when he leaves the Chicago housing project of Altgeld Gardens for
Harvard Law, he’s still trying to fill out an imagined story arc:
“I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail,”
he wrote, “knowledge that would have compromised me before coming
to Chicago but that I could now bring back to where it was needed,
back to Roseland, back to Altgeld; bring it back like Promethean
fire. That’s the story I had been telling myself.”But young Obama isn’t Prometheus; he’s Aesop. He brought fables,
not fire. He writes in hushed tones about the “sacred stories” of
the people he meets as a community organizer. It’s all part of his
character arc: Like in a third-act revelation of a cheesy Hollywood
screenplay, their stories are what help him find himself. Learning
the tales of their lives, he writes, “helped me bind my world
together…they gave me the sense of place and purpose I’d been
looking for.” This sentiment, which would follow him to the
presidency, combines Obama’s post-grad literary sensibility with a
youthful narcissism: The lives he encounters become vehicles for
his own self-fulfillment.”
2012-10-09 20:46:43
Source: http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2012/10/obamas-fables-peter-suderman-young.html
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