It’s no secret that CC Alum and Illinois Senator Barack Obama isn’t too eager to show his face at 116th and Broadway. Far be it for Fair Alma to stand for such disloyalty. Her revenge this weekend was as swift as it was quietly spectacular–literary even, based as it is on the ironic fact that the farther Obama gets from Morningside Heights, the closer it seems to get to him.
This weekend’s news cycle was marked by two interrelated setbacks for the Obama campaign, one brought on by an overzealous newsmedia, the other by the candidate’s astounding lack of common sense. The first was the LA Times’ irresponsible piece on the Obamas’ “connection” to pro-Palestinian academics and activists, an article based more on a vulturous (and not to mention culturally and politically insensitive) concept of guilt-by-association than on the candidate’s actual policy positions or personal beliefs. The second was Obama’s pop-psychoanalysis of small-town America, an unfathomably insulting statement on par with Howard Dean’s infamous “Confederate flag” gaffe back in 2003.
On the day “bittergate” broke, the National Review became the first right-wing publication to use the Khalidi smear as an argument against Obama’s candidacy (lest we forget, the first mainstream pub to employ it was the Huffington Post. Go figure.). Interestingly, the article did not try to argue that Obamawas himself an America-hater or a hardcore Palestinian nationalist–only that his friendship with Khalidi had to be contextualized within the candidate’s larger affinity for the academic left.
Odd as it is to criticize a former law professor for being friends with other professors (shocking, right?), the article is propogating a politically disasterous image of Obama–namely, one that has him surrounded by people who couldn’t be more out of step with flyover-state America. After Friday’s comments, it will be hard to argue that this is coincidental or totally meaningless: Obamathe armchair American studies professor can’t coexist with Obama the left-wing populist warrior, for reasons that should be fairly obvious to anyone who goes to this institution. Columbia isn’tAmerica. And the more out of touch Obama seems, the more his “connections” to the academic left will hurt him–regardless of whether he has The Iron Cage sitting on his bookshelf.
Disconcerting to any self-respecting academic is the fact that the these kinds of attacks will be fed by the popular notion that the ivory tower is irreconcilably at odds with the greater society. If Obama’s “elitism” turns into a leading character issue (which it will–trust me), it will be a sad commentary on the disjuncture between critics of modern American life and the very people at which their critiques are aimed. But regardless of the dynamics underlying the elitism tag, thesis abstract-worthy comments like Obama’s certainly don’t help things–not for the candidate, and not for the well-meaning left-wingers who think his comments this past Friday were dead-on.