ARMCHAIR CONSULTANT: What Obama really has to overcome in order to win the election

Xenophobia is a funny thing. In theory, it describes a "fear and hatred" of anything foreign but in practice, it is generally a charge levied upon groups who reject others on the basis of race or gender. The term has been copiously applied to American protectionists, namely those who oppose widespread immigration, or most recently by Barack Obama in relation to rural, white voters in Pennsylvania whom he considered to be "bitter" in comments that have been batted around quite a bit as of late. Granted, he didn't use the word itself but the idea was inferred by his detractors who turned the phrase back on him and ironically dubbed his statements "xenophobic."

The term has been coupled with elitism, racism, sexism and almost every other possible form of prejudice this election season, but it doesn't really hit at the heart of what seems to be going wrong with the Obama campaign, and for that matter what has gone wrong with the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Accusations of racism, sexism and all-around xenophobic behavior seem to be obfuscating the real problem that plagues these campaigns, which is elitism.

Much has been written about elitism since Obama's comments hit the press in the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, so I apologize if you are sick of reading about the role of elitism in campaigning. However, I think it is important to point out the distinction between elitism and xenophobia because they are usually applied in diametric opposition to each other. That is to say, elitists (under one definition meaning those who are "conscious of being or belonging to an elite") often suffer due to xenophobic assumptions that paint them as inherently prejudicial of non-elites. In contrast, many members of the elite think of themselves as reasoned to the point of being devoid of xenophobia or prejudice, or at least consciously aware of their biases to the point of rendering them benign. Of course, in the end, everyone is equally guilty of not only being aware of these biases, but acting on them as well.

So, although elitists can be xenophobic, and harping on elitists can be seen as xenophobic, where does that leave the campaign?

George W. Bush, epitome of the layman's president (the "guy I'd grab a beer with" or "whiffle ball Tony") was once himself a victim of the brand of xenophobia targeted towards elitists. While running against Kent Hance in a 1978 congressional race, Bush was "successfully portrayed... as an elitist carpetbagger with suspicious connections, via his father, to the Trilateral Commission."
(For more information, check this out.)

Bush not only nearly staved off defeat in that race, but was able to channel his folksy charm into a hallmark of two successful presidential campaigns, repeatedly branding his opponents as "out-of-touch" with the average American. If ever there were an underrated talent that George W. Bush possesses, it is his uncanny ability to shapeshift into whatever community he faces (well, almost any community). This is not unlike another two-term president with ties to the current race, whose greatest attribute may have been a similar ability to relate to the common man.

Obama, for all of his lofty, prosaic charm, has yet to learn this lesson. What makes Obama an elitist isn't a disdain for the poor or his mischaracterizations of rural and working class whites (neither of which really pertain to him); no, instead it is his steadfast belief in the value of the elite to solve the problems of the non-elite and, well, everybody. Of course, Clinton and McCain suffer from this problem as well, and it is almost inherent to any national campaign (with the exception of Mike Huckabee who saw limited success by eschewing this altogether but was marginalized by the Republican elite). The real problem is that when you get caught making a statement that could be interpreted as xenophobic toward the non-elites, you start to sound disingenuous with regards to wanting to help them.

So, Obama has two options at this point:
1) He can embrace the "I-feel-your-pain" approach of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and try to convince rural white voters that he is one of them (which, by definition, he is not). This is a tempting strategy since simple math would dictate that nearly 200 million Americans did not vote in 2004, and presumably a great many of them are eligible, rural and white.

orrrr...

2) He can stop running from the fact that he is essentially a middle class urbanite who understands urban plight better than anyone else running, and who instead inspires members of non-elite and elite to come to an understanding that we need to be working together in order to get anything accomplished.

Systemically, the odds are not in Obama's favor. For now, the following is an anecdotal theory, but I hope to flush it out with more concrete evidence down the line. Essentially, being a member of the elite means having gone to college (and beyond) and therefore being able to tap into greater earning potential and thus more elite networks that include politics, finance and corporate business. I try to say this without the implication that the elite are superior in any way, but I understand that it may be intrinsically impossible to overcome that idea.

Most of us suffer from complete and total removal from the parts of the country that now dictate presidential outcomes. And, in our defense, it is not entirely our fault. When you graduate from Middlebury College (as I did), or Columbia University and Harvard Law School (as Obama did), you rack up a fair amount of financial obligations before even starting your first job, and unfortunately, the only parts of the country that can afford to pay us the wages required to meet these obligations happen to be "blue" pockets in all 50 states and across larger parts of the east coast, the west coast, the Pacific northwest, and the midwest. Thus, the dialogue gap between the college-educated and the non-college-educated grows more and more wide, and we remain conceptually alienated from one another. Sounds like the perfect xenophobic vitriol for our melting pot.

Obama's original campaign message was one of unity, but has veered off-topic under the heat of scrutiny about his ties to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and racism finger-pointing. Another fundamental problem is that Obama's notion of unity was far too narrow and underdeveloped: essentially he was re-branding the notions of bi-partisanship that permeated every single local, state and federal campaign before George W. Bush took office, and which has since taken a back seat to bitter fighting. Obama would benefit from renewing his call for unity, not between Republicans and Democrats and whites and blacks and other cliché polarities, but instead between the elites and the non-elites where the real dialogue has broken down. A Republican and Democrat in Boston have far more in common with each other than do a Bostonian and a rural Kansan, and for the life of me I wouldn't even know how to open these lines of communication. But Obama has a real opportunity to show us both the way, so that hunting and traditional values seem more understandable to me, and urban decay and multi-culturalism might seem more understandable to them. If Obama is really committed to engendering change, then maybe this is where the real challenge lies, and thus the real opportunity for success.

I would venture to say that Obama didn't really know what he was getting into until after he started his campaign. Perhaps when people think of Obama as being inexperienced for the job, they mean that he really just hasn't been to a lot of the places he is campaigning in before having started his campaign. And that's understandable. He's only 46, he has been committed to working for Chicago's underrepresented, and spent a great deal of time in school. Not to mention the fact that he probably racked up a fair deal of money in loans and needed to start working to pay them off. So, Obama not only knows where the rift lies, but is himself on one side of the divide. Obama's true chance to shine will be when he throws the rope across to the other side, and asks us both to start pulling ourselves together.

Are you gonna get mad if I post a bunch of videos I like? More importantly, are you gonna watch them?

FRIENDLYMIXTAPE

APRIL MIX UP.

SHARON!

GRAIN: Friends & Family, Passover 2008

the fifth question: "oh my god, so many matzoh balls. why? why?"

aunt elyse: "two girls at passover? you're living the dream."

the asia room at casa joseph

jamie, grandma and erica. i'm trying to figure out how this photo was taken.

discussing obama, i believe.

bunny thought something was shilarious.

sam is HUGE.

the incomparable jessica.

prima teresita and me at that brunch place in dumbo.

DEAF JAM/GRAIN: Tokyo Police Club

Tokyo Police Club, Paradise Rock Club

Gump with the new frame

The Charles

Caught Tokyo Police Club and Smoosh with Nick, newest blog roll member Joe and Trish. Though TPC commendably contributed to my worsening tinnitus, the real focus of our attention was the born-post-1990 sounds of Smoosh. They covered This Modern Love by Bloc Party, which I'm pretty sure is about being high on cocaine. Even if it isn't, other Bloc Party songs are, and ultimately that makes the Smoosh rendition uncomfortable to listen to. But what the hell, they could play, even if I sensed that some overbearing parents in the wings were to blame.

Tokyo Police Club got me thinking... what other notable musical entities were comprised solely of the membership of exclusive clubs?

New Young Pony Club - a vibrant British dance/rock band
Culture Club - English new romantic pop group in the 1980s (thanks, WP)
Mickey Mouse Club - no link or explanation needed
Club music - everyone knows what it is, but no one can concisely describe it
Sam's Club - where one can buy Celine Dion records retail or in bulk
Buena Vista Social Club - the only club I've ever really wanted to be a member of

Shout out to fellow mixologists

I very much enjoyed the last one. Currently downloading the Spring 2008 mix and looking forward to it.

I HATE the Knicks... but I love The Onion

Isiah Thomas: 'My Time With The Knicks Was Actually A Large-Scale Psychological Study Of New York Residents'

I was a Bulls fan growing up. Fairweather? Maybe. But I was 10, so, cut me some slack for having some appreciation for the greatest athlete of my lifetime.

WARM GLOW: Danny Deckchair/Kicking and Screaming

Escapism is an implicit theme in any movie we watch. Fundamentally, the very act of watching a movie requires us to submit to this escapism to the fullest degree. In fact, to drill down even further is to uncover an even more complex arrangement that leads us to not only forget about the red velvet curtains, art deco detailing and the rapidly flickering image, but to fully embrace a world that is not our own for the sake of being entertained by the possibilities of this new paradigm.

Thus, when escapism becomes the explicit theme within this implicit framework, the result is total euphoria. I know this seems like an overly academic introduction to a review about two relatively inane movies, but ultimately this is what makes movies such an awesome force. That, in spite of knowing it, sensing it, and being acutely aware of it (especially when the movie is shitty and our eyes begin to wander), we can willfully sit down, pop in a DVD and always succumb to this alternate reality.

Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming is a subversive form of escapist moviemaking because it heavily channels realism. And not just any realism: my realism, and, since you most likely found this blog through me or someone like me, your realism. We've just graduated from college, we're mulling around our not-so-former stomping grounds, and trying to prolong the inevitable submission of our soul to the rigid machinations of the real world that we can only just begin to envision.

On this point, I always find these movies the most difficult to watch. After all, the idea of trying to escape my own reality only to find myself in a similar psyche locale with a better looking protagonist and a few extra G's in the bank doesn't really seem to create much of an incentive to watch any further than the first minute, since every other scenario could've been extrapolated pretty simply from my own life experience. But the promise of a subversive escapist movie like this isn't so much to present a world that might be unfamiliar to certain audiences that do not identify with these dilemmas (after all, who outside of the gold coasts is even netflixing this right now?), but instead to provide some perspective for those of us entrenched in its reality as the minutes tick by. And, in a weird way, I'm going to draw a somewhat extreme conclusion by calling this an activist film, meant to lull us out of our daily complacencies by reminding us what seminal life moments look like and feel like, just in case we've forgotten.

In college, these moments seem almost scheduled: the professor that inspires you to give German philosophy another shot (or, let's face it, a first shot), the courting of a girlfriend, the study abroad culture shock. These moments happen so often that we begin to take them for granted, and we expect them as frequently beyond our four+ years of higher education. Of course, reality sets in and we find ourselves deeply entrenched in the day-to-day struggles of finding gainful food, shelter and labor which some may find tragic in and of itself, but the real tragedy is that we almost stop believing that these watersheds can even happen. We submit so wholly to the concept that our life paths are being paved faster than we can redirect them, that all we can do is hope for a nice car to enjoy the ride in.

It is for this reason that I am relieved to say that I loved Danny Deckchair. The movie is definitely more along the lines of a surrealist escapism, but the lesson remains the same. We all run the risk of complacency, which is all too human, because comfort is our natural point of homeostasis. We all struggle to balance some semblance of stability with enough excitement to make life truly worth living. And yet, we often fail to find solidarity in these concepts. Maybe we should focus on how to help each other through these not-so-trivial moments that end up encompassing great swaths of our lives and find strength in the successful examples that certain lucky individuals have managed to accomplish. This would be true optimism.

Strapping 100 weather balloons to a deckchair is certainly an extreme solution to the problem of complacency. The problem is, solutions to this complacency are relative because they are completely dependent upon how entrenched we ourselves feel in our own routines. It may not take much to break the monotony, and it is all too important to do so because these are the moments that provide us with the best stories, the most fulfilling moments and the highest levels of happiness. And besides, when you reach a new level of contentment, it's time to do it all over again.

Escapism seems like an ugly word because it reminds us that we are slavishly fatalistic with regards to our own lives, all too willing to give up control and escape through the remote control. But what about applied escapism? Why don't we start taking the lessons that these movies have to offer more seriously and go try something new? In fact, I'd like to start doing this tomorrow, and I hope you all would join me, support me, guide me and listen to me, and I would be more than happy to do the same for you.

GRAIN: images from a mobile phone

Political Science Fiction - Part I

So, anyone that knows me knows that I am a political being, albeit reluctantly so in more recent times. I tend now to focus more on issues than candidates or parties, which is hopefully an indicator of some greater political awakening that happened when I graduated from college and realized what the wisest of us learned without the degree: that the world is complicated and binary systems do a poor job of accurately portraying the spectrum of opinions. Then again, it could be like the old audiophile argument between mono, stereo or surround sound: maybe two speakers correspond to two ears.

Ultimately, this leads me to take empathetic, relativistic positions on candidates in politics. I will admit to a fair amount of knee-jerk liberal stuff (empathy for the disenfranchised, an uneasiness with conflict, an inability to find Larry the Cable Guy charming), but more so than anything I want results that reduce suffering and misery in ways that are preventable. This truth may seem self-evident, until you sit down and watch or read political coverage in this country for long enough for someone to stick a very large foot in an correspondingly large mouth.

Tonight, I sat down with some friends to watch the last of the results of the Pennsylvania primary, otherwise known as the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. Like much of the Democratic primary process, it was confusing, incoherent, infuriating, emotionally manipulative, and generally lacking vision. And that was just Chris Matthews! Zing!

We mocked and ridiculed Hillary's, uh, subtle invocation of Rocky Balboa, confused by which Rocky movie she was referencing. Was it the first one where he loses gracefully and in doing so truly appears as a winner? Was it the one where he fixated on anachronistic Cold War rivalries that no longer reflected the contemporary political landscape? Was it the one where his brain damage caused his dialogue to sound over-rehearsed, leaving the audience begging for a break? Was it the one that was billed was a publicly-mandated comeback that nobody actually seemed to want? Or was it the one that seemed vaguely racist because he was kicking the crap out of a black guy? Regardless, these are the kind of shenanigans that make you wonder who exactly these politicians intend to reach when they deliver platitudes as vetted reality.

I do not spare Obama in this respect either. Besides the fact that his "concession" speech made me wonder how much Abercrombie and Fitch had to pay to reach their ideal demographic--college student-targeted product placements in "reality tv"--Obama has routinely made me question this experiment in campaigning where he answers every question the way we (being educated, affluent, elitist college graduates) wish someone running for president would answer it, while not necessarily having the teeth to back it up. At least when Toby snarked at the press on The West Wing, he was meeting with Republicans to broker a deal on the farm bill or explaining to the Religious Right that they did not have a monopoly on spirituality in this country. Instead, Obama has backed himself into a corner where bipartisanship is a proxy for likability and hope stands in for truly audacious positioning. Frankly, if Obama were as talented as everyone on both sides seems to think he is, he would have sold all of us on much more ambitious changes for the future, rather than repackaging Kerry/Edwards '04 for the Subaru/Ivy/Pitchfork crowd of 2008. Thus, Obama's largest liability moving forward, similarly to Eliot Spitzer's tumble in some respects, is the constant worry that his audacity is disingenuous and, much much worse, hypocritical.

Sadly, this isn't the man's fault. He is an exceptional human being that has, in retrospect, made some commendable choices that have unfortunately tied his hands. One can only wonder what kind of campaign Obama would have run with Michael Bloomberg's war chest, gall, and propensity to reference his mother. But that would have meant that the years as a community organizer and legal scholar being sacrificed in favor of the seemingly less utilitarian pursuit of riches in the business world. He isn't the only one to struggle with this problem; every day I and many of my contemporaries wonder whether we are even coming close to helping the vulnerable communities we have committed ourselves to while costing us in financial and communicative resources. Every arcane little regulation that Bloomberg manages to shelf makes me question my choice.

Normally, in any other election year, we manage to convince ourselves that what is at stake is generally trivial or benign enough that the formulaic appeals of politicians running for higher office are not only entertaining, but charming in their lack of sophistication. After all, we need something to talk about before baseball season kicks into high gear. But given the global climate that we live in at this very moment, this kind of systematic jerking off
is no longer adorable or tolerable. If anyone of these campaigns were in tune with anything, they would've changed their slogans to "McCain: Just try to spell 'China' with those letters; you can't" or "Hillary: Because maybe menopause is exactly what we need to stop fucking all of this up so much" or "BHO: damnit, go buy an iPhone already so I can spam you and be a good American." Instead it's the same old shit, except with the new-found injection of process reporting where substance take a back seat to the metaverse of polling strategies, touchscreens and cable network inter-office banter.

I could spell out for you what the challenges are but I would run the risk of sounding pretentious and possibly a little bit over-urgent. And that is what Part II is for....

I have a point, I swear.

Well, I suppose every blog begins with a whimper, not a bang, since most blogs join a show already in progress (unless it involves the finer points of white consumerism or Errol Morris' discussion of a photograph). The impetus for starting this blog was to assert more control over my online identity, because I decided that I had had enough of losing out to an increasingly popular IMDB page when searching my name on Google.

Philip Hersch, I'm rooting for you and your career, I really am, but I'd like to get to the point in my life where prospective employers aren't sketched out by my past life as a "former-Israeli commando, now the Head of Security for a Southern California Jewish high school." On a tangential point, I'm not sure whether I am supposed to interpret going from a Mossad commando to Beverly Hills (High) Cop as a step up, but alas I am not willing to spend the $4.95 on shipping and handling to find out for sure.

That being said, it's not exactly an exciting platform for robust virtual broadcasting to the outside world. Surely I stand for something besides shameless self-promotion, or rather, defensive ego management.

Now, if you happen to be a potential employer, friend or vindictive blackmailer, let me explain a couple of things you will find in my googly-past.

1) Saxophonist Ari Joseph Pushes the Limits of Campus Music Scene

Yes, I am a saxophonist. For a while, this was the #1 Google result for my name, and I was quite content because it belied a certain creativity and risk-taking that I like to project to the outside world, but apparently the four hits it was getting was not enough to sustain its top-ranked position, soon replaced by Philip Hersch and his burgeoning acting career. But hopefully this explanation will also provide a nice segue into explaining...

2) Fuck you Saxophonist Ari Joseph

...which was an entry written by powerfriend Tyler Kremberg (coincidentally, the same Tyler Kremberg who coded www.arijoseph.com) in an effort to show his search optimization prowess over the laymen. Now, with full understanding of the vulgarity of such a statement, I would hope that we can all agree upon its relative inanity and move on. And if not, well, then I pre-emptively apologize if I have crossed you in some way that would inspire you to use my saxophone powers against me.







Tyler Kremberg and Ari Joseph circa New Year's Eve 2007.





3) WHDH - Special Report - Rush to Romance

The year was 2008, and the date of airing was February 14th. Two nights earlier, I had accompanied a young woman on a date set up by CrazyBlindDate which ended up being aired on the local news. After its obligatory airing among all of my friends who proceeded to microcritique my game skeellz, business cards were eventually made to commemorate my newly-dubbed title of "Dater."

There are plenty of other fun little tidbits you can find out about me from surfing these here interwebs, but I will let you get to that and leave it in the comments section. Perhaps I will devote a bit of a running commentary to such trivial pieces of information, but more than likely I will focus on things that tend not to embarrass me quite so much. In the meantime, enjoy.

Currently wearing: golf shorts, a Threadless T, a Brooklyn Industries hoodie and a smile.
Currently listening to: a mix of songs that are exactly 2:42, based on Joshua Allen's ingenious essay on the magical length for the perfect pop song. Some standouts in my library include:

1. Blackbird by Doves
2. I Shall Not Be Moved by Johnny Cash
3. Inoculated City by The Clash
4. Jealousy by Natalie Merchant
5. You Could Have It So Much Better by Franz Ferdinand
6. Now At Last by Feist
7. Seen This Mexico by Shrimp Boat
8. Emily Kane by Art Brut
9. Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain
by Cul de Sac
10. London Halflife by Metric
11. St Augustine by Band of Horses
12. K by The Clientele
13. Providence by Sonic Youth
14. Dia de Graca by Elza Soares
15. Magic Step by Sam Prekop
16. Will Gravity Win Tonight? by Matthew Dear
17. Busy Signal by Prefuse 73
18. Sherbert Head by Boards of Canada
19. By the Cathedral by Keren Ann
20. Nada Sera Como Antes by Elis Regina

...and many others!

Thanks, and good night.
-Ari

p.s. look to friendlymixtape for new mixes coming soon.

The beginnings of the all-purpose blog.

For too long, I have been committed to the idea of a narrowly-focused blog, to not much avail. Starting with the launch of arijoseph.com, this will be the home of my running commentary as often as I can possibly update it. Look for book reviews, music reviews, movies, activities, commentary and anything else I can dream up.