Aga Khan’s blog

Leaving for a new spot.

Find me at: Http:// mrdockellis.blogspot.com/

Nothing more here. Aloha

No, this isn't about Barack Obama. Although, just as much cheerleadering is going on for this word as Obama. Ah yes, we have another bailout coming. This one for a relatively paltry $15 billion shows the course we're following. The three US auto makers will be the takers of this largess, only weeks after getting $25 billion!! But now things are worse, so they get less money? Huh? No matter how hard the LWM cheers, this is a tough sell.

The stupidity in DC continues to snowball. Senator (and we use that term loosely) Chris Dodd is pushing for the removal of the CEO of GM. Talk about calling the kettle black. This guy feeds at the Washington trough for decades, lately getting sweetheart mortgages and now he feels this guy has to go. With billions of federal dollars flying out the door never to return, GM looks downright efficient compared to this bunch. I won't even go into why Chrysler, a now private company gets billions. Their owner Cerebus LLC has billions! What in the name of Pom Poms is going on here? All these guys are giving cheerleading a bad name, especially since they'll be back in the spring for more. Go Team Go!!

Part of the fascinating thing about B. Obama ascending to the White House, besides the obvious racial novelty, is how he out dueled the ambitions of two of the most grasping people in DC: John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. With Edwards disgraced and Clinton safely tucked under his wing at State, Obama would seem to have no problems at all in his party. The rank and file loves him as well. Yes, he'll have to deal with career hack Nancy Peliosi and the DC version of Sgt. Schultze Harry Reid, but they are obviously inferior in political skill as well as power, so no biggy there.

The real problem is not the people as the philosophy. The Democratic Party since FDR has been a glorified spoils system writ large. You get elected, you direct the money to a loyal constituency. Want to expand your power base? Send a new cash flow streaming out of the Federal Teat to a new group. Once they're sucking, they're hooked. And it worked. Vast new entitlements and bureaucracies now wash over the political landscape.

However, with bailout mania sweeping the nation, everybody wants a bailout now. The old Dem power philosophy is sort of like the monster from Alien. It started out relatively small, but now it's taking over the ship. Obama wants to be the Democrat he is, but to do that he must give everybody everything. To say no, risks being branded as a cold callous Republican, more interested in the greater good than the narrow group, even though the group will scream bloody murder to get their piece of the bailout pie.

Starting with the $150 billion in the spring, then $80 billion to AIG, $25 billion to the US Automakers, then the TARP for $700 billion, then $30 billion for Citibank, another whopper $800 billion for various consumer credit debt and this is only the list so far. The US state governors want $100 billion. Ho Hum . . . Pelosi wants $400 billion, yet another stimulus. They obviously should have bought some Viagra with first cash. And today, the auto makers want another $34 - 75 Billion, so that maybe just maybe they can stay afloat.

It's easy to see Obama has a very tough row to hoe. He'll have to fight to keep his own shirt from being grabbed for bailout means. This fight will be waged against the very philosophy that brought him to power. Everybody wants the moolah. My two favs have to be the newspaper industry, being devoured by this very medium and the ethanol industry which wouldn't even exist in the first place, if it weren't for a government subsidy.

If you have any money left, buy some popcorn and pull up a seat, it should prove highly interesting.

With soon-to-be President Obama getting the accolades of the press as a hero, part of me wonders where the concept of hero resides. Is a hero ordained by others or self-made? Some may think this is an exercise in sour grapes. Yes, I did not vote for Obama and like most people over forty, I should be forbidden by law from saying the word "cool." Be that as it may, what is the worth of a media hero or villain for that matter. George Bush was the recent Mr. Evil, but after the election he's portrayed as the accommodating helper, giving what help he can to Mr. Fabulous. Perhaps this was deemed necessary in an attempt to get Bush to go along with yet another Bailout. (one less that Obama himself must do and rest assured they'll be plenty more)

And yet, if a media hero is simply of the moment, what are the ones that stay with us. Those are the ones that strike a chord of truth. For all the hard times as a child, once Obama got into a tony Hawaiian prep school, he was on his way. Sure being abandoned by a philandering Dad is tough stuff, but Obama was able to party it up at Columbia and still get into Harvard Law. A hero has overcome the adversity everyday and triumph. There's a smugness with Obama that just doesn't click with the hero caste.

Ken Kesey, author and major league partier, said "There's more truth in a Batman comic book than in Time magazine." Obviously, after this election, Time and most big media worship Obama and worked to make him that hero. But what about Batman, the real or imagined pulp hero? Deprived of parents by murderous thugs, he seeks vengeance on the criminal brotherhood. The trajectory of that life makes sense as the rage of pain is controlled as a force for good. Everyday that battle must be fought.

Superman might be a better comparison for Obama. An alien deposited on this world through no wish of his own, he must fit in (as Clarke Kent) and still save the day for those indelibly sweet, yet totally blundering humans. Interestingly, Superman was invented during the Great Depression of the 1930's. With 25% unemployment, lots of Americans didn't feel like supermen and yet that's when he appeared. Obama seems to relish the save the day part, but most of his life, others seems to have accommodated for him. We heard ad nauseum about how he could have taken that big Wall Street job, but decided to represent Acorn instead. The faux humility makes an interesting contrast because Superman is humble in both his personalities; humble as Superman because wisdom has informed him that great power must be wielded with great care and humble as Clarke Kent cause he's a total dweeb with the babes. Obama seems quite aware of his purchase with the younger set.

Maybe the most similar pulp hero isn't a hero or heroine. Wonder Woman might be a dead ringer of Obama in pulp form, though much better built. Come to man's world from an island paradise (sound like Hawaii?), to battle injustice and save man from the heinous Nazis. Powerful, but a bit haughty, Wonder Woman in her alter ego as Diana Prince, must serve as secretary to lovable, but dopey Steve Trevor. Since back on the Island, she's a princess, this must be pretty demeaning stuff. When Obama was a kid, his mom used tell him stories of his heroic African heritage. While Obama may have felt special, his black and white parents probably were the most defining part of his growing up. A drag not an asset in the 60's and 70's, it became a big plus in the 80's and 90's with the increasing gale force wind of affirmative action at his back. Funny, though this pulp heroine, seems to have much less appeal, perhaps because she isn't seen or perhaps portrayed as having that daily struggle like Batman or Superman.

I could go about the X-men and others, but since they arrived in the 1950s, the pulp hero now is mostly an outsider and stays that way. Interaction with the average people is different -no more secret identities to blend in.

Perhaps the pulp hero Obama most wanted to be was John McCain circa 2000. Here was the insurgent, of the so-called Straight-Talk Express. McCain lost, but the Media loved him. McCain himself, like Obama, was a bit of a coaster, getting by on his impressive Navy ancestry, but Vietnam tested him in a way an adult coaster like Obama never experienced. The NVA actually tried to use McCain's coastering ways against him by trying make him a political pawn in a propaganda war aimed at his father, then head of US Navy forces in the Pacific. At times, McCain could be frustrating because on a certain level, you knew he didn't need to be President to make himself into a hero. He had already showed as much and whether it was a zen-like understanding of who he was or something else, John McCain simply would not pose for the prize in any manner he deemed unworthy and he would not allow anyone else to do it either. Perhaps, that's all a hero is: sticking to a standard. By allowing others to understand that duty and how to adhere to it could be part of it. If Obama can stick to a standard and show what it means to stake out a position, however lonely, he may become a hero. For others, the testing is over. For Obama, the testing is only starting.

So this is interesting how we find something that teases us, like a coincidence that titillates. There I was seeing who "my neighbors" were in this collection of electromagnetic pulses. Turns out it was only a sign, much like a billboard you drive by and ignore on the road. Yes it pestered for some cause kind of techno-save-the-children, but who should the opening shill be, but Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S.J. !!! Wowee Kazowee!! I love long French names. They seem so noble and pure, like J. J. Rouseau, who dumped his kids in an orphanage. Anyway, a guy named Walter Ong studied P. T. de Chardin. Ong was positively broad or broadly positive whichever you like and was buddies with Marshall McLuhan, most misread guy on the planet. (Woody Allen was right!) Yes, you guessed it I boned up on Ong. Sheesh, what a coincidence. One thing leads to another.

Well, I was spinning out this initial blather because it fills a need: my need. Spurring the masses with hope, dope or rope that's someone else's deal. Sure it's nice to have a community chat, but on a certain level talk is so overrated. We always assume when we engage with others through various media that we'll reach greater understanding, peace, hope, but alas, McLuhan said it best that "the global village is full of spite, more so than any nationalism ever was." Think about that. How many people expired in the 20th century wars of nationalism?

If you give a kid a computer, what will he learn? What is then at the top of his hierarchy of knowledge? Paraphrasing Thoreau, if a kid in Iceland emails a kid in Ghana what do they say? It's damn cold here, anything else? Sure, they compare technology and now the tail wags the dog.

Let's end this on a happy hopeful note from none other than Darth Vader. Keep hope alive, Darth!! "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The power to destroy a planet is insignificant to the power of the force." Anything that perverts the human spirit, yokes it to some plastic and wires, robs us of a true understanding between beings and substitutes some ultimately insipid imitation, masquerading as engagement.

Now get up, walk away from you computer and go talk to an actual human being and ask them about something trivial, but listen for their soul and respond to it. Say Hello In There.