MORE OBAMA...SORRY TO BE SO TEDIOUS

Kelso was very lucky because as if on cue, the New Yorker published a profile of Senator Barrack Obama in the May 7, 2007 issue, written by Larissa MacFarquar, "The Conciliator".

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/07/070507fa_fact_macfarquhar?printable=true

Please read this for yourselves and write in with your opinions. Here is the Kelso opinion. No particular idea where Larissa MacFarquar sits in either the New Yorker pecking order or its ideological groups. The latter would have, oh, Hendrik Hertzberg, Seymour Hirsch, Jane Mayer, John Cassidey and John Seabrook sort of left to center-left; Bossman David Remnick, Malcolm Gladwell, Joe Klein and Elizabeth Kolbert sort of credulous-to-center-right, Nicholas Lemann just plain good and James Surowiecki, your basic genius left-libertarian who uses state-of-the-art financial scholarship to punch holes in capitalist mythology [conflict of interest alert: James is a friend of Kelso's].

From a pecking order standpoint, what the hell is a Larissa MacFarquar? The two times that Kelso can recall the New Yorker doing a profile of a candidate whose chances they really wanted to sell, they brought out Lemann to profile Bush in 2000 and Klein to profile Kerry in 2003. Two big name writers to be sure. These were very compelling profiles and were thoroughly convincing that each would take the next step successfully. No idea what's behind the choice of MacFarquar to profile Obama but this is one boring article, maybe intentionally so -- just look at the article's title: "The Conciliator." Boy, Kelso's really excited about having a "Conciliator" as the next President. The piece is so boring that Kelso is in no hurry to read anything else MacFarquar writes.

Having read all eleven pages carefully, Kelso really knows no more about Obama than he did going in. Oh, there are pieces of information Kelso didn't know before, biographical detail aplenty, and bags of faintish praise for Obama from friends, but after the eleven pages Kelso's still where he was: believing that Obama is a conservative Democrat whose core values seem to be religious grandiosity, egotism, naked ambition, and a compulsion to be a Republican, but somehow stuck as a Democrat because of the state he calls home. Go ahead, Obama, be a Republican and get on with it. We don't want you and we sure as hell don't need you. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Al Gore are perfectly capable of getting the 90% of America's African American voters, white skin and all, without the instant surrender to all things Republican and without dragging a very solid looking Democratic Party into a Harold Ford, Jr., disaster, by running not for an office but for America's Baptist Pulpit and losing an easy race. One can only imagine how Giuliani, McCain, Romney or Fred Thompson would drag Obama around on a leash. Think of Joe Lieberman's "debate" against Dick Cheney and imagine that happening every day of the general election campaign. Yuck.

Ms. MacFarquar, unintentionally however, does some very important. In an effort to contrast Hillary Clinton unfavorably with Barrack Obama, she makes Senator Clinton seem like a radical populist. MacFarquar derisively quotes Clinton as saying with regard to the health care crisis: "We have to change the way we finance health care, and that's going to mean taking money away from people who make out really well right now...The insurance companies make money by employing a lot of people to try to avoid insuring you and then, if you're insured, try to avoid paying for the health care you received." Well, bravo Hillary! Kelso never knew you felt that way and never knew you made this particular speech. This corner's still with you.

Obama, according to the profile,"offers [solutions] generally sound, small and local, rather than deep-reaching and systemic." The crap Obama said at the same health care forum which MacFarquar quotes is the same impenetrable English-but-not-English that sounds good but means absolutely nothing. Taking this small piece of the profile, Hillary comes across as Lou Reed or Henry Rollins to Obama's Perry Como or Barry Manilow. From Mondale to Dukakis to Clinton to Gore to Kerry the Democratic candidate has gotten more and more right-wing. Obama is the next link in that chain. He'll lose the election and embarrass the party in the process, highlighting the most cowardly elements of the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is too conservative to really inspire Kelso, but gee whiz this fucking Obama is well to the right of Ronald Reagan and only slightly left of George W. Bush based upon everything Obama's said and done so far.

By Kelso's reading of the tea leaves, the Democratic nominee for President will be Hillary Clinton or Al Gore, so we'll be spared the embarassment of an Obama candidacy and have a reasonable candidate to support but the sooner this android exits the stage the better.

It has been said that a camel is a horse designed by committee and in Barrack Obama we have a candidate designed by committee -- some joint sub-committee of the Democratic Leadership Council and the Republican National Committee. He is a man devoid of views but full of religion, a conservative perceived as liberal, a hawk perceived as a dove, and a prude perceived as a relaxed libertine. Barrack Obama is less than a camel. He's a man in a patch-work camel suit complete with neoprene humps. You can have him. Kelso'll take Hillary.

You read it here first: Tampa Bay's James Shields will beat Johan Santana this year for the American League Cy Young Award.

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