Aug 14 2008
Obama: Be Sure to Clear Your Vacation Destination with the Press!
August is a natural vacation month for families: Pack up the kids and take one last fling before school starts in the fall. This was a family tradition when I was growing up and I know it to be the tradition of many families with children today. I am really interested in how this tradition suddenly became subject to scrutiny—based merely on destination; and secondly, what makes people think they are entitled to an opinion on this matter? What happened to the “family values” theme of neoconservatives? Vacations help families reconnect; say, if they have been traveling or busy with work… Vacations allow families ‘time together’; a concept formerly known as “quality time”. What is wrong with this picture? Nothing that I can see, unless of course you are Barack Obama and your political opponents are trying desperately to reinforce their most fundamental argument against your candidacy: You are “the-Other” e.g. “not-one-of-us”.
According to Emmy Award winning NPR reporter and ABC Contributor Cokie Roberts, presidential candidates are not supposed to go to Hawaii–that is too exotic—they should go to Myrtle Beach. Never mind that the person they wish to visit is elderly and still happens to actually live in Hawaii. Forget that “values” lesson on the importance of families if you happen to be from Hawaii because obviously the Republicans have deemed the 50th state as “too-exotic”. This is out of control…way out of control…
Roberts contends that Obama has determinedly professed to “be from Kansas”. I can only say that simplistic, reductionistic interpretation of Obama’s life story is insulting to anyone who is informed. Maybe that in itself is the message from the neoconservative, and unfortunately dominant, branch of the Republican Party: Being informed is unnecessary, we will tell you what to think, how to feel, and certainly who it is American to vote for… In this case the message is not implicit. Obama is explicitly called out as “the-exotic-other”, a concept never intended to become a political weapon. The saddest thing of all is this new concept of “What Constitutes a Good American”.
This type of thing could (does) lead people to believe they have nothing positive to say for themselves so they will turn anything negative against there opponent.
Going to a a US state is a strange place to see have a vacation. God forbid he actually sees his grandmother.