Spring Break
Is Barack Obama the next big Cultural Moment
Ryan Nowell
Issue date: 10/29/08 Section: Opinion
So, I was one of the 45,000 to line up on Sunday but only partly to see the man himself.
Standing for two hours on a surprisingly cold afternoon for the chance to squint at a Barack Obama-dot from a football field away, while perhaps sweet ambrosia for the party faithful, was not my preferred way to spend a piece of the weekend.
Mostly, I was going to observe the assembled throng.
The one thing every politician wants to be (or portray themselves as) is a Cultural Moment, some organic event that bubbles out of the social goop that articulates the era's unrest and yearning. Big stuff. Hence the caps.
Modern media saturation has not been kind to the Cultural Moment, though. The two-and-some-change decades that have weaned this paper's key readership have seen these Moments dwindle to mere water cooler fare.
With our attention on other, inane avenues, politicians have taken to manufacturing this phenomenon in place of inspiring it, with mixed results.
There's a good deal of political fetishists out there chanting and screaming, who'll testify that candidate X will deliver us from the perennial near-future smack-down that always comes around Election Day.
The other 57 percent of us would apparently rather sleep in on Nov. 4.
That's what I went looking for last Sunday. I wanted to see if this was it, that moment when we recognize ourselves in a politician and let our will be known, or if this was only it because we're being told it's it.
I arrived in line around noon and already it stretched around the corner of Loomis and Plum.
Taking up a place in line, I had an eye out for any mean-spirited generalities I could make about the crowd -- some common physical trait, brand name or suspect odor to broadly characterize Democrats in a bemusing and clever fashion.
As the most stereotypically liberal-looking person there, though, I decided a different plan of attack was needed. Beware: Shopping from the Sacco and Vanzetti collection and wearing your hair like a Phish roadie can leave you dwelling in many a glass house.
Standing for two hours on a surprisingly cold afternoon for the chance to squint at a Barack Obama-dot from a football field away, while perhaps sweet ambrosia for the party faithful, was not my preferred way to spend a piece of the weekend.
Mostly, I was going to observe the assembled throng.
The one thing every politician wants to be (or portray themselves as) is a Cultural Moment, some organic event that bubbles out of the social goop that articulates the era's unrest and yearning. Big stuff. Hence the caps.
Modern media saturation has not been kind to the Cultural Moment, though. The two-and-some-change decades that have weaned this paper's key readership have seen these Moments dwindle to mere water cooler fare.
With our attention on other, inane avenues, politicians have taken to manufacturing this phenomenon in place of inspiring it, with mixed results.
There's a good deal of political fetishists out there chanting and screaming, who'll testify that candidate X will deliver us from the perennial near-future smack-down that always comes around Election Day.
The other 57 percent of us would apparently rather sleep in on Nov. 4.
That's what I went looking for last Sunday. I wanted to see if this was it, that moment when we recognize ourselves in a politician and let our will be known, or if this was only it because we're being told it's it.
I arrived in line around noon and already it stretched around the corner of Loomis and Plum.
Taking up a place in line, I had an eye out for any mean-spirited generalities I could make about the crowd -- some common physical trait, brand name or suspect odor to broadly characterize Democrats in a bemusing and clever fashion.
As the most stereotypically liberal-looking person there, though, I decided a different plan of attack was needed. Beware: Shopping from the Sacco and Vanzetti collection and wearing your hair like a Phish roadie can leave you dwelling in many a glass house.
Be the first to comment on this story