I admit it. I'm a hOpehead. Despite the many substantive reasons to back Obama, the more ethereal merits of his campaign have - from time to time - penetrated my skeptic defenses. Maybe I've overestimated my own world-weariness. It's possible. Probable even. God knows it's easier to tear something down than to build something up. So perhaps I've indulged occasionally in the favorite hipster pastime of too-cool-for-schoolery. And though I'd rather not invoke a Clintonian defense, if I'm found guilty of acting fashionably jaded, I will remind the court that I did so because I could. Ironic detachment is the elastic waistband of intellectual perspectives: one size fits all.
But if sincerity and earnest depth of feeling were so passé, how is that I am now an ardent supporter of a politician so unabashedly dorky?
First, I'm a dork, too. Exhibit A - For all my careful attempts to stockpile - via CDs - some semblance of indie credibility, I genuinely like some VERY cheesy music. Word to the wise: if we're in the car together and Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" comes on the radio, the dial stays where it lays. Sure, I'll feign displeasure and even sing over her in a faux-Scottish brogue, but the smile I'll wear on my soul will be all too real.
Second, despite contrarian claims to the...uh...contrary, Obama's popularity does not necessarily belie his inherent goodness. There are precedents. Though I happen to enjoy the Rolling Stones - on a visceral level - more than The Beatles, I nonetheless consider those cuddly Liverpudlians to be unimpeachably great. And they have sold in excess of ONE BILLION ALBUMS. Socrates decried the wisdom of crowds and he was right. But he also lived almost two and a half millennia before Eleanor Rigby.
In the end, I can have my cake and mock it, too. And, what's more, it'll be easy. These days, despite dire economic signposts, hope is available in relatively large quantities. Whenever I need a hit of Sweet Lady H, I'll just play my anthem and swoon. There's no shame in relishing the "goosebump effect," especially not when I thought its prospects for transforming the political landscape had died on 4.4.68. And even the "objective," informed observer of rhetorical style, while maintaining her steely-eyed critical distance, must ultimately confess that Obama controls his lyrical cadences with a technique that is, by any honest measure, masterful.
But, when I'm feeling snarky, I'll remember one thing. will.i.am, the man most responsible for the virulency of the "Yes We Can" video, is also the "artist" behind the musical crime of the century. A classic primer, courtesy of Alanis Morissette:
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