I agree that Obama is often rather vague about the “change” and “hope” themes in his campaign rallies, but let’s be fair, poltical campaigns are not wonkfests, they play on broad themes and rely on generalizations. If there were literally nothing behind Obama’s “change” campaign, I’d find the criticism valid, but that’s just not so. The enthusiasm of his supporters is pretty understandable, considering how appealing he is on a personal level. For me, it’s not so much his charisma and speechmaking ability that impress me (though I think they are important for any politician), it’s his temperament. He reminds me of Joe Montana – simply unflappable and cool under pressure and criticism, and able to deliver. He’s run the best, most tightly organized political campaigns I’ve ever seen, and I think on a personal level he really is the kind of guy I want in the white house. I understand that much of his agenda is abhorent to you, but I’m a liberal who voted for Reagan in 1980 simply because I thought the Democrats needed to be slapped around, and I thought Reagan was a decent guy who might do a few good things to swing the pendulum back to sanity. I think Obama can be the guy who does something similar in this climate. Do you have any sense that this could be the case?

I agree that there is something behind what Obama is saying when *he* says he wants to change things, but I think he relies on the vagueness and open-ended nature of the promise to draw people in who know that they don’t like things as they are and so are interested in almost anything different. This is why, as someone not on board with most of Obama’s policy goals (he and I are in agreement on Iraq, of course), I am wary of the way that he is using a fairly vague appeal to advance a substantial agenda that I find for the most part to be very undesirable.

I would be happy to knock McCain off of every pedestal on which the media have placed him. When he and they say that he engages in “straight talk,” they mean that he is saying things that people in the media like to hear. I don’t know of a time when McCain has told a hard truth to anyone, except maybe when he told the Michiganders that their jobs weren’t coming back. No different than a lot of pols, and a lot of people, he declares his view to be the truth, which may or may not be the case, and then wants credit for his political courage for giving us his (often self-interested) opinion.

I’m an Obama supporter, but I appreciate your criticism. But I still don’t get the Goneril comparison. I can admit that the Obamas go a bit overboard on the messianic thing, the amorphous “change” thing, etc., but “treacherous and ruthless”? Come on, who are you kidding? That makes sense for Hillary, certainly, though I agree that she’s Lady McBeth in this little play of ours. I just don’t see the ruthless treachery in the Obama camp, and so Goneril still seems way out of line. I’m not sure I see a good Shakespearean character for the Obamas.

And honestly, even the change meme isn’t really an empty slogan. Obama really does want to change things. He obviously wants to implement a fairly broad progressive liberal agenda in this country, not just play let’s pretend. If he did that, it would really represent a serious change. It’s obviously not a change you or other conservative commentators want to see happen, but it’s not some ephemeral empty-suit rhetoric either.

Now, obviously he’s not quite the bold-truthteller either. He doesn’t empasize things people don’t want to hear. But I don’t even hear him making the claim of being the bold-truthteller much anyway. His main message is that he’s the guy who can really change the Bush-Cheney policies we’ve been on for the last eight years. I don’t think that’s an empty claim. If he gets elected with the kind of popular support he’s building, he’ll be able to do just that. And he’ll have the support of a significant part of the center and even moderate right (hell, even some of the disgusted far right).

But if you’re going to knock Obama off the “bold truth teller” pedestal, shouldn’t you do the same with McCain, who is actively promoting that myth about himself with far less justification than Obama. I mean really, McCain simply has no legs to stand on in that category, the reality being very much the opposite.

Of course, the idea of the Obamas as bold truth-tellers is as strained as the idea of Obama as a bold leader. They are frequently saying that they don’t tell us what we want to hear, but rather tell us what we “need” to know. But that’s simply not the case, and the constant refrains about “change,” unity and “coming together” are evidently *exactly* what a lot of people in his party want to hear. Now we can give him credit for finding a message that resonates with these voters, or we can give him credit for telling people unpleasant truths, but he can’t really get credit for both.

I think you’ve mixed up the analogy. Michelle isn’t out there trying to win the support of her husband, but of the country, the media, voters, etc. In the context of Lear, therefore, she is clearly going against the grain of pious, platitudinous, pill-popping patriotism. Obviously she is saying something that offends people, or there wouldn’t be any controversy over her remarks. That is like Cordelia, not Goneril. The fact that she is also promoting her husband as a messiah is a different story, and outside the Lear analogy, but in any case, she is not doing so to gain the affections of the object of her flattery. In any case, these remarks were not aimed at her husband, but at the “fatherland” as a whole, and the “fatherland”, like Lear, reacted with rejection and offense, just as Lear did to Cordelia, who refuses to flatter them. Michelle can be criticized for her remarks to the country, but she certainly isn’t flattering them.

So again, the comparison to Goneril just shows an ignorance of Shakespeare, or an overeagerness to find a meme by which to condemn Michelle. It’s a lack of imagination, in other words. Can’t Larison at least take the time to come up with some literary spin that makes sense?

Maybe this idiot’s joking but, in defense of a very fine school, here’s some English courses, from ’04-05:

208. Shakespearean and Film
3 hours 3HU, WR

293. Lyric Poetry Before 1700
4 hours 4HU, WR
Second Semester.

305. Authority and Subversion in Shakespearean Drama
3 hours 3HU, WR
Second Semester.

Of course, we also find something utterly unacceptable:

302. Medieval Women Writers
3 hours 3HU, CD, WR
First Semester.

But, in the English dept. defense, let’s note that these are White women at least, thank god.

Goneril is the daughter who flatters her father and tells him exactly what he wants to her – like Cindy McCain, in this case. Michelle Obama, in saying things we don’t want to hear, and being rejected for doing so, falls into the Cordelia role. Of course, it’s Cordelia who truly loves her father (the country), even though she says less than flattering things about him. If we are to take lessons from Shakespeare, it implies we ought to be less harsh with Michele Obama, and more suspicious of the easy “pride” of pill-popping Cindy McCain.

Oh, but that doesn’t fit the narrative you are tring to construct? Well, then don’t use Shakespeare as your guide. Maybe you should try that master of pill-popping platitiudes, Rush Limbaugh.