I’ve been searching for a term that describes my position on the primary at present. Despite accusations to the contrary, I’m not a “Clinton supporter” or terribly “pro-Hillary.” Though I do like her, and certainly want her to keep fighting until the end (I also thought her Rocky reference was quite apt, because even though Rocky ultimately lost, he lost with dignity, and he lost after taking the fight to Apollo Creed on his own terms, instead of being a joke who was supposed to take a dive for the benefit of Creed’s show). I guess when you decide to counter the dominant narrative, you’re seen as pro-Clinton these days.
But I’m not really anti-Obama, either, though I don’t think much of a great deal of his supporters. Particularly when they’ve taken an easily-refutable position and react badly to the refutation (horrors! Obama’s actually a politician!).
I think the term I’ve been looking for is “Obama-skeptical.”
Because the mania with which his candidacy has been greeted since Edwards dropped out reminds me, a whole lot, of the U2 fandom which gripped my college roommate, Lisa.* I met Lisa in junior year, after we’d been assigned to the same room at room draw. It was 1988. The Joshua Tree had been out for a year, and that was their big breakthrough hit (personally, I was much more fond of The Unforgettable Fire and War, which I found less pretentious (yes, even “Sunday Bloody Sunday”), and I definitely remember seeing the posters for Boy and War in the DJ booth on WKRP, so it’s not like I didn’t know the band from way back).
Within the first few days of knowing Lisa, I was informed in great detail of her love for U2, how she had nearly been crushed to death during a concert in Philadelphia that summer after deciding to follow the band on tour without telling her parents because she and some friends had ambushed Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton outside the Hartford Civic Center after a show, and Larry had kissed her cheek and signed her Gumby keychain.
In early October, Rattle and Hum came out. The only theater it was playing at in the area was in East Hartford, but Lisa had a car, and one night at dinner shortly after the movie came out, she and Holly, who lived down the hall and was also a big U2 fan, were talking about going to see the movie. To be clear: they were talking, in front of me, about the two of them going to see the movie, without asking me. But I liked U2 well enough, and had for a while, so I suggested that I might come along as well if they were going to make the trip out to East Hartford — particularly since I knew that particular movie theater well, much better than either Lisa or Holly, who hailed from a different part of the state.
Lisa looked at me for a little bit, then she said, very tightly, “All right. But you have to understand, this is a total fan movie. And I don’t want you to say anything wrong that would be against the movie, because it’s a fan movie, and you just don’t understand.”
And I looked at her, and I looked at Holly. Holly had the decency to look embarrassed, but it wasn’t her car. So I just said no, thank you, and stayed home.
Because she was right: I just don’t understand that kind of fervent and uncritical belief, the kind that would lead you to pick up and travel to Philadelphia to nearly die in a rush to the stage. I’ve had my little obsessions, don’t get me wrong (there was even a small Monkees obsession in high school, when MTV started playing old episodes; I even went so far as to leave school in the middle of the day (my mom was a sub, and so I just took her car from the faculty lot during my free period) to watch the episodes and look up old issues of Rolling Stone on microfilm in the public library). But I never actually lost my head with them to the point where I bored and perplexed my friends with my devotion.
More often than not, the Obama true believers remind me very much of Lisa and her U2 obsession (and, later, of my friend Melissa and her Robert Plant/Led Zeppelin obsession, but I’m afraid I introduced her to Led Zep).
It’s a fan movie, and I just don’t understand.
_________
* And yet, oddly enough, looking back, I can’t actually recall her playing any music in the room, much less U2.
*applause*
I think it’s more like “it’s a fan movie, and you understand it way too well.” What a terrific post about perspective!
I had much the same experience you did in college, only my roommates were major Bruce Springsteen fans (he was just becoming famous, and the college was Rutgers in NJ, so there you go). Because of them I couldn’t listen to Springsteen for years. I really didn’t appreciate them going around singing “Your pappa said he knows that I don’t have any money” over and over and over…
But you see, it was a fan thing, so I didn’t get it.
Every fandom of which I’ve been a part has this thing. Look at sf fandom — they actually call themselves “fen” (plural of “fan,” get it get it get it… geez YES I get it, it’s just not clever) and outsiders “mundanes.” They’re self-designed to keep out those who “don’t get it.” Sometimes makes me wonder why I gravitate towards such gatherings.
I had a friend in high school who went through phases like this: the Beatles, X Files, Russian language (really). I just never understood.
You know, the sad thing is that this kind of exclusionary bitchy nonsense (ie your roomie and the movie sitch) DOES NOT STOP once you get out of college. In fact, it gets WORSE.
A former CT-er here…
Was that movie playing at the theater near the weirdest Denny’s in the state? If I recall, there was also a Red Lobster near there.
On topic, Obama just came to my state and the similarities between his visit and a concert are amazing; long lines, ticket scalping, and T-shirts and buttons for sale.
Yep, the theater on Silver Lane in East Hartford, just over the Manchester line. I’m not sure I ever went into that Denny’s (though I worked at the one in Vernon as a hostess — though briefly, as I am not cut out for working with the public); what was weird about it?
At the time, I think it was weird to us because everyone there seemed so much older than we were. Maybe it was because there were more bars around that one than the one we usually went to (Enfield).
Looking back on it now, I think it was just E. Hartford’s vibe. I worked in EH for awhile and have friends who lived or grew up there, and there’s something about that town. It’s just one of those places. You’re always going to meet someone who’s a character. I think about the kids in that town, putting on shows at the K of C hall, and later all the nights I spent at the Triple A diner and the dive bars. I think about hanging out at my friends’ house watching the world from their front porch. It’s one of the places I miss now that I’m away. It’s unfortunate to me that for so many people, CT is defined by Fairfield county, when there’s so much more to it.
Sorry for the long response.
Perhaps there’s a happy winning medium between the effervescent fandom for Obama on the one hand, and the insufferable technocratic dullness of Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore and Kerry on the other.
Obama has made his Faustian bargains no doubt, a few of which we know about, but we stare Dr. and Dr. Faustus in the face every time either Clinton speaks. So it’s pleasant to pretend that Obama has never dined with Mephistopheles. In time, if Obama prevails, we will curse him for every sell-out that he makes. Daily Kos will go from being his amen corner to being the groundling section of the Roman coliseum, wanting to see the lions eat President Obama (if he’s elected) for lunch.
Yeah, Bruce, that’s one of the things that makes the fandom so concerning to me. What will the fans do when he doesn’t live up to the expectations they’ve projected onto him? I just think it’s going to be ugly.
Heh. The thing with CT, at least 20 years ago when I was a townie and doing the bar thing there, was that the bars close really, really early. So the party inevitably dumps into the all-night diner restaurants. I spent many a night at that very Denny’s eating Moons over My Hammy and socializing with the drunken post-bar crew. My friend Sandy even got picked up once by a guy who had the waitress send her a glass of milk. Funny.
In my dorm, there was a little group that idolized Phil Collins. I was never invited on their concert outings, because I “just didn’t get it”. I would be alternatively upset that I was excluded and happy I didn’t have to buck up the cost of a ticket and share in the gas money — so I guess they were right.
It concerns me that Hillary doesn’t have enough fans. The fans are the power in people-powered politics.
I don’t know any really fervent Hillary supporters. Even the Clinton campaign staffers I’ve met seem lukewarm about their candidate, relatively speaking.
It’s funny, though; she has plenty of supporters, if not rabid fans. And the supporters she have tend to be of the steady, reliable type even if they don’t run around raving about her.
I think there’s also an Angry Old Broad factor in play; while it’s often dismissed as an appeal to victimhood, she often surges in the polls after she gets treated like shit by the media or by Obama/Obama supporters (I’m particularly fond of the sobriquet “Joan of Arc of the dry pussy demographic,” myself). And that’s probably because such treatment pisses off Angry Old Broads (or, in fact, *creates* Angry Old Broads). And Angry Old Broads tend to express their anger quietly.
there is a frightening sort of demo-patriarchic nationalism that surrounds Obama; it seems easy for the folks that i have talked to, to get swept up in the idea that is Obama to the exclusion of real critique of his facade/persona. like Fromm noted in Escape From Freedom, the emergence of a charismatic leader gives the majority of folks a sort of mascot upon which they can project suitable evidence of their allegiance to ‘the cause.’ the presence of an energetic-enough mascot alleviates the potential that people have to actually engage in critical thought, and allows them to escape the responsibilities that would otherwise be implied as inherent in a democracy.
new bumper sticker: it’s an obama thing, you don’t have to understand
Or maybe political consultants with blogs are tired of all the slots near the Clintons being filled?
I find it really difficult to believe that all these folks have lost their hearts and their minds to starry-eyed passion all at once. The reactive ferocity from that campaign started on day one, and it was in gross disproportion to what it was responding to (which, parenthetically, wasn’t race - it was a story Novak pulled out of his ass about some mythical denunciation).
And why wouldn’t our big activist/wonk/academic bloggers go for him? He’s a centrist, he has no patience for “gadflies,” people to the left of him are mired in the sixties and should be ignored, his coalition doesn’t rely on those pesky women whose issues are standing between the party and all those yummy white men, he’s supposed to be putting the young into the voting booth, he’s got very sharp elbows, and he’s a bright young political obsessive lawyer from a really good school.
Does any of this sound at all familiar?
So now we have a nice internecine battle going on, and the usual griefers and trolls and unstables are coming out of all sides of the woodwork to pour salt on any open class, gender or race wounds they can find. Cause bullies are cause bullying, just plain bullies are just plain bullying, everyone’s righteous and everyone’s making righteous cause with people they know are scum because it might help their favorite. I imagine the folks who set it off would probably like it to stop now. Good luck with that.
It’s been a remarkably dirty job, although oddly enough it seems to have conferred a certain amount of inspiration to, you know, actual voters.
Probably just as well we don’t matter much.
Or maybe political consultants with blogs are tired of all the slots near the Clintons being filled?
Ha. Ya think? And aided and abetted by those in the party who want to see the Clinton faction pushed aside.
I also think you’re right that those who set it off would like it to stop, but so far I don’t see much evidence that they’re trying too hard. Which is just going to bite them in the ass in the general.
I don’t really see their upside in stopping it. The candidate isn’t going to embrace them in public anyway (personally I suspect there are a few who’d be a bit surprised by how little he thinks he owes them in private), there’s already enough material out there in diaries and comments to make either candidate look bad if someone wanted to do that, and it intimidates people at least some people who want to publish Bad Stuff about whoever your candidate is.
No-one’s going to stop unilaterally, nobody can make anyone else stop, there are a few really operatic personalities involved that really enjoy this sort of thing (including one, ironically, who has decidedly retro views on persons of dusky hue in his own life), and besides, for the “community” it’s not about the candidates anyway. It’s about being on the side that wins for once.
It’s about getting together with likeminded friends to count coup on all those fucking Democrats who could have fixed or avoided everything bad that’s ever happened if they had just done what you wanted them to. Fuckers have blood on their hands, dammit, and if the stick you have to use to beat them with may have picked some up shaking hands with Joe Lieberman, well, you go to war with the candidate you have.
Whatevs. I’m not going to like most of what either one of them would do when they get into office. One of them is just a little more upfront about what that’s going to be.
War really is U2’s best album.
Your roommate probably would have beaten me to death in the theater as soon as I started laughing at the sing-a-long around Elvis’ grave, which was virtually identical to the scene in This Is Spinal Tap four years earlier.
Maybe I’ve just gone through more phases of fandom (I tend to be the obsessive fan type), but I’m not quite as worried about it. Most people don’t usually become anti-fans and start ripping at their former idol. Mostly, they just drift away and stop buying the albums, but that usually takes at least a year or two. Hell, some people are apparently looking forward to the freakin’ Backstreet Boys reunion. (Or is it that other boy band that came out at the same time? I can’t tell them apart.)
Man, I hate U2.
Oh, poo. Surely, you are not familiar with their early stuff, like “Wire” or “A Sort of Homecoming” or “New Year’s Day.”
Before Bono lost the mullet and became an overweening egomaniac with Fly shades.
Oh, and that’s “Wire,” not “I Trip Through Your Wires.” The former was used in this fantastic sequence on Miami Vice in ‘85, in which a whole car chase was done to the song. Miami Vice was really quite good about using music to help along the story, doing stuff like having a new character come on-screen as a new instrument was added to the song.
I was never all that fond of the show itself, but it got serious points for style.