PrintMay 11, 2011
Maureen Dowd and the Barack Man's Burden
Maureen Dowd has finally discovered the man of her dreams: Barack Obama. The New York Times columnist -- notorious for her disdain of all things testosterone -- let Times readers know this past week that she has finally found a man she can admire, a man of "muscular purpose" and steel beneath an exterior of "studied cool." And, in doing so, she has firmly grasped the baton being passed to her by other members of the Times' opinion corps and taken up the "Barack Man's Burden."
The relentless acclaim of all things Obama is the Times' version of the "White Man's Burden" immortalized in the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, the 19th century English writer who encouraged his nation to bring British rule to other and darker-skinned parts of the globe. Imperialism was a noble enterprise and a burden to be shouldered by the English for the good of humanity, went the reasoning. This meant, at times, justifying policies that were often wrongheaded and racist. However, the "White Man's Burden" justified autocratic government because non-Europeans purportedly were largely simpletons who could neither think nor govern as their more sophisticated and white betters.
Fast forward to the 21st century: The New York Times, a liberal media institution, has found its inner Kipling and given us the doctrine of the "Barack Man's Burden." This consists of equal parts racialism, good ol' fashioned thug government, and elitism. Promote both the man and his policies, for both are necessary to insure a proper future in which those born, educated, or selected for leadership occupy the top positions in government and other organizations. Therefore, it is the duty of every right-thinking progressive individual and institution to take up for Barack Obama, to assist in bringing his radical transformation to the nation and the world. The Barack Man's Burden: My Barack, right or wrong.
Never mind the Constitution and the resistance among those -- like the non-Europeans more than a century ago -- born to be led; never mind the fact that, as American Thinker's J.R. Dunn puts it, "Obama has compiled a record not only of pure incompetence, but willful incompetence." It does not matter because Barack Obama has "an obligation to rule over, and encourage" the ordinary and less enlightened citizens of the United States." And it is the obligation, indeed the burden of institutions like the Times to ensure victory for Obama and his fellow progressives. It is a dirty job, a long slog in which past pronouncements are merely words, never principles to stand upon, but someone has to do it. The Barack Man's Burden.
That is why the Times can excoriate President George W. Bush as a bloodthirsty tyrant delighting in the deaths of others, but now "celebrate a killing" ordered by Obama because, as the newspaper pointed out, "Reveling in a death can be an expression of unity, not vengeance." Maureen Dowd fawningly compares Obama to Michael Corleone in The Godfather, enthusing over the president's ability to calmly play nine rounds even as Navy Seals "carry out the gory hits he has ordered." A man, she enthuses, a real man! Not like that evil George Bush, of course, who struck back at those behind 9/11 because he was fueled by a "heady cocktail of testosterone and opportunism," a violent figure whose very male-ness is an affront to humanity. Rudyard Kipling would be proud and, if he were alive today, would be a Times opinion page poet, describing the fact-defying, consistency-be-darned approach of the New York Times to Barack Obama in this way:
Take up the Barack Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:Now Barack brings us from bondage,
Into our loved progressive night.
Male and female and David Brooks, the employees of the Times plunge ahead, bearing the Barack Man's Burden. Times columnist Paul Krugman, whom Hot Air describes as "everyone's favorite economist-turned-far-left bomb thrower," lets us know that Obama's economic policies are right on the money and would work -- if it weren't for the perfidy of corporations, the evil of Republicans, and the stupidity of the average Joe living west of the Hudson River. Ignorance fuels opposition to the Obama transformation, chimes in David Brooks, by those who resent the president's "intellect" and "expertise." Results? Hey, that's so yesterday! Obama is today, the future, the alpha and omega captured brilliantly by Times photographers in a "photograph of a backlit cross, over which the shadow of Obama is enveloped in a halo of light."
Such is the Barack Man's Burden. Looking at the photograph of Obama and company in the situation room, one blogger noted that the Times has thrown itself into the battle "to make the Jr. Chipmunk sitting in the small chair in the so-called 'iconic' photo seem more than he is." And now Maureen Dowd has jumped into the fray, intent on returning this president to the pedestal from which he repeatedly falls...no, jumps.
This is a president who "can lead straight on," who is not a wimp (unlike George Bush and most of the men around him). George Bush, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and others she's written about join most of the men in her life as small beside the godfather cool of the current resident of the White House. A flip-flop for a Times columnist with two decades of disdain for all things male? Yes, but even for a woman, such is the Barack Man's Burden.
Stuart Schwartz, a frequent AT writer, is on the faculty at Liberty University in Virginia.
