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--and totally and completely ignoring the facts that really matter. For example, Mike says "Obama was mixed race" which is a true, superficial fact...but is it the fact that really matters in deciding if Obama feels like an "outsider"? Let's go through the facts that really matter:
(1) Obama is a nerd. This is super important. Perhaps the most important thing of all. We know he's a nerd--the way he talks, the way he thinks, his pop culture references. This guy knows his Star Trek. So, superficial fact--Obama did have to earn his way into Harvard--but Mike ignores the fact which matters here: that, as a "nerd" Obama probably wanted it that way because it acknowledged his intelligence. Mike draws the wrong conclusion from the fact that Obama had to get into Harvard on brains rather than by way of family connections (like Bush, jr. did). He takes it as Obama feeling outsider...but, as a "nerd," getting in on smarts, Obama would have felt superior to those who got in on family connections. Special and unique rather than "outside."
(2) Obama was raised in the 70's. Obama was born in 1961 watching television with Bill Cosby as a spy, Diane Carroll as a nurse, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, the Jeffersons, Stanford and Son. He grew up with hippies urging everyone to give up their wealth and live simply. He listened to Motown and saw a man walk on the moon. When he was a teen, people danced at disco clubs and said, "Have a nice day!" He didn't grow up shining shoes, selling newspapers, supporting his family and hauling around golf clubs for rich people (if you're going to say he wanted to join the country club, you'd better offer that sort of fact to me. Where is it?)--He grew up when the whole country, everyone around him, was complaining about gas shortages and trying to save whales. Where are these facts in that analysis? Obama may have been outside the country club (superficial fact)--but where and why did he yearn to be in that club? All the REAL FACTS of the time he grew up in says that everything around him, on television, in pop culture, ignored that country club and made the upper class look bad and undesirable, not good and desirable (is Mike's thinking of the 80's maybe?).
(3) Jakarta: Where does this country club shit come in given the fact that Obama lived in Jakarta from ages 6-10? He still has friends in India, Pakistan and Indonesia. He attended private and prep schools. If anything, he has to have felt that he was on the inside, not the outside. Because looking out of those schools, he'd have seen dire poverty, far more dire than he'd go through working at Baskin Robbins. Which means that Obama, contrary to this lame analysis, had to have known even when he couldn't afford a cab, that he was lucky; he wasn't starving or living on the streets. Mike's point that Obama was sometimes poor is true, but it's a superficial fact. The real and important fact is that his upbringing would have made him understand how "rich" he really was. Where in Mike's analysis were THESE facts?
(4) Hawaii: Where does this shit about "mixed race" and the hardships of that come in given that he went through grad school in Honolulu? If he was in Kansas I'd buy it, but Honolulu? We're talking about a state of so many different races and mixes...how and why would Obama stand out? How much yearning can you have for the white country club when most of the kids you hang with are of various races and, whatever their class, running around barefoot, in jeans, sleeping on the beach, surfing? Mike's got the superficial fact right--Obama was mixed race. But the REAL fact of how he grew up among all races is missing.
To quote Obama himself: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."
Mike's got the wrong story here. Totally wrong given the facts--the REAL facts. And his most egregious mistake is to compare Obama to past presidents. No past president has had Obama's very unique upbringing and there may be none that we can rightfully compare him to. We have to analyze him on his own, given his own unique set of facts. In short, Mike is making the SAME mistake here as he did in comparing Obama to FDR in the first place. He's only looking at the superficial facts, not the real facts, and drawing, once again, a bogus conclusion.
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