Blinken: Before Trump Takes Office, 'Every Dollar We Have at Our Disposal Will...
Pocahontas Way Off Reservation on Hegseth Attack
UR Investigating After 'Wanted' Posters Featuring Jewish Faculty, Staff Plastered Around C...
Connecticut Teacher Resigns After Video of Her Threatening to Kill Trump Voters Goes...
Feds Raid Home of Polymarket CEO After Betting Site Predicted Trump Win
After Trump Win, Owner of LA Times Makes Major Change at the Paper
Israel Reportedly Planning Foreign Policy 'Gift' for Trump
Egregious: A Wisconsin School District Received Over $1 Million to Promote Woke Initiative...
Revealed: How Bob Casey and His Lawyers Are Trying to Steal an Election...
Hundreds of Explicit Books Have Been Expunged From Schools in This State
George Clooney Whines About Being Used As a 'Scapegoat' Following Harris' Loss
'God-tier Kind of Trolling': John Fetterman Shares His Thoughts on Trump’s Cabinet Picks
This NYT Post-Election Focus Group of Young Voters Is Brutal for the Media...and...
There's Been an Update About 'Peanut the Squirrel'
FEMA Director to Be Brutally Grilled in Back-to-Back House Hearings
Tipsheet

Back to the Future

As Hugh Hewitt notes, he has been playing excerpts of Barack Obama's reading his book, "Dreams From My Father."  Audience reaction has been mixed about hearing the first presidential candidate, as Hugh puts it, who has "purposefully recorded himself swearing so profusely or with such variety."
Advertisement


Contrary to the rapturous claims that Barack could end the "culture wars," hearing Hugh's audience react suggests, in fact, quite the opposite.  Callers seemed quite distinctly divided into two camps that are completely consistent with the customary understandings of the two factions of the culture war -- cultural traditionalists and cultural leftists.

In fact, one could view the reaction to "Dreams of My Father" as sort of a cultural Rorschach ink blot test.  The book turns off cultural traditionalists, what with the admitted drug use, the cursing, etc., etc. -- most of all, however, with Barack's willingness to recall and record those behaviors without any seeming recognition that it might be inappropriate, at best, for a political leader (and a man who's perhaps the next President of the United States) to be casually cursing and reading aloud about his own drug use.  Conversely, cultural leftists will like him even more than before because of those same behaviors (most of all, his willingness recall and to recount them in detail) -- because they endow him with the left's most beloved quality, "authenticity." 
Advertisement


It's hard not to conclude that the hype about Barack's potential to transcend the culture wars will go the way of the claims that he would transcend racial divisions.  The culture war wages on; different words, same tune.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement