Two Lefties Grouse About Obama at Salon, With One Suggesting He Might be a "Sociopath"

I'm not sure this is anything, but you be the judge.

The bulk of the dialogue between Thomas "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank and a guy named Adolph Reed Jr is mostly about their upset that Obama isn't sufficiently pro-labor or pro-income redistribution.

I'll leave it up to you add to your own editorial punctuation to that sentence, but, for the lazy among you, here are some pre-written editorial punctuation marks you can just slip in there: (!), (?), (!!?), (????!!!!), (WTF, DUDE?!?!!)

Reed's central criticism of the contemporary left is that it has become focused on identity politics. As he says in the interview: "The problem with a notion of equality or social justice that's rooted in the perspectives of multiculturalism and diversity is that from those perspectives you can have a society that's perfectly just if less than 1 percent of the population controls 95 percent of the stuff, so long as that one percent is half women and 12 percent black, and 12 percent Latino and whatever the appropriate numbers are gay."

This he attributes to "electoralitis," the imperative of electing Democrats to public office. While Reed and Frank acknowledge that such an approach has been successful in some elections, they are scornful of it. Says Frank: "[Democrats] think they have an iron clad coalition behind them. They have this term for it: the Coalition for [actually 'of'] the Ascendent. I forget what it is. Made up of these groups, and labor is not one of them."

Reed disdains what he calls "the cult of the most oppressed," the idea "that there's something about the purity of these oppressed people that has the power to condense the mass uprising. I've often compared it to the cargo cults. . . . As my dad used to say, 'If oppression conferred heightened political consciousness there would be a People's Republic of Mississippi.' "

Go to Taranto (the link goes to BotW) for the discussion of "sociopathy." Reed analogizes Obama's "blank slate" persona to that of a sociopath, notoriously manipulative individuals who can become whatever their intended target needs them to be. He doesn't push on the idea too hard (and it does seem a bit overmuch), but I thought it would make for a good screaming headline.

The media taught me that!

posted by Ace at 12:28 PM

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