-
Cloud of Witnesses
January 28, 2013 | 30 comments
-
Obama’s Gettysburg Address?
December 20, 2012 | 72 comments
-
Glamour of Evil or Glimmer of Hope?
May 2, 2012 | 47 comments
-
Cheapening the Peace Prize Eight Days a Week
March 16, 2012 | 18 comments
-
Catch-22 Revisited
February 24, 2012 | 70 comments
The Obama Watch
The Anti-Ritualist
Why Barack Obama will never write a good vampire novel.
Barack Obama will never write an acclaimed vampire novel because he has no respect for ritual.
To make sense of that statement and explain why the indictment within it matters, let’s examine a few examples of genre fiction before sifting through evidence offered by the president himself.
Other literary genres have charms of their own, but the choices that horror novelists make are especially important because they often touch on questions of ritual. As any priest, liturgist, relief pitcher, band leader, wedding planner, barista, chef, musician, teacher, bonsai gardener, or tea ceremony devotee could tell you, it is human to take comfort in ritual. A local Starbucks said exactly that before ceding space on its door to an announcement about the return of the pumpkin latte.
It’s hard to blend genres successfully, so my hat’s off to
Stephanie Meyer and
her bestselling “Twilight” series of vampire romances. That said, I
sympathize with horror writer Stephen King, who
took a swipe at Meyer for mixing “ethical and sensitive” with
“undead.”
King thinks vampires should be scary, and seems discomfited by
people who flout literary custom for artistic rather than satirical
purposes, as Meyer has done. One assumes he has no quarrel with
Terry Pratchett, because when Pratchett had a female vampire
renounce bloodsucking to join the City Watch that polices the
metropolis in his Discworld fantasy novels, he was playing
amusingly against (blood) type. But Meyer’s undead “Edward” is
another story.
Edward is freakishly strong and preternaturally quick, as vampire lore suggests that he must be. Yet we meet him in high school. However long he is alleged to have lived before being smitten with a classmate named Bella, Edward acts like a lovestruck teenager afterward, even seeking advice from a vampire father-figure. In the Twilight saga, romance trumps horror, so it seems fair to ask whether literary mashups of that kind make one genre or the other a junior partner. Unfortunately, Zombie Jane Austen does not provide helpful guidance in this area.
The vampire “family” in Stephanie Meyer’s fiction owes a debt to “The Twilight Zone.” Remember the episode of that iconic TV series where the unresolved question was whether a monster visible only to William Shatner was destroying the wing of an aircraft in flight? That was innovative for its time, because an “old-school” monster would have been visible to everyone on Shatner’s side of the plane. It’s no great leap from that inverted convention to the way that Meyer now treats favorite vampires and werewolves as models of self-discipline.
Anyone with misgivings about Meyer’s approach might find vindication in John Steakley’s “Vampire$,” which looks at the battle between good and evil from a conservative point of view. Writing more than a decade before Meyer hit it big, Steakley updated customs of the horror genre rather than ignoring them. Steakley’s vampires are evil creatures utterly incapable of love, angst, or protective impulses. His tale of mercenaries who hunt them with the backing of the church and the personal blessing of the pope depends in part on ritual. His vampires do not cast reflections, but can be hurt by wooden stakes. A crossbow-carrying priest is part of the mercenary team, and whether they’re Catholic or not, the vampire hunters attend Mass before doing battle with particularly loathsome fiends. One member of the team is an expert pistol shot, but Steakley bows to convention by having the gunman discover that blessed silver bullets make better ammunition against the undead than standard hollow-point rounds.
It will be obvious from what I’ve said so far that although Stephanie Meyer is a bestselling author and John Steakley is not, he has more respect for ritual than she does. That predisposition combines with his talent to make his story more engaging than hers. The critic who called “Twilight” a “misogynistic piece of hardboiled crapola” was being unduly and hilariously harsh, but it would be fair to say that Stephanie Meyer has done more to subvert the art of horror writing than to advance it.
That brings us back to Barack Obama, whose penchant for informality is such that he torpedoes ritual even without meaning to, as when presenting other heads of state with self-aggrandizing gifts, or privately seething over rather than celebrating the prowess of U.S. Navy SEAL teams, as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (in their new book, The Post-American Presidency) report happened when a SEAL sniper on the fantail of a destroyer dispatched the Somali jihadist pirates who had been holding a merchant marine captain hostage.
While that reaction was little-known because difficult to substantiate, President Obama’s musical tastes have made headlines. He nixed the playing of “Hail to the Chief” by an ensemble from the U.S. Marine Band. As his Press Secretary explained at the time, this president “is not a ‘Hail to the Chief’ kind of guy.” He prefers to be introduced like a lounge act with access to a piano, entering White House conference rooms over the strains of songs like “Desert Rose,” and so another American ritual was benched.
If you broaden the definition of “ritual” to include those times when it is synonymous with “custom,” our president’s aversion to both becomes even more obvious. Having confused informality with authenticity, and grown by dint of community organizing and bad sermons into an adversarial relationship with competence, Obama stands alone among recent presidents in making private-sector experience a disqualifier for top jobs on his economic team. He is also alone in bowing to dictators, and alone in describing the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.” Ironically, that last remark (delivered to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times in March, 2007) might describe the only ritual about which Barack Obama is publicly enthusiastic. We already know that his enthusiasms don’t extend to common American observances like the Seventh-Inning Stretch or the hand over your heart during the Star-Spangled Banner. Yet Kristof’s column bore the fulsome title, “Obama: Man of the World.”
The presidential mania for informality would be a small thing if all it meant was that even with ghostwriting help from F.O.B. (Friend of Barack) Bill Ayers, Obama won’t intrude on territory already settled by writers like Stephanie Meyer and John Steakley. But anyone who dismisses ritual as fluff, shoehorns mere rhetoric into places where ritual should be, or sneers at the pomp and circumstance with which ritual sometimes travels, is chopping at more than the foundations of horror literature. Willingness to perform ritual when appropriate is a mark of respect. Ritual bridges past, present, and future in ways that informality and improvisation cannot. Anyone dead-set against ritual bears watching, but perhaps not listening to.
About the Author
Patrick O’Hannigan is a writer in North Carolina.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Patrick O'Hannigan
More Articles From The Obama Watch
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/10/19/the-anti-ritualist
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
coal carrier| 10.19.10 @ 8:45AM
Ladies and gentlemen, who is this guy? He came out of nowhere and now he is our president. What is his experience? He was a community organizer on the public dole. Never held a job in the private sector. He was elevated to the rank of a Jr. Senator and runs for president. He campaigns on “we are going to fundamentally change the United States of America”. Fundamentally change America to what? Did anyone in the media ask this question? No they didn’t. I guess they were in awe of the Roman Columns.
My contention is that Obama is a plant. A puppet backed by big money from people like George Soros, an international financier who made billions when the British Sterling tanked. You say, wrong, Obama received small donations for the little people through the Internet. Yes he did. And who were the little people? Rank & file union workers, rank & file teacher union workers, government union workers and AFOL-CIO union workers. However he also received contributions from big money donors like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. He also received support from corporations such as GE. And where do you think the government will go for its so-called green technology?
Back to George Soros. Is he banking on the collapse of the dollar and the capitalist system of America? You can bet the farm on that. How will he benefit? How about this for an example.
BP has a disaster on its hands in the gulf. The puppet president doesn’t do anything but have photo shoots to appease the likes of James Carvel. He refuses international help to clean up the mess. He mandates the removal of oil drilling in the gulf. Then he turns around and approves billions to Mexico so they can drill for oil in the same Gulf of Mexico that he has just prevented American companies from doing. And approves billions to Brazil so they can drill off shore in the Atlantic. And, by the way, who has invested heavily in the Brazilian oil exploration market? George Soros. Is this Obma’s way of incorporating redistribution of wealth? Knowing that the U.S. market will still have a huge demand for oil, we will just have to go to the 3rd world to get it. As I said, redistribution of wealth. And he also has a way to repay Mr. Moneybags for political support. Far fetched, you say. Do your homework. The Internet is a wonderful thing. No wonder he has an Internet Czar to control the free flow of information that is cumbersome to his agenda.
So who is Barack Obama? Do you know anything about his father and his background? How about his mother and what was her ideology? What was the political ideology of his grandparents who raised him? Look at the people that he has surrounded himself with and who he looks to for support: Andy Stern, Jeff Jones and Bill Ahyers, radicals from the 60’s. Socialists looking to destroy America. Who else? Cass Sunstien, the Propaganda Czar. Van Jones, an avowed communist, just to name a few. And who are these people?
They are all socialists or communists. Not one person in his administration or sphere of influence is a free market capitalist. Ah, you say, because capitalism has failed. You say, look at the state of the economy. I say, the state of the economy is what it is not because of capitalism’s failure, but rather the outrageous, over weighted, intrusion of governmental intervention in the private sector for 50+ years. Taxation, regulation and excessive entitlements are about to bring the US to its knees. Special interest political groups and individuals with an open door to the Oval Office have raped the Treasury. Foreign aid has risen to billions of dollars, yet the worldview of the United States is at an all time low. Why do we still have our military planted in Europe and Korea 60 years after the conflicts? Why do we have to support the defense of France, Germany, Spain and Great Britain? Why can’t they support their own defense?
What do these socialists and communists want? They want the total collapse of our entire economic and financial system. They tried it in the 60’s but they failed. Their failure was due, in a large part, to our parents. The Greatest Generation would not let this happen. The men had balls and the women had guts. So overthrowing the American government by force wouldn’t work. So now they are working inside of the government. In the words of Van Jones “ We will achieve the change we want from the bottom up, from the top down and from the inside out”.
Dai Alanye | 10.19.10 @ 9:22AM
Let's give credit where credit is due. However generously Soros might be presently financing Obama, President Blessed Handsome was originally backed by anonymous Arabs. His bow to Saud was no accident.
GavInTucson| 10.21.10 @ 4:50AM
Of course he's a puppet, as most presidents have been for the last 100 years.
The last two REAL Presidents that come to my mind were Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. They railed against the system that is really in charge in the U.S (Central Banking/Federal Reserve). One was killed, and the other was nearly killed. In fact, if you look at every President that was either assassinated or nearly assassinated, you'll find that they all have one thing in common. They ran against the idea of a central banking system in the United States.
For the unwashed masses, the Constitution requires that the Congress coin and regulate money. The Federal Reserve Act (1913) changed all that and relinquished that authority to a privately owned global banking cartel. Your money is now worth what unelected bankers say it's worth.
Every new potential President is "required" to have a meeting with the Bilderberg group prior to their election. The group shapes U.S.(and world) policy (for their profit, of course), and basically gives marching orders to the incoming President... or else!!!
But don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Start YouTubing the federal reserve, ben bernake. Bernake comes right out and says that the Fed's "relationship" with the gov't is "above" the government, and not subject to congressional scrutiny. Start reading. Start learning... FAST! Your country is about to be stolen from underneath you, all in the name of NWO and what's good for you.
Steve A| 10.19.10 @ 8:52AM
Prior to reading this article there were 2 things I had agreed with Obama on. #1: Killing that fly in an interview. #2: Giving the green light for the Seals to zap the jackass pirates. Apparently, I am down to 1.
Tim*| 10.19.10 @ 9:03AM
Obama is one angry black dude with an "It's Payback Time Whitey American Crackers " Agenda .
He's the product of an absentee Failed Post Colonial African Socialist Drunk and a Flakey Mother ,who couldn't her keep foreigner husbands .
He's an AlinskyBoy , A Chicago Wise Ass Politician and an All Around Trash Talkin' Shuck & Jive Poster Boy for The Peter Principle .
The Tea Party Rebellion Escalates.
Rise Up In Rebellion.
canuckistani| 10.19.10 @ 12:42PM
....and what are you?
I like winning and I don't see a win just yet.
Give us one example of an electable pres candidate that fits your narrow view of the world?
Palin - quitter in chief
McCain - senile in chief
Romney - flip flopper in chief
Jindal - geek in chief
Pence - already said no
Pawlenty - beige paint in chief
Any TP-endorsee will be shackled by the nutjobs infiltrating the GOP and utterly turnoff the independent base with diversions. And right under your nose, wait for the Coats-Toomey axis to emerge with Ryan after his snub in the contract on America....another diversion that will hand BHO the SS wedge issue he'll sail into reelection on.
After Boehner emerges from his tanning bed on Nov 3rd, he'll be the #1 spokeman for the GOP AND the TP. Good luck with that.
The problem with populism is you have to gin it up with promises and money you don't have, and the TP has awoken the mean streak in people.
Tim*| 10.19.10 @ 1:28PM
I ain't a Pseudo-Intellect Faux Canuck .
Memo To PosseurBoy :
We Tea Party Rebels are urging Our Tea Party Kingmaker, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint to run for the Presidency in 2012 .
RCV| 10.19.10 @ 2:43PM
I'm Jim Demented, and I approved this paid message.
Tim*| 10.19.10 @ 3:24PM
You're A Tory FOP ,who's lips are stuck on King Obama's Ass LawBoy .
The Tea Party Rebellion Escalates.
Rise Up In Rebellion !
Alan Brooks| 10.19.10 @ 10:28PM
"I'm Jim Demented, and I approved this paid message"
Tim* doesn't realize that the tea party will help destroy the GOP. After the GOP takeover next year, they will fizzle out-- as there is no strategy, only tactics-- and they will go the way of the Whigs.
LeoInTheWoods| 10.20.10 @ 4:29AM
Alan,
The TEA movement is already identifying Democrat primaries in the next election cycle to promote fiscally conservative candidates for. If you think this movement is going to stop at the GOP, get ready... you've got another think coming.
canuckistani| 10.20.10 @ 8:50AM
At least I get the pseudo title.
You're a scared little bigot that wraps yourself in the flag of deceit, making alibis for the fraud TP rebellion.
I am not sad for you, you've made your choice, but I am sad for the country when fear-mongers start to take over the discourse.
Alan Brooks| 10.19.10 @ 10:23PM
"Obama is one angry black dude with an "It's Payback Time Whitey American Crackers " Agenda."
Technically, blacks have reason to pay back whites. But don't forget how many of them are sincere Christians and try hard to forgive enemies.
In fact, if I lived down South, I would attend a black church, black churchese are slightly more sincere than white churches, as it is more difficult for a rich white man to go to Heaven than it is for a poor black to go through the eye of a needle.
voted against carter| 10.20.10 @ 3:48PM
BINGO! Go to the head of the class. You must also have grown up in Chicago. Succinctly put.
Texas Mom 2012| 10.19.10 @ 9:20AM
About the only ritual Obama observes is chronic golf expeditions are vital to him.
Rituals like attending church regularly and attending the National Prayer breakfast or anything to do with prayer? He is the least Christian ritual observing in United States history. (sorry awkward phrasing alert)
It also seems to be a ritual with him to stick his big nose in events that he should not at the same time trivializing events he should. Examples of the former include the Cambridge police/beer summit (that was a ludicrous display), the Ground Zero bumbling and conflating the speech on Iraq troop withdrawals with domestic policy from the Oval Office while never mentioning Victory!
Examples of the later include failure to act quickly on the BP oil spill and then shutting down drilling causing economic devastation along the Gulf Coast. Failure to push for tort reform in the Health Care fiasco or even to address any ideas Republicans offered therefore further polarizing Congress. Failure to propose concrete ideas to Congress thereby allowing Pelosi/Reid an unrestrained Pork-a-Palooza laughingly called a stimulus...
He offered no Plan although he will be blamed because he was all over the media talking about 'my plan'... A plan that was apparently written in fairy dust because no one ever say it!!!
Alan Brooks| 10.19.10 @ 10:31PM
"Rise Up In Rebellion !"
Go ahead, Tim, you and Terry can blow up the Murrah Building-- if you wish.
Mike W| 10.19.10 @ 10:38AM
Actually, this is one area where I agree wholeheartedly with the President. There's too much ritual and pomp associated with his office - when I see a news story on TV or in print about a "Rose Garden ceremony", I know it's something I can safely zoom past, and I do.
What the U.S. needs is a ceremonial head of state, like Britain's Queen, someone who can preside over silly things like ribbon cutting while the real work of government is done by elected officials who aren't worried about whether their tie is straight. Right now the closest we have to that position is the First Lady, or maybe the Vice President.
Emma| 10.19.10 @ 1:58PM
Ritual always has a secondary effect of emphasizing something significant which, inherently, predates and outlasts the existence of the participant in the ritual. And teh won isn't about to allow public reminders of his previous non-existence or his (soon, please) future irrelevance.
Patrick| 10.19.10 @ 3:27PM
True, but then any rational narcissistic sociopath would compensate by enveloping himself in ritual and pomp, so as to enjoy making the insects crawl.
Seriously, what's the point of burning down Rome if there isn't any music to go along with it?
Patrick| 10.19.10 @ 2:51PM
"Twilight" was horror?!? I thought it was a teen-coming-of-age story mixed with fantasy elements to make the former ever so slightly less banal.
Rather, it is a few D10's short of a "Vampire the Masquerade" campaign. Whiny protagonist vampires, devoting all their time upon their angst, check. Completely enchanted human sycophant, check. Mean, butch, werewolves as semi-antagonists, check. "Evil" vampires who hate the whiners, check. Yup, sounds like Stephanie just recorded the goings on in her LARP group.
Equating "Twilight" to horror would be like equating J.R.R. Tolkien to H.P. Lovecraft. Seriously, "the Hobbit" is truer to the horror genre.
As for ritual, yes, it is very powerful in pacing and suspense. Sure, religious ritual is particularly useful in framing the antagonist as being preternaturally evil, but that is not always necessary. Vampires, however, are particularly suited in this frame. They are, in part with great intention by a Mr. Stoker, they are the ultimate exemplar of an antichrist.
Undead, drinking the blood of mortals, seductive, murderous, and propagating through murder, and so unclean they are repulsed or even damaged by things naturally astringent (garlic, silver, sunlight) and holy (holy water, Eucharist, crucifixes), vampires must be confronted by the Christian.
However, liberalism has seeped into the very core of our Western Culture, and so there must no longer be any true evil, except Republicans of course, so vampires have to be rehabilitated too. By stripping all that makes vampires so...vampiric, Stephanie Meyer creates a castrated faerie with sharp teeth that may well just angst people to death. She is not alone, much to my dismay.
Patrick| 10.19.10 @ 3:20PM
As for Obama, he's neither a convincing hero (for the left), or villian (for anyone else). He's, well, boring.
Sure, he's sucking the lifeblood out of my livelihood, draining the vigor from our nation for his own unnatural brood of well dressed parasites, and any number of vampiric parallels, but once the novelty fades, there's nothing left but a clueless, leftist hack intent upon destroying his own position and credibility.
The One We've Been Waiting For| 10.19.10 @ 10:18PM
We're buying shrimp, RCV. This is all so depressing. You are my only steady troll. The rest have abandoned me. They feel I haven't lived up to my promises with don't ask, don't tell. I was abandoned by my father and my mother. The only person who ever stood up for me I stabbed in the back with my typical white person remark and you all expect loyalty. Get serious, I'm all out. As long as I have to analyze myself what about you.? Why are all trolls gay? And why do they pretend to be straight? I guess anybody who would use their sewage removal facilities as an amusement park has no credibility. This would explain a lot. They have no credibility even amongst themselves so they pretend to be understanding straight people. The usual profile is that they have a kid at the University of Michigan or somewhere. Go blue. I am good at understanding why people do things. I could probably make money at this. It is not as much fun as golf though. That is my calling. Cap and trade, baby.
Yosemeti Sam| 10.20.10 @ 1:15AM
" ... Barack Obama will never write an acclaimed vampire novel ...."
No?
Consider BHO's sunk his teeth into America.
And he won't let go until the last red drop is sucked.
Who better to write about vampirism from an autobiographical perspective?