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Showing posts from January, 2009

Obama "blackwashes" US power

Obama promises the USA Rawlsian balls Obama will be cowed into compromising over any plans to tax and spend on the poor unless that spending is merely strategic, focused and highly limited - and he suggested as much in his speech. I had an hour long conversation with my brother on the phone who had flown over to be at the inauguration. He thinks I am being offensively ungenerous. Isn’t Obama better than Bush, Phil? Obama is such a well meaning sincere chap. A gent. A sincere man who deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry, but the right way to see Obama, Chris, is as the face of a massively expensive marketing exercise on behalf of US corporate capitalism. You’ve heard of “greenwash” well isn’t Obama a kind of “blackwash”. My brother described the inauguration as an African American’s day out. A day when the dreams for African American equality came much closer. Point taken. And what a salutory effect the Obama must have on a racially divided country and a traumatised African Amer