Obama: Dating Radical Chic

by Barry Artiste | June 7, 2008 at 05:22 am | 203 views | add comment

Opinion
Barry Aritise, Now Public Contributor

Though I am not up on American Politics, I do know something of the Radical Left, the Left who espouse equality for all, except when it comes to themselves.

To appease any guilt they feel, they will open their wallets and throw money (with a Tax receipt of course) at a social problem or cause which will not go away. The Radical Left hope by giving money and not getting involved that somehow they will sleep better at night and have something to talk about at their elitist dinner parties, as they furrow their brows in earnest while sipping chardonnay, and munching on appetizers. Hollywood is full of them, Celebs who certainly never practice what they preach, at least in private.

Perhaps it is said best if one has ever watched Team America "World Police", written by Pam Brady, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Though hilarious, there is a grain of truth in what is "Hypocrisy" in Politics and the Radical Left.

Lefties who are ordinary Joes and Janes in the trenches
know what I am talking about, when they are frustrated by those who say one thing, yet Hem and Haw when asked to get their hands dirty, make a stand, make a difference, and then do the opposite when push comes to shove.

As a Right Wing Conservative, I admire some Lefties, I hold in the highest regard who truly put their actions before money. I consider Ex Federal NDP Leader Ed Broadbent one of the few who I know and respect personally.

I truly believe we need the Doves of the Left, we need that balance, but a balance complete with the Hawks to back them up in case the left of diplomacy takes a right turn.

If Obama becomes the next president, one wonders if he will go with his conscience and not the will of the Radical Left who think they bought and paid for him.

I hope Obama will realise the delicate balance of Left Wing and Right Wing, as they are both on the same Bird of Prey.

Tom Wolfe, dean of contemporary American writers, was not quite 40 when he published two long essays in 1970 in a slim book titled Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.

The essays were a witty, biting look into what American society was experiencing in the midst of an unpopular war in distant Vietnam and the racial/class violence in its inner cities.

In Radical Chic, Wolfe wrote about New York's rich folks on the Upper East Side -- folks with their "weekend place, in the country or by the shore," and with their absolute "psychological necessity" to afford servants tending to their hourly needs -- embracing the left-liberal politics of students and their university teachers while patronizing the leaders of radical movements who were terrifying middle America.

Wolfe portrayed Leonard Bernstein, famed conductor of the New York Philharmonic, giving a party at his home to raise money for those who posed as Marxist-Leninist-Maoists and espoused the cause of liberating Afro-Americans from "capitalist" exploitation, as did the Black Panther Party. This was the time when baby boomers were in full flight -- their heads filled with drugs, music, free love and revolution -- to turn the world upside down in solidarity with peasants of the Third World.In 1968 baby boomers crashed the Democratic Party's convention in Chicago, and as the fever of the radical movement took its toll in riots, murders and assassinations, Bernstein and friends felt morally superior in raising their fists and opening their wallets in support of those who yelled mindlessly "power to the people."Forty years and a generation later boomers and the Radical Chic, whose antics doomed the Democrats in the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972, are back in full force, unchastened and non-remorseful, behind Barack Hussein Obama.