Obama's political success was built on his ability to invoke values detached from belief systems. To break away symbols and ideals from religious and national value systems, and mix and match them into his own sound bites. Like the famous Hope poster, that mixed patriotic color schemes with socialist realism, or his own speeches which invoked the Founders in support of socialism.
The Obama wave was piggybacking on a culture where context had ceased to matter. Obama's image had more in common with the way hip hop artists sample songs, than with a symphony. His campaign was the perfect trailer to a movie that would never be released. It was the marriage of corporate advertising campaigns, pop culture, radical politics and Americana-- thrown together in a pot and boiled into one indecipherable mix that was appealing, and yet completely void of meaning.
Obama kept on saying very little of substance, yet entertaining his audiences. His speeches called up spirituality devoid of religion, Americana devoid of patriotism and ideals devoid of ideas. He appropriated them all and used them as props in his show.
His obvious inspiration for this was not Jeremiah Wright, who did provide plenty of textual inspiration, but Oprah herself. Oprah's success lay in marketing that same diffuse spirituality, not grounded in any actual belief system. Instead what she offered was an endless self-centered buffet, spirituality as self-empowerment, with herself and her chosen gurus as the center of a new commercial belief system.
Obama echoed that same self-centered appeal, telling audiences, "We are the ones we have been waiting for", a quote from one of Oprah's favorite authors, and appealing to their own search for meaning.
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