Is Obama Channeling a Cult Movie Hero?
You can hear all the great leaders of the past in Barack Obama’s stentorian voice, see them in his confident bearing, feel them with his preacher’s urgency: JFK, RFK, MLK.
Or can you? Maybe Obama’s primary source of inspiration is none of these. Maybe it’s Cyrus.
Cyrus, like many of the cultural deities of our time (Roseanne, Seal, Gallagher) did not require a last name. He was simply Cyrus; the healer, the leader, the visionary. At the start of the 1979 cult classic The Warriors
Cyrus, like Obama, arrives at his position on the basis of buzz. “Everybody says that Cyrus is the one and only,” says the leader of the Warriors gang. Another gangbanger, asked what he knows of Cyrus, replies, “Magic. Whole lot of magic.” Obama is described as magic more often than Earvin Johnson (though Johnson himself, perhaps feeling his nickname was endangered, derided Obama as “a rookie”). “He’s the one and only,” another hoodlum says of Cyrus. Compare that with Oprah Winfrey’s comment, “I know Obama is the one.”
Cyrus casts his gaze over an admiring throng — the downtrodden, the cast-off, the freaks, the underemployed, the young, the minorities, the criminals and the just plain angry — that basically encapsulates the Democratic party. The only missing element is the rich-but-guilty class that funds all of the above and whose response to hardened thugs like these is to offer them more chances to play midnight basketball.
Cyrus is a master politician. Here he is on the awesome power of coalition building: “Can you count, suckers? I say the future is ours if you can count!” He explains, “Now look what we have here before us. We got the Saracens sitting next to the Jones Street Boys. We’ve got the Moonrunners right by the Van Cortlandt Rangers. Nobody is wasting nobody. That is a miracle. And miracles is the way things ought to be.”
He continues, “the problem in the past has been the Man turning us against one another. We’ve been unable to see the truth.” Obama assails those who would “slice and dice this country into red states and blue states, blue collar and white collar, white, black, brown, young, old, rich, poor” and vows, “We will end it by telling the truth.”
Like Obama, who believes taxes are too low, Cyrus has a populist, redistributionist economic program based on lifting up the underclass (“We could tax the crime syndicates, the police….because we got the streets, suckers!”). Saying there are as many as 60,000 gang members in the city, Cyrus notes that uniting so many of the powerless would yield enough juice to crush the ruling elite: “Now there ain’t but 20,000 police in the whole town!” Obama, too, vows to take on the powerful by being the lord of the losers: “That’s how we’ve always changed this country, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.”
So Cyrus has the support of an organized criminal enterprise; Obama has the support of the Teamsters Union. Cyrus even sounds a bit like a union chief when he praises the extortionary power of work stoppages and slow-downs: “Nothing would move without us allowing it to happen.”
Possibly Obama, who was 17 when The Warriors came out, saw the picture as a young man and marveled at the way Cyrus, a galvanizing speaker who appears to be a mixture of various ethnicities, is referred to as “the president” (of the biggest gang in the city) called upon to address a gathering of “delegates” from 100 different gangs. Maybe when Obama heard Cyrus call out to the frenzied faithful, “Can you dig it? Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IT?” an idea formed in Obama’s head about the power of meaningless catchphrases.
Maybe Obama was dazed by the adoration of Cyrus’s audience and the way that, even when Cyrus pauses dramatically, the audience can barely contain itself, shouting, “Come, on Cyrus, we’re with you!” and “Go ahead, bro!” Or, possibly, Obama, who gets his suits from Burberry, simply admired the sharp styling of his predecessor in rabble-rousing. Cyrus wears a loose-sleeved, chest-baring two-toned robe that seems to scream “multiculturally certified,” “Liza Minnelli lounge wear” or maybe just “cult leader.”
Anyone comparing JFK to Ohhhhhh….BAMA is clueless. Remember JFK was the first Neo-Con, a tax cutter of the first order and started wars in Cuba and Vietnam. Tell me a Fable;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfU4KA6lQjI&feature=related
Most of the Heroes of the left don’t even come close to the fables told of them.
Che was a psychopath, not a revolutionary. He was Castro’s pet murderer, noted for shooting peons in the nape of the neck. After their hands were tied behind their back.
Politically, you couldn’t get a nanotube between JFK’s politics and George Bush’s. Ever want to see a liberal democrat start spewing and stroking out, just have them compare positions of JFK and President Bush. Peas in a pod as we say down here. The biggest difference between the two is President Bush isn’t boffing everything in skirts he runs across. JFK made Billy Blue Dress look like the Pope.
I don’t know this film, but I’d swear The Obamboozler’s handlers are using Eric Hoffer’s 1951 book, “The True Believer” as their Bible…that is to say, as far as socialists have a Bible other than “The Communist Manifesto”….
Wow. You guys really don’t get why he’s popular. Good luck.
Yeah between “Obama” an’ “Osama” is a B. an’ an’ S. That’s BS. Bull sh*t or if you like B.ruce S.pringsteen, A SONY(Japanese)employee who in the 80′s sang about the hardships of American Auto industry lay-offs,(even the strikers used his song’s as anthems)only to end up as the shill fer the reason behind those lay-off’s)..It’s the same precedent that people like Bob Dylan exploited…that Harry Truman, “Goood ole boy”, Will Roger’s populist schtick backed by a bunch of thugs an’ racket bosses. I mean if it was about leadership Republicans would an’ could but don’t, squash ‘em with Colin Powell. Even the Republicans are makin’ deals. You know, stick a few bums in the ring..so the “Champion” gets a string of “KO’s”. This is the Age of Cosmetics an’ lipstick economy. I remember in ’99, I was in the NAVY when JKF Jr. died, an’ my mom told me it was because he was thinkin’ of goin into politics….which by all means would have cleaned house.Politically JFK Jr. had it all goin’ for him…the nation would have embraced him passionately….an’ the Clinton’s knew it, the Gore’s knew it..e’ry street pest with his eyes on the prize knew it…an’I smell a rat.
Obama has that stink of “Kawalla Man” money (I also see some connections in the looter’s ideology that gave us the ’92 LA riots..an’ act of terrorisim, being revised an disguised as “social uprising”..the looter’s actually gained Political clout for their act of aggression an’transgression.Big Trouble in Little K-Town. Who in all right,reason an’ rationale could find comparison or even dare such a perversion of “equality” in the case of Reginald Denny’s as oppossed to Rodney King’s? This was a legacy of the Bush Presidency.). All that loot’s, in today’s atmosphere of the quick an’ easy, “it’s all good” transportation an’ transaction to findin’ it’s way steady into the coffers of AlQueda…an’ thus the political climate is under corrupt influence an’ the institutions of the nation endangered.
Interestin’ you make the Cinema/Political connect also…It’s deeper I think…in the 80′s a lot of Middle Eastern monies were bein’ dumped into Hollywood.A cheap movie make’s a lot of “legitimate” returns. Plus with a movie you get to paint an’ idealized picture fer a cause, in a spectacular way, by “suspension of disbelief” that’s inherent in yer product thuse eliminatin’ the need fer real elemental factor an’ consequence. (though I kinda think, that’s the real fantasy fer a fooll ta believe…that you can rip-off this world…that the world don’t have to weigh it, an’ set things straightit straight)But with slingin’ celluloid, you get yer ten bucks no matter what that boob in the audience thinks…an’ that ten bucks has much more value then yer zebra stripes painted on a donkey….because it it’s drawn out of other sources of industry and reasources. Most of ‘em legitimate.
How Hollywood can make millionaires out of drug dealers demands preventative legislation.
Amusing piece! (But prepare to be called “a hater”.)
My two cents:
Some Obama supporters don’t seem to realize that they court this type of mockery by their over-the-top adulation of the man. I’m glad to see people lampooning this hero-worship zealotry. I’d be concerned if people weren’t.
An unfettered ego is a dangerous thing. And people willing to feed that ego seal their own fate; usually not for the better.
Whether Obama studied this movie or not is a moot point. The man IS a student of what it takes to succeed politically and he is a master orator that knows how to say all the right things, without really saying anything at all…
Another movie that comes to mind is “Being There”, with Peter Sellers as Chauncey “Chance” Gardiner. A
man who becomes a presidential candidate while essentially a blank canvas on which each of the film’s characters paint their own picture, sometimes making Chance out to be much more than he really is.
The truth is, of course, Obama’s “mystique” and “mythology” is of our own making, but not without his own acquisence. He does his job of saying what we want to hear, in a way that is both meaningless and meaningful, and we do our part by projecting the passion for policy, the message for a “miracle”, the demagoguery for “destiny”.
Never before in American history of Presidential politics, has such an “empty suit” of SO little accomplishments or experience, been promoted to the possible pinnacle of power with little more than words that tickle our ears. Sure, he’s run a great campaign, he’s gathered powerful endorsements, and his ability to raise money is phenomenal…but what has he REALLY done with his life other than set the stage, bit by bit, for his life’s quest to be President? It is both fightening and fascinating…
Those that are fascinated, are there in his corner…those that are frightened (like me), at what might happen under an Obama Presidency (with a majority Democratic congress) are able to see through the empty rhetoric and decide that we need far more than promises and posturing. We need a leader who is PROVEN and READY…we need McCain!
Is he that popular? I was under the impression that quite a lot of people in the Democratic Party, not to mention the rest of the country, find him hard to stomach.
“Proud Democrat,” As a FORMER +/-30 year Demmocrat, I DO “get” why he’s popular:
SEE THE FAMOUS YOUTUBE PARROT
“Obama” Squwak! Yes we – squwak – can! Yes we can! Obama! Squwak! YES WE CAN!”
proud dhimmicrat – Let me guess, b/c people like you are idiots and will fall for someone who speaks well but has nothing beyond rhetoric. you’re the one who needs the luck.
this is an unfortunate analogy in that Cyrus gets killed.
dumb choice, tool.
I’m having a hard time wondering whose hot air chaps my hide worse, Kyle Smith or Obama. Then I remember that with all the forced analogies, requirements for suspended disbelief, drollness of subject matter and contrived significance that is shared between Obama and Smith, at least one won’t ruin my country. Smith, you are a poor analyst, a conservative tool (and being that I’m conservative, that derogation actually means something) and boring. Since your review of There Will Be Blood, you have been my least favorite writer in PJM and you won’t be getting any more clicks from me.
“Proud democrat:
Wow. You guys really don’t get why he’s popular. Good luck.”
Sure we do, Or at least I do. He is a half black David Duke. He speaks well. That is code for he lies a lot.
Ohhhh…..BAMA is a demagogue. Not the first one I’ve seen. After you see a few, you will understand what is going on.
Ohhhh…..BAMA is a Marxist. Not the first one I’ve seen. After you see a few, you will understand what is going on.
Basically, Ohhhh….BAMA has built his campaign on 3 voter blocks. Blacks, youngsters and Marxists. Less then 20% of the popular vote and about 10% of the EV’s. He hasn’t been able to expand his ‘movement’ because the rest of us have heard that pretty stuff before.
Jefferson Airplane said it best;
When the truth is found…
to be lies
and all the joy within you dies…
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love.
So when Ohhhh…BAMA proves to be smoke and mirrors, which always happens with demagogues,
Those youngsters will be looking for somebody to love.
Big John will take them on the bounce.
“Talk to me, tenderly.
Show me I’m in a fantasy.
We’ll bind together, only you and me.
Ohhhh…..BAMA is a smart man. He knows a coalition of racial bigots, innocent youngsters and ageing radicals isn’t enough to get him into the white house. That is why he is reaching out so desperately to mainstream America.
Mainstream America isn’t reaching back.
Keep your luck, you will need all you can get. Besides luck is a feeling. Conservatives don’t do feelings.
WE do history. Nobody as far left as Ohhhh…..BAMA has ever won the white house, except maybe FDR.
WE do math. The contenders for the Democratic nomination are tied right now at zero. There are NO DELEGATES until the party convention is called to order. As far as counting them now, that is how fools with nothing better to do spend their time. The rules of the Democratic party allow ANY delegate to ‘vote their consceince’. So a pledged delegate really isn’t pledged.
We do demographics. Pollsters under poll Hispanics. Not sure if that is a language thingie or a cultural one, but it is a fact. Google it. Hispanics are polling against Ohhh….BAMA by about 7 to 3. California, with it’s 40%+ Hispanic population is in play. As are most of the western fly over states.
WE do EV’s( 2000 Election).
So you need to go for all the luck you can generate.
On a cold Wednesday morn in November, dreams will meet reality. AS always, reality will win. On a positive note, it will still be ‘change’, just not the change you had in mind. Plus it will mean Hill-de-beast didn’t hi-jack the nomination. Which is what I’m betting on.
Political Conventions are protected speech under the 1st Amendment. So Bribery, Blackmail and arm twisting are not crimes, but free speech. I expect the Clinton’s next door neighbor to show up with a tractor trailer full of 100 dollar bills.
The democratic party will have the best Presidential candidate money can buy.
Does that make FOX NEWS the Baseball Furies? God, I loved “THE WARRIORS” so much, it’s unhealthy. Walter Hill is a genius. Check out his brilliant 1975 Bronson pic, “HARD TIMES.”
The hero is so cool and blank. The fights are so fierce and yet ritualized. That movie would make a great political metaphor, as well. It’s set during the depression and hasn’t aged a day.
The great thing is that even if Obama loses the GE, we get John McCain for President.
Same lefty policies, with vastly less push-back from Republican Congress-critters. Sweet.
If you guys had another Reagan this time, you’d all have a big fanboy man-crush on your candidate. What gets your goat about Obama’s revival-tent crowds is that McCain couldn’t pack the lot at Gas’N'Go if he gave away a free fill-up to every supporter.
Oh, and thanks for reminding us that conservatives “don’t do feelings.” Your cold Vulcan logic, grasp of history and demographic insight got you the 2006 midterms AND the 2008 Presidential candidate NO conservative wanted. Good luck with THAT, Spock.
Thanks for the movie memory. But cyrus, unlike obama, probably rose to his position through some kind of action because the streets aren’t as suceptible to charm and bs as the political world. IF he wins, he’ll be rolled by reality – he’ll stay in iraq – and infuriate the left that supported him fanatically.
Can anyone tell me in plain standard English what SeanSarto is talking about? Man, talk about a muddled mind.
We will have the White House For 4 years. Maybe the pubbies will grow some spines before the election too.
“We will have the White House For 4 years. Maybe the pubbies will grow some spines before the election too.”
A yup, But don’t count your chickens just yet. Of the candidates the dems have put forth there is a half black Marxist, trailer trash, and a tired old war horse. I’ll bet on the war horse.
Can anyone tell me in plain standard English what SeanSarto is talking about? Man, talk about a muddled mind.
Nope, I barely get by in American, much less what ever sort of language he is using. It brought to mind the commercial about minds being a terrible thing to waste where the egg was frying in the pan.
Talk about empty suits … G B is as empty as they come. oh yeah he did execute a bunch of cons and bankrupted a baseball team besides a few oil firms . Now thats political experince fer ya
welcome to the future LOSERS .. Mcsame will soon forget why he’s even here or where he’s at until lieberman reminds him . Choice …
Huh?
Obama as black gang leader?
You think this trope will be taken seriously?
Trust me.
It won’t.
Incidentally, THIS is totally false.
JFK was a tough liberal. Which is not at all as you suggest.
>John Samford:
Anyone comparing JFK to Ohhhhhh….BAMA is clueless. Remember JFK was the first Neo-Con, a tax cutter of the first order and started wars in Cuba and Vietnam. Tell me a Fable;
Goodness, what a sad comment on American Education this is!
The Warriors is not just a “cult” flim. It is a very thinly veiled retelling, in a modern setting, of Xenophon’s Anabasis, also known as “The March of the Ten Thousand”. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_%28Xenophon%29 and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon ) Just as “West Side Story” is “Romeo and Juliet” only set in NYC, “The Warriors” is “The Anabasis” only set in NYC. This is obvious to anyone who is even vaugely aware of the source material.
As such Cyrus (in the movie) is a stand in for the real Cyrus the Younger, (hence the name and the robe as a choice of costume). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Younger
The Cyrus (in the movie) is only there as a plot device in order to explain why “the Warriors” are so deep in enemy territory; and thusly have to make the “march up country”. (Again the gang’s name is “The Warriors” an obvious hat tip to Xenophon and the Ten Thousand… get it?)
Cyrus (in the movie) and his “magic” are only a plot divice. His short monologe was created to help set up the plot; there is no meaning to it. That it mirrors standard leftist themes is not a suprise. What sort of speech would you expect gang members to come out to see? To the best of my knowledge the New York City street gangs don’t all come out for Billy Grahm Crusades or Barbra Streisand concerts; and I don’t see them dropping everything to attend a Bill Bennet talk on the importance of education.
This is a poor choice of analogy, at best, (in that Cyrus dies early in the film), and confession of a rather poor eduction at worst.
I’m with P.ami on this.
cyrus dies,
use stasi instead of marxist. it really gets to them..