PrintJanuary 6, 2012
How Obama Lost His Postmodern Groove
On December 9, President Barack Obama sat down for a lengthy interview with Steve Croft of 60 Minutes, unaided by speechwriters or teleprompters. In the course of it, not surprisingly, he showed himself to be almost as vain and unreflective as the late dear leader, Kim Jong-il.
Obama put his own accomplishments above those of any president, with the "possible exceptions" of LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln, and as to personal insights, he could offer up only self-serving bromides like "I'm a persistent son of a gun. I just stay at it."
Those who got to know Obama through his acclaimed 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father had to be at least a little disappointed. For that one brief, shining moment, Obama emerged as an all-out, balls-to-the-wall postmodernist -- self-absorbed perhaps, but as anguished and introspective as a monk.
Although postmodernism is as hard to define as pornography, postmodernists are not hard to spot. As a rule, they reject the possibility of an...(Read Full Article)
