Category Archives: Barack Obama

October 4, 2012, 9:08 pm

Things I Didn’t Tweet, And Questions That Were Not Asked, In the (Not So) Great Presidential Debate

When the Twitterati were peaking, Big Bird was getting 17,000 sympathetic tweets a minute.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that, in my view, what wasn’t talked about at the first Presidential debate last night was more remarkable than what was.

I’m not spinning it like my pals in the liberal media are — although I’m relieved and happy to see that the President’s energy has returned today. (Favorite admonishment? It’s from Rachel Maddow, after a superb presentation on the history of modern presidential debate: “As for the national bedwetting going on among Democrats today? C’mon! Buck up!”)

All right! But like many folks on the left who were Tweeting last night, I rocketed from unpleasant emotion to unpleasant emotion: boredom, fear, rage, anxiety are a few. I even became uncharacteristically…

August 24, 2012, 4:48 pm

Money Boys Got A Boo-Boo, Want Barack To Kiss It

By Claire Potter

In this week’s New Yorker, political reporter Jane Mayer unveils what we at Tenured Radical are not learning from those fifteen or sixteen robo-mails that come off the interwebz and onto our desktop: the Obama campaign is behind on its fundraising primarily because liberal-minded billionaires who floated the campaign in 2008 are unhappy.

“But they are billionaires, Radical!” you say — astonished. “Why are the billionaires unhappy?”

Apparently it has nothing to do with Obamacare or the tax code. It’s about parties. It’s about showing the love. According to his critics in the Hamptons, Malibu and Palo Alto, the President doesn’t call to schmooze, doesn’t drop them notes, and doesn’t send bar mitzvah cards. He doesn’t do endless “grip ‘n grin photos” that donors spend 10K for so that they can pretend to their friends that they are Barack O’Buddies. He doesn’t call the…

June 19, 2012, 8:59 pm

It’s Summer: Let’s Tee Up Some History Shorts

By Claire Potter

Obama may have made history by being the first president to golf in cargo shorts.

Word has it that all of us will be wearing shorts on Thursday, as the temperature rises into the high 90s. So let’s start the chilling with a…

Cold War Cultural Revival. You thought that the membership of the American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association and the Organization of American Historians had collectively driven a stake through the heart of American Exceptionalism. But someone from the Republican National Committee fished your old copies of Frederick Jackson Turner and Lionel Trilling out of the book donation box at the local library.

In April 2011, your favorite Radical twigged you to a Sarah Palin speech in which she explained that her appearance at the Iowa State Fair was intended, not…

January 10, 2012, 4:36 pm

Go Ahead New Hampshire and Iowa, Have All The Fun

By Claire Potter

In Connecticut we wait and wait, but the candidates don't come. (Photo Credit: the Guardian)

We in the Nutmeg State follow primaries in other states with great eagerness. Why? Because presidential candidates don’t campaign for our votes here, and we almost never see them, either in the primary season or during the general election. In the last cycle, Obama held a big rally in Hartford and another in Bridgeport. But given the fact that he has done little for cities, including not having an education policy, my prediction is that Obama won’t go farther north than Westport for this year’s campaign. Just like in Iowa, during the “Fairfield County caucuses,” ordinary Americans in our wealthiest suburbs gather democratically in each others’ living rooms and huddle in the corners.

Unlike Iowa, however…

August 4, 2011, 5:36 pm

As President Obama Turns (The Clock Back On Women’s Rights)

By Claire Potter

Is President Obama now starring in Ronald Reagan Theater?

In case you think nothing good came out of the Congressional budget ~~free for all~~ negotiations that ended at the beginning of this week, think again. You will be cheered to know that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius seized the moment. While everyone was distracted by the Tea Party and the President taking political a$$hattery to a new low, Sibelius slipped a major reform enacted under the Affordable Care Act over the transom: no co-pays for insured women seeking gynecological care. As WebMD reported: “Health care reform requires new insurance plans to fully cover women’s preventive care, which now will include free birth control, yearly wellness visits, breastfeeding counseling and equipment, and screening for…

February 24, 2011, 1:15 pm

Every Little Queer Vote Matters: Reflections On The Demise Of DOMA

By Claire Potter

“Oh my G-d, he’s marrying another man!”

Now that Rahm Emanuel has gone off to work his magic on Chicago, it seems that everyone in the Obama White House has gone a little light in the loafers, as my Dad used to say. Clinton-era palliatives to the right wing that beat back the gays, while Republicans reorganized to elect a president who would send our money and our jobs abroad, are dropping like flies. First the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell received a timetable for withdrawal, and yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act because it is unconstitutional.

In both cases, the Obama administration is holding out an olive branch to liberals who have been in an impatient “show me” mood. But looked at another way, one of the things we know about conservatives is that they are increasingly less persuaded, as a…

November 9, 2010, 12:50 am

Department of Uniquely Tacky Political History Gifts

By Claire Potter

Seriously? Chia Obama? I saw this on TV tonight and couldn’t wait to run upstairs and log in.

The good news is that Chia Obama is part of the “Proud To Be An American” series that includes Chia Washington, Chia Lincoln and Chia Statue of Liberty. If you go to this part of the Chia Products website, you will see that Chia Washington has his green hair neatly trimmed colonial style, whereas Chia Lincoln, Chia Obama and Chia Liberty all have a neat ‘fro.

We are living in amazing times. I don’t think a sitting President has ever been honored with his own Chia, come to think of it. So buy one now — for that historian who has everything. For a limited time only. $19.95 + $7.95 shipping and handling. Free shipping with two or more. Buy Chia Obama for the whole American wing of your department. It’s never too soon to start thinking about the holidays.

August 20, 2010, 12:10 am

Annals of American Ignorance: Or; The President Prays Every Day, And So Should We All

By Claire Potter

It’s all over the news lately that, according to a new poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly one in five Americans is dumber than a rock — er, I mean, thinks that Barack is a Muslim (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The increase in those who believe that Obama sneaks off to the mosque behind our backs — seven percent since last spring- is accompanied by a “sharp decline” of 14% in the number of Americans who think Obama is a Christian.

In May 2009, LiveScience reported that one out of five Americans admit that they pee in the swimming pool. The Centers for Disease Control reports that one out of six Americans has genital herpes, one out of five Americans infected with HIV do not know they have it, the American Dental Association reports (gag!!) that one out of five Americans surveyed do not brush their teeth twice a day, and the National…

July 25, 2010, 2:33 pm

Sunday Radical Roundup: Surely The Obama Presidency Means We Are Now Beyond Race

By Claire Potter

To paraphrase Leslie Nielson in Airplane (1980), “No, not if we are firing black people in public service for talking about race — and don’t call me Shirley.” Even out in Minnesota, where the Radical family was taking a vacation from all things political, everyone was aware that it wasn’t a great week to be Shirley. Read good commentaries in today’s New York Times from Frank Rich, a particularly lucid Maureen Dowd, and Van Jones on the Shirley Sherrod affair.

Sherrod’s firing and rehiring by Tom Vilsack, a Midwestern progressive who should have known better (and a West Wing that either signed off or insisted on it) is a teachable moment. Ponder, if you will, what this event tells us about the cynical use of race in contemporary political culture. Why the Obama administration can’t do better than it does, particularly given the historical lessons of the Clinton years in which…

What, exactly, has happened to feminism?

If Joanne Lipman’s peculiar rant in yesterday’s New York Times about why women should only blame themselves for the lack of gender equality in the so-called “post-feminist” world was not enough to inspire this question (see Historiann for extended commentary), read today’s paper. A front-page story by Mark Leibovich features former Clintonista Dee Dee Myers wagging a finger at President Obama for playing sports with men. Forget it that a grown woman who calls herself Dee Dee, and whose job description seems to be pundit, is accusing the President of not taking female people seriously. Forget it that Dee Dee would know better than anyone that it is not always a good thing for the President to relax by playing with girls.

No, I am going to lay those issues aside and cut to the chase: who the President plays basketball with has nothing to do with…