2008 Election

After listening to the hundreds of hours the media have forced onto the airwaves of Barack Obama blowing hot air and smoke, I’ve noticed a familiar cadence in his speech and manner. In fact, as I listened more and more and noticed the nuances and mannerisms, even terminology, I searched my memory for the connection. He sounds like someone. He sounds like one of those self-help lecturers. After a lot of struggle and even some doubt as to whether I was imagining it, I finally placed the fence-sitter’s choice award winning performance. His voice, his movements, his tone, …his whole persona is a carefully crafted and rehearsed impression of Tony Robbins.

As the realization sunk in, another realization hit me; no wonder his empty rhetoric and out-of-nowhere-but-crooked-Chicago-politics origin have not hindered his rise to populist popularity. No wonder the common folk (some say simple minded) fall so easily for his hypnotic ambiguity. HE’S A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER! Not an inspirational speaker, not an truth speaker, not even an empathetic speaker. This difference between B.O. and Robbins is that motivational speaker B.O. keeps all of his talking points in the ethereal realm of “hope” and “change” and, as much as possible, avoids the facts of reality.

It’s only been in recent weeks, since McCain’s started using his teeth, that Obama’s begun to abandon the happy-because-I-decide-to-be cirrus world of the golden and happy-tongued.

Though I can’t definitively verify the connection between Obama and Robbins, a cursory search returned ample references to that connection, several claiming certain knowledge that Barry was trained by Robbins. (If you know any different or can confirm, feel free to comment.)

For the record, I understand from soaking up public sentiment over my life that Tony Robbins has made millions of dollars helping a great many people for exactly as long as those people stay in the bubble and procedure of belief in his system. Though I don’t know much about his programs and have never seen him speak, I know the self-help lecturer type and I know the effects of those programs. When there’s substance, it’s a good thing. When substance and sound policy is absent, it’s mass hypnosis.

There’s nothing wrong with people seeking to improve themselves and seeking advice on that pursuit from those who they believe have experienced success. The problem I have is when a extremist politician stands in front of the country and builds a presidential campaign on a tick-perfect impression of a filthy-rich famous (and very liberal) motivational speaker. Barack Obama shouldn’t want the presidency on mirroring someone else’s performance without the substance. He may have the performance down, but by discerning his words we suspect that he’s still just the angry kid with a tumor of a chip on his shoulder that metastasized by the teachings of questionable parenting until supported and saved by stable grandparents, though one was a “racist”, so he says. An angry kid shaped by charity education and then radicals and corrupt politics afterward.

When I think of Obama, a quote from the most recent Bond movie, Casino Royale, keeps popping into my head, so I’ll let you decide if the shoe fits…

… by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, my guess is you didn’t come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it. Which means that you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity: hence that chip on your shoulder.

Obama’s a stage performer, and one inch deep, not a change agent.