Sherry Chandler

A political figure of mythological proportions?

At The New Republic, John Judis makes the case for Barack Obama as The American Adam:

Looming over all of American history–but particularly the country’s formative years–is the Biblical figure of Adam, the only person, according to the West’s major religions, to have lived unburdened by what came before him. As literary critic R.W.B. Lewis wrote in 1955, in his wonderful book The American Adam, early generations of Americans became captivated by the idea that they could create a future without reference to the past. The revolutionaries who fought for America’s independence saw themselves as breaking not only with the Old World but with history itself.

…

In his Studies in Classic American Literature, which appeared in 1923, D.H. Lawrence identified the celebration of the new and the rejection of the old as “the true myth of America.” According to this myth, Lawrence wrote, America “starts old, old, wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing of the old skin, towards a new youth.” The myth of America as Adam runs through our country’s literature–from Walt Whitman’s self-description as a “chanter of Adamic songs / Through the new garden the West,” to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby to Ralph Ellison’s invisible man. And it reemerges periodically in American politics–usually during times of upheaval or discontent.

…

Obama’s youthful unlined face, his exotic name, and his unusual upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia by a white mother and grandparents, black father, and Indonesian stepfather contribute to the sense that he can give the United States a fresh start. He is like Herman Melville’s Adamic hero, Billy Budd, a foundling who was “happily endowed with the gayety of high health, youth and a free heart” and “looked even younger than he really was.

I would like to pause here to point out that, though Billy Budd may have been presented as a type of the American Adam, he did not come to a good end, nor was he presented to us as a viable role model because he was just too naive to live. Nor, though he was the center of a considerable mancrush, did he manage to act as a savior.

Not arguing that Barack Obama is either innocent or naive. Just talking about the full resonance of the analogy.

Oh well, cynical old Melville was the spoiler in the myth of American exceptionalism, and so, apparently, am I:

Of course, as New York Times columnist Gail Collins has remarked, some voters are repelled by a promise of fundamental change. “Women–especially older women–are often politically risk-averse,” she writes

Well, there’s the teeth drawn from my vagina dentata, pitiful thing that it is anyway, all dried up with age. Just a Grinch by definition (to mix my metaphors), just slavering to steal Christmas. After all, if Gail Collins says it is so, it must be so.

Here’s an interesting statement to make about a type of Adam:

Former Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont said of Obama, “I’ve fallen for him.”

And so did we all fall for Adam if I remember my Genesis. Seems like there was something about getting thrown out of Paradise, maybe some angels with flaming swords.

It may be true that I’m just an old crone, or perhaps a Lilith, a spoiler in the charmed circle of Eden, but women don’t have too much reason to get het up over the Adam myth. And I do believe that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again in the belief that you’ll get a different result.

Huckleberry Finn was a type of the American Adam but he had to light out for the territory. Jay Gatsby was another, mooning over the blue light at the end of Daisy’s dock. How the flaming swords have diminished but he still wasn’t able to regain his paradise.

Overall, I’d say the Adam thing hasn’t worked out too well for us. We have exceptionally and innocently committed genocide, slavery and miscegenation. We have innocently raped a continent from sea to shining sea. We are now innocently consuming most of the world’s resources with a whole world economy depending upon our maxing our our credit cards.

I’ve had it with innocence. I’m ready for some hard-eyed realism. Maybe with a few laugh wrinkles around those eyes.

Afterthought: I would like to reiterate that I am not necessarily anti-Obama. But I see another version of sexism in this article. And that does make me mad. Afterthought the second: And anyway, wasn’t it the Bushies who said they didn’t have to worry about boring stuff like history and reality? Afterthought the third: I forgot to mind my manners and say that I found this article by way of War and Piece.

Update: If giving is an indication, Kentucky will go strongly for Obama. Not that it will matter much in May. He’s gotten considerably more in campaign donations from Kentuckians than all the other candidates combined. Interestingly, Ron Paul has outstripped John McCain here in the Bluegrass State.

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