Obama as Constitutional Monarch
I was on television a little while ago (a really fun program on MSNBC called Race to the White House, hosted by David Gregory), and I had a brief tussle over Obama — basically, I argued that he’d make a terrific constitutional monarch. One of my fellow guests, a far more effective and very entertaining television performer named Rachel Maddow (if you don’t know her now, you will soon), parried with me, and said that the idea that Obama engages in “self-adulation” is absurd — the “self-adulation” remark was a claim advanced by a letter-writer. I defended the claim, though I wouldn’t have made it myself, and noted that it’s been made by people who know him. But of course plenty of people who know him would say no such thing, and emphasize his openness and humility. I have to say, things move very quickly in that setting.
Moreover, I actually don’t think self-adulation is so bad. I spent at least 6 to 7 hours a day staring at myself in amazement: how can my head be so perfectly round? I mean, it’s not self-adulation, exactly. More puzzlement and simple scientific curiosity, which is why I use calipers to carefully measure the spherical orb that I use mostly for balance. But is it self-absorption? Definitely.
Anyway, this is a little silly, but it reminded me that I like to be precise, which is why I’m so prolix, deliberate, and often elliptical. Wait, but being elliptical isn’t being precise! Well, it is if you are precisely conveying ellipticalness.
I’ll also note that a blogger, Jeffrey Wells, has compared me to The Thing (From Another World) and The Thief of Baghdad. This is, believe it or not, is the review I’ve been waiting for all my life. I must say, my resemblance to The Thing is really striking. Also: My full intention is to cheer on Iraq’s efforts to defeat violent extremists so that I can one day visit Baghdad and steal the hearts of the locals. Until then, I’ll have to keep my Baghdad thieving on hold.
Actually, one of my best friends delivered packages in Iraq for over a year. He didn’t do any thieving, however. At least as far as I know — I’ll have to ask him about this. Were he to steal anything, it would probably be the collected writings of Anthony Burgess and, come to think of it, human organs.
My great dream in life has been to host some kind of chat show, or to teach myself how to levitate. Sadly, I think these are equally unlikely prospects in light of my manic intensity and bushy eyebrows.
i have a rounder head, thank you very much!
— razib · Jul 26, 12:56 AM · #
You know who you really look like? (I didn’t want to say it for fear that you would be offended but some of your recent posts have convinced me that you probably can’t be offended). You look like the evil Thuggee priest, Mola Ram, (I’m thinking of naming my new son that) in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
— cw · Jul 26, 05:16 AM · #
cw:
Ironically enough, (1) I actually am an evil Thuggee and (2) I’ve been carving myself one of those horned headdresses out of illegally-obtained elephant tusks.
— Reihan · Jul 26, 05:59 AM · #
And yet your spirit animal is the cute and cuddly Marmoset. You are a mystery, inside an enigma, wrapped in a flour tortilla and slathered with a compote of conundrum.
— cw · Jul 26, 06:10 AM · #
A lot of people subconsciously see Obama as the one we’ve been waiting for, the offspring of a dynastic marriage who in his very person unites the white and black races, the way the future King Henry VIII’s birth of a Lancastrian father and Yorkist mother sealed the end of the War of the Roses. (See Henry VII’s speech at the very end of Shakespeare’s Richard III as he takes a York wife for the classic expression of dynastic marriage as the harbinger of social peace.)
— Steve Sailer · Jul 27, 12:20 AM · #
or perhaps a Philospher King.
— matoko_chan · Jul 27, 03:56 AM · #