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When Vivek Ramaswamy ripped off Obama’s opening line, “who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?” it wasn’t just cringe for copying Obama on a Republican debate stage.
Not that many years later, politicians from parts of the world that weren’t normally likely to be represented in American politics have become commonplace. The GOP debate had two Indian politicians (and for that matter, Kamala was raised by an Indian mother) which means that highlighting it the way that Obama did, with his implicit suggestion that America was prejudiced, but he knew his audience was smarter, is even more cringe than ever.
And yet this, “look how far we’ve come, baby,” stuff doesn’t really stop.
Arunan Arulampalam, the head of a local nonprofit with no previous elected experience, declared victory in Tuesday’s three-way Democratic primary in Hartford.
Arulampalam spoke Tuesday night at Dunkin’ Park where he was flanked by family, including his wife, Liza, and his parents, who fled Sri Lanka to Zimbabwe, where he was born.
Arulampalam recalled telling them when he was a kid that he wanted to be a politician.
“You guys said, ‘Look, no one is going to vote for someone with the last name Arulampalam. It doesn’t fit on a lawn sign,'” he said. “Well, tonight, a few thousand people voted for someone with the last name Arulampalam and I am the Democratic nominee for mayor of Hartford.”
Hartford has a large Indian population. Safe to say that there’s a comfort level with different last names. Arulampalam’s story also sounds like the kind of thing that politicians make up all the time. (Were his parents explaining to a child that he couldn’t run for office because his name wouldn’t fit on a law sign? Seriously?)
But the need to make this stuff up is also revealing.
Back in ’08, when Obama was treating his presence as a validation of America’s progress, that was condescension. And as we soon discovered, the trap door slammed shut, and behind it was endless malice. Every Democrat’s (and some Republican’s) favorite new hip black friend was a firebreathing bigot who hated everyone.
I have no idea what the other politicians who pull this cringe routine are actually feeling inside, but it’s past time to retire it.
The condescending head-pats that tell us we’re no longer bigoted because we’re willing to vote for Napahatalamasimipotaalaum comes with the flip side that if we don’t vote for him, then we’re bigots.
It’s an exciting multicultural era. There are lots of new politicians about whose names require a lot more work. And most Americans are willing to give them a shot anyway.
That’s not because we progressed, but because Americans have always been fairly tolerant people. Otherwise, none of this would be happening. The politicians talking down to us came here or their parents did generations ago. They were able to go to Ivy League schools and have opportunities handed to them.
They worked hard and succeeded, which is great, and it would be best without the seemingly self-deprecating, but actually passive-aggressive lines about how out of place they seem. The fact that they’re here shows that they’re not out of place. America is wildly tolerant. Let’s move on.
I’m not sure it matters who votes for whom any longer after 2020, but should it and, certainly after Biden’s fiasco, the last name cringe will be in effect and Ramaswamy will discover this as time goes on. People are gonna need a sure thing, and while I’ve found very little fault in anything he’s had to say, he’a ultimately a young untested Hindu and we’ve be bitten by people who were great orators before.
We like to think of ourselves as a tolerant people but, once we look in the rear view mirror of history, we see exactly what that tolerance has got us. While I certainly didn’t vote for Obama, the night he won I found myself happy for black America. Finally some recognition. What a dumbass I was.
A lot of the trade with Africa was carried out by Indians, who often migrated to Africa and set up small communities there.
Yep, that’s what I think when I think Daniel Greenfield: “wildly tolerant.” Tee hee.
Also, Obama was “a firebrand bigot who hated everyone”? Not your keenest analysis. Surely he loved woke Chinese Islamist Marxist trans pedophiles, right? Surely he loved them.
Obama loved himself. He seems to like hanging out with celebrities. Not clear that he likes anybody else. He has spent enough time treating his old staff and closest allies like garbage.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
I want to go back to something about Barack I’ve mentioned twice now. Barack never had any loyalty toward any of these people. Use John Kennedy as an example. I mean, whatever else we say about Kennedy, he remained intensely loyal to people who went back way before the presidency with him. Kenny O’Donnell, for example. Lem Billings was openly gay at a moment when that was hardly fashionable or acceptable. They all loved and accepted him, quite publicly, because he was Jack’s best friend from prep school, and that continued after Jack was dead. Friendship was everything to them.
And then very early on in COVID, about six, eight weeks into COVID, the woman who was finance director on Barack’s Senate primary run, Claire Serdiuk, up and died at age 50, leaving behind a 4-year-old. And when I went to the GoFundMe page for Claire, you could see everybody who’d worked on the Obama primary campaign, and then Claire went to SEIU [Service Employees International Union], and the folks at SEIU all donated. Anybody whom I’ve interviewed in that situation, I would donate to, always have.
But Barack has no interest in any of that. It’s just not there.
…enjoy your garbage messiah
Yeah, I’m not good at psychoanalyzing people, but he’s definitely a narcissist. That’s a good starting point anyway.