the rix mix

Hank Kalet is a reliably progressive journalist in Jersey. I'm a fan. He's also a poet. In a prose column, "Letter to Liberales," he writes of President Obama

He is better than the alternatives were, at least the major party candidates, but he is proving not to be a transformational president. In fact, he is nothing more than a milder, more liberal version of Bill Clinton, a member of the corporate status quo interested only in tinkering around the edge.

Hank then lists seven disappointments. Yes, every one is very disappointing.

But I found myself hung up on the word transformational. The word itself is suspect, coming as it does into general usage from academia, specifically theoretical linguistics & a professor named Chomsky who wasn't assigned an English Dept. undergraduate grammar course (a class I regret ducking because, oddly, it wasn't required of a Lit major unless you wanted teacher certification).

Alright, I'll buy a vowel, Pat, even though I'm not certain what it means. I'd prefer transmogrification, via cartoon character Calvin's Transmogrifier, which really did change or alter greatly with grotesque or humorous effect.

As a poet, Hank must know Barack Obama is transformational, if he's applying the word the way I think he is, or maybe wants to but is holding back. To say Obama is not requires compartmentalization, another useful word I don't much like, but gets past the Blogger spellchecker.

You go to the political sphere for bad language, for lies & evasions, for words that don't mean what they appear to mean - that may mean the opposite; for cliches like "at the end of the day" & "putting the cart before the horse" & "comparing apples & oranges"; for sloganeering - "Repeal & replace." That last one is stirring, eh? Tweet away, brave revolutionaries.

There's a poetry-lover on the Rahway NJ Democratic Committee. It's about as high up in American party politics as you'll find someone who would smile sadly & knowingly if you pointed to the crowd at a Teabagger rally & said, "The pure products of America go crazy" (if we steal the phrase & broaden it some). I doubt she has political ambitions. I hope not. Her day job involves teaching adolescents to read & listen through murky language. A good way to do this is to talk back to TV commercials & politician sound bites: What the f*ck do you mean, "At the end of the day?" When does your day end? Why are you puppet-rapping for McDonald's & reciting "I'm loving it" when your hip hop predecessors were censored or shot each other over words they invented?

Barack Obama is a dark-skinned, biracial Hawaiian elected by a clear majority of voters. That's somewhat transformational. By electing him, America skipped over two decades, the '30s & '50s, neither of which have birthed a president.

Congress endorsed, however imperfectly, the ideal that every American has a right to health care. The ideal is the fundamental dispute, not the requirement that every American must have health insurance. The right wing is angry about the requirement, but it wants to repeal the right. What is really driving it crazy?

The 2010 census will reveal in detail what we already know about America's changing demographics. Transformational.

One-hundred blooming flowers transform the yard. There's your photograph. The gardener is proud. The gardener remembers browsing the seed catalogues. The gardener turned the earth, planted the seeds, sensed when they germinated, watched the seedlings break the surface. The poet understands & learns from the gardener.

Labels: about writing, Barack Hussein Obama