Obama's hidden teleprompters exemplify systemically produced ignorance. The "presidency does not want viewers to see and acknowledge those teleprompters. This is not new. Every modern day administration seeks to hide such scripting of presidential presentation. In fact, every good speaker seeks to "hide the rehearsal process and present only a well-crafted, final product. Such slight-of-hand is the basis of every good speech. In this sense, public speaking is akin to theatrical performance where actors, directors, set, costume, and light designers rehearse endlessly until opening night. Then presto! The magic happens and audiences are awed by the flawlessness of word and deed. This suspension of belief produces a wonderful theatrical experience that I have personally enjoyed as both audience and performer, but it's awfully dangerous when applied to presidential politics.
All governments are institutions of power. Governments coordinate, extract, and distribute labor, knowledge, wealth, policy, and when it comes down to it, life and death. Think about it. Governments can affect infant mortality rates, prevent or ignore treatable diseases, administer or withhold welfare money and food stamps, distribute wealth upwards or downwards, release or incarcerate people, expand or contract prison systems, execute or pardon people, initiate or avoid war, combat or contribute to global warming, etc. That's power. Suspending our belief and allowing ourselves to be awed by the craft of presidential discourse masks this operation of power. We are then lulled into a false sense of security and accept the veneer of the presentation without critically analyzing the construction, purpose, and implications of that presentation. We may then assume, for instance, that Barack Obama is some type of super-human capable of writing, rehearsing, and memorizing speeches while also flying, meeting, calling, negotiating, interviewing, eating, sleeping, parenting, and solving domestic and global crises. I guess he can also solve world hunger, save Lois Lane, and turn water into wine.
At this point it is easy to understand how we could miss Obama's teleprompted oration. We literally don't see it because we are wowed by the wonderful aestheticism of the Obama brand. Reflect for a moment on Obama's prime time speeches: the DNC nomination speech, the presidential victory speech, the inaugural speech, and the supposed "press conferences. These are orchestrated spectacles intended to induce Obamania. Even the slightly less staged town hall meetings play into this game. Do people really faint at such events? Mixing presidential politics and the theatrical suspension of belief produces a blinding ignorance that, unfortunately, many people willfully accept and enjoy.
The early twentieth-century German director and playwright Bertolt Brecht worried about this type of blind ignorance. Brecht fought against this problem by creating plays that purposefully estranged and alienated his audiences. Actors would directly address the audience; bright lights would sporadically flash during slow, intimate moments; unrelated songs and out of place captions would appear; etc. Such uncharacteristic conventions remind the audience of the constructed nature of what they are watching, thereby breaking their complacency and inducing their reflection. I guess we could say that someone like George W. Bush was a Brechtian wet dream. No matter how hard he tried, Bush could never hide the constructed nature of his presidency. Stutters, stumbles, and awkwardness continuously marked his public discourse. But that's exactly why the fanfare surrounding Obama may in fact be more dangerous than Bush's 9/11 heroism. We have come to think of Obama as transcending the system when in fact he is a product of that system. The Bush administration was never capable of fully hiding its operations of power. But the Obama administration, armed with a great speaker and a handsome face, directs our attention away from its power and toward a strategically ambiguous notion of "hope and change.
This is not about recoiling into cynicism but about exposing the system for what it is. I want the Obama presidency to place those teleprompters front and center for the whole world to see. I want him to provoke the Brechtian moment; to estrange us from the glitz and glam of twenty-first century political branding. Doing so would infuse the Obama presidency with an almost unimaginable integrity, which was, more or less, one of his campaign promises. Just imagine: the United States president standing naked before the world, acknowledging that yes, it is true, the emperor does in fact have no clothes! This is not a hero, but an anti-hero; a figure who breaks the silence, acknowledges the elephant in the room, and undercuts the duality of president as actor and citizens as passive audience members. Such a figure undermines the president's privileged position and creates conditions for equally distributing that power among everyone. We are then invited to participate in rather than be spectators of political change.
I'm not sure if America could withstand such a shock. Congress, bloggers, mass media, Wall Street, and even the United Nations might grind to a halt. Speechless. Dumbfounded. Awkward and uneasy. The president is naked. What do we do?
Part of the problem is that we are all part of the system. Could we "the everyday people of this country "withstand such an audacious display of honesty? Some of us could and some of us could not. For those who could, it becomes our responsibility to spotlight the hidden hands of power. We must note those teleprompters, expose their strategic concealment, and articulate their detrimental effects upon America's political mind. Doing so enables us to see the situation more clearly: Obama is a highly gifted and even well-intentioned individual who is reduced to mediocrity by the overpowering weight of the system. This leads to the realization that the system itself must be fundamentally changed from the ground up. No president can produce such change because every president pledges fidelity to the sources and structures of power. Pledging otherwise is a sure ticket out of the Oval Office. Only social movements, the kinds that history has seen a million times, can create the kind of change we can believe in. Yes we can, yes we should, yes we must. Or perhaps there is a better slogan, one that neatly summarizes this essay: Obama is great, but the system is rotten! This slogan appreciates the Obama presidency without falling victim to the presidential spectacle. That's a solid starting point for holding his feet to the fire and demanding some real change.
Author Bio: Jason Del Gandio is a writer, thinker,
activist, and teacher dedicated to local and global justice. His first book, Rhetoric for Radicals: a
Handbook for 21st Century Activists, was released in November,
2008 (New Society Publishers). Jason is
currently an Assistant Professor of Public Communication at TempleUniversity
(Philadelphia, USA). Visit his website for more information: www.jasondelgandio.com
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