(no subject)

[eirias]

Reading Obama's memoir, you learn that as a kid he was called Barry. As a young adult he reverted to using his full name. That's not all that striking; a lot of young people change their self-presentation in this way. But I think it is a fairly striking choice for anyone with political ambitions. I think a lot of people would have switched back to the more "American" (more on that in a later post, I hope) -sounding name on entering Harvard. Obama's success with the other route is a reminder, I think, that squashing your identity is no way to get elected.

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

well, at least not if you're barack obama. i rather wish somebody would squash sarah palin, i confess.

[nein09.livejournal.com]

It's also not much of a way to go through life, full stop. I don't think people can be happy without fully owning who they are.

[nein09.livejournal.com]

Of course, it's not as though using a nickname is denying your identity, but deliberately choosing not to do so makes a huge statement in this instance.

I do hope you get around to writing about who is and isn't an American - it's a topic that I think about a lot, and I think my definition is even broader than most people's.

[littlepurple.livejournal.com]

A lot of people think McCain would have done better if he had not let the people running his election squash his identity.

McCain's identity

[gomi-no-sensei.livejournal.com]

No kidding. The original McCain -- well, I wouldn't have voted for him, but I did respect him. The current version doesn't impress me.

[japlady.livejournal.com]

As a black man, working as a community organizer in a black community, barack Obama actually denotes black pride -- its an african name, not a name an african slave might have been given by his master.

Then when he ran for state government, again he was representing the same community. I seriously doubt he thought when he was a community organizer that he would ever represent on the federal level, let alone run for president.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. It's hard to know where his ambitions were when he decided to go to law school, of course (and that was post-community-organizing, IIRC). But you're right that even if his ambitions were high, if his ideals were also high and he was aiming to use that law degree to represent (for instance) low-income black Chicagoans, the choice makes a certain kind of sense. Still, it strikes me as kind of awesome, because I think a lot of people would have made the moral calculus that it was more important to make sure you could get a position somewhere, even if you had to squelch some of the things that made you want the position in the first place.

Re: McCain's identity

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

I respected the old McCain at one point. Then I read the Rolling Stone piece on him (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print). And just like that he went from a candidate who I disagreed with on many issues to a man who practically nauseates me.