DebateGate

General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: BT on September 20, 2008, 09:17:39 PM

Title: Reflection
Post by: BT on September 20, 2008, 09:17:39 PM
Even after two autobiographies, Mr. Obama remains something of a floating, uncrowded presence. His story (and he is so impressively self-aware as to have made the most acute comment on it) is temptingly open-ended, very much a page to be written on. He himself has written, most memorably: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080919.wcomurph20/BNStory/specialComment/home (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080919.wcomurph20/BNStory/specialComment/home)
Title: Re: Reflection
Post by: Plane on September 20, 2008, 09:24:05 PM
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."




On purpose?
Title: Re: Reflection
Post by: BT on September 20, 2008, 09:30:47 PM
Apparently.

Wasn't there a movie with Peter Sellers with the same plot.

I think it was Being There. but not sure.
Title: Re: Reflection
Post by: Plane on September 20, 2008, 10:05:49 PM
Apparently.

Wasn't there a movie with Peter Sellers with the same plot.

I think it was Being There. but not sure.


Oh yes!

I loved that Movie!

Chauncy Gardener only spoke what he heard , but he watched a lot of TV so what he spoke was always impressive, mostly to people who were very ready to be impressed.
Title: Re: Reflection
Post by: Michael Tee on September 21, 2008, 03:30:34 PM
Being There was a great movie, based on a great (and very short) book.  While it was a very funny movie, I don't recall laughing out loud even once during the whole course of the film.  A different kind of funny than, say, Analyze This, which was absolutely hilarious.

I agree Obama's a blank screen and I agree that it's deliberate.  What I don't agree to is that anyone can project his or her own values onto the screen.  I think the screen is for the left-of-centre only but the different values that can be projected onto the screen are in the range of centrist-leftist to somewhere just short of Dennis Kucinich.

Also, I don't think there's an Obama supporter anywhere who isn't acutely aware of the possibility that what Obama would write on that blank screen after the election might constitute a complete betrayal of the trust given to him during the campaign.
Title: Re: Reflection
Post by: Plane on September 21, 2008, 04:43:12 PM
Also, I don't think there's an Obama supporter anywhere who isn't acutely aware of the possibility that what Obama would write on that blank screen after the election might constitute a complete betrayal of the trust given to him during the campaign.



Wow!

What makes this risk worth taking?


There were a gaggle of candidates recently who were known quantities.