"I have plenty of reservations about everything Obama’s doing now – I’m not so into domestic drones, I’m not so into spying."

Said the artist Shepard Fairey, whose advertisement for "HOPE" conned the world.

I did a Google images search on "hope" and Fairey's poster did not come up first. This did. It didn't even come up second. This bullshit did. It didn't even come up third. This treacle did. This dumb thing was fourth. And this insipidity came up fifth. Some lady's hands offering us "hope" written on a piece of paper is sixth. 7-13 are also not Fairey's Obama poster. 14 is a parody of the Obama poster:



I had to go all the way to the 18th hit to get to the Obama poster:



And here's the Wikipedia article on "Hope."

Hope is the state which promotes the desire of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or in the world at large....

What a bad idea for a political slogan. Obviously... now.

Obama's name comes up near the top of this article, right next to this diagram:



We're told of some book that examines "Dealers in Hope," including Obama (and Moses) and says that a leader can "Lead Change and Shape Culture" "by creating a hopescape and harnessing the hope system," and if you look again at the diagram, you'll see the "hope diamond" to be made from that lump of coal labeled "adversity." Just get some voice and promises vectors going into your imagination machine.

Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies.

Jack Hamilton has a piece in Slate subtitled "Forget Walter White. Eastbound & Down is the most original, disturbing, wrenching show on television. (And it’s hilarious, too.)"

If we live in a golden age of great television shows, the vast majority of these shows have featured angst-ridden white male protagonists. This shift from heroes to anti-heroes has been frequently and rightly characterized as a broader interrogation of masculinity itself, one occasioned by crises of its creators, crises of culture, or both. But while current prestige-magnets like Mad Men and Breaking Bad might offer revisionist takes on white maleness, they also offer their audiences renewed fantasies of the same. Young men buy suits cut to look like Don Draper’s; aggrieved Internet communities close ranks in protection of Walter White’s right to be the One Who Knocks.

So what's great about Eastbound & Down is that it deprives the beleaguered white male of hope.

Eastbound & Down isn’t so much a show about white masculinity in transition or decline as it is a biting send-up of male fantasy itself. Powers fancies himself an alpha dog, gunslinging, rock ’n’ roll outlaw, a fiction he believes to be reality, and to which he believes himself to be entitled. Kenny Powers’ problem, in a sense, is that he’s watched too much TV. If Mad Men is a drama about the encroaching demise of a certain white male dominance, Eastbound & Down is a satire of its vacancy, and its bankruptcy. The latter is a whole lot funnier, and often more daring.

Because hopeless, pathetic decline is hilarious. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: Tragedy is when a woman or person of color feels disrespected or bullied. Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies. (Here's the disemparaphrased Mel Brooks quote.)

I quoted the subtitle of the article above — because it made the content of the article clearer— but now I see enough additional meaning to make me want to quote the title. It's "Breaking Ball." That's not just a play on "Breaking Bad" and a reference to crushing testicles, it's an allusion to the show's milieu, baseball. Eastbound & Down shows baseball as "gross and debauched, a morass of juiced-up players, abusive fans, godforsaken locales, bored and boring spectacle."

Many of the actors on-screen... boast hilariously unathletic physiques, and seem to have last donned a glove back in the days when home plate came with a tee. It’s the ugliest depiction of the game in recent memory, a hilarious and welcome desecration of one of the old white America’s favorite civic religions.

Take that, white America.

CORRECTION: This post originally ended with this parenthetical:

(And can golf ever catch a break? It's the most coolness-resistant activity on earth. It's the sport most associated with Obama, and the man most associated with the sport is Tiger Woods, and yet it's still the domain of the old white guys — fat old white guys.)

Meade proofreads and corrects my inference that "tee" was a joke about golf. I guess that says something about the connections in my brain. Running down the out-of-shape, declining white males led me to thinking about golf. The reference is to the children's game of tee ball. I don't think children playing tee ball wear a batting glove. That's what threw me off. But obviously, they do wear a glove to play defense in tee ball.

ADDED: Meade reads my correction and informs me that children playing tee ball do wear batting gloves. I'm surprised. There's so much more gear these days, what with helmets to tricycle and knee pads to roller skate. And then as I'm writing this, Meade interrupts to inform me that the author of the article meant a fielder's glove, which I know, but my point is, when I'm reading and words are used to call up an image in the mind, and I see "tee" and "glove," I picture a person at a tee wearing a glove, and that takes me to golf, not tee ball. Or is that how the female brain works?

Why are the figures on our national stage so lacking in greatness?

I wonder — as I scan the news this morning for topics and stop to think about Howard Kurtz and Jason Collins. Kurtz isn't a bold or great writer. He was dependent on Tina Brown, and he crossed a line, got a little edgy but didn't bother to sharpen up for the attempted edginess, and he got cut. Tina Brown runs her various operations. Is she at the level that should awe us?

Jason Collins was never a great basketball player. It's pathetic — a literal joke — that must we look at basketball to find men to look up to. (They are tall.) But this week, we're expected to admire this athlete we hadn't heard of before not for any athletic achievement but for the miniature feat of revealing — after years and years of hiding — that he's gay. Did he risk anything? His revelation comes at the end of his lackluster career, he's receiving plaudits from everyone on up to Barack Obama, and since his college days, he's had powerful political friends including Chelsea Clinton and (his erstwhile roommate) Joe Kennedy.

Is Barack Obama a great man? He's reached the top position. That takes some doing. He scrambled up over a number of people — were they great? — and he maintained his position, but is he great? We — some of us — like him. He seems like a good person — to some people, the ones who feel comfortable enough with him because at least he's not Bush, he's got a nice smile that reminds us of hope and Republicans seem mean, and it's not really his fault that there are so many problems.

And how about those Clintons and Kennedys and — as long as we're listing American dynasties — Bushes? There are no giants here. Why are the figures on our national stage so lacking in greatness?

It must be us. This must be our doing. Our preference.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jonas quotes George Carlin:

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"

Henry and Balfegor both mention Steve Jobs as the last great man. When I wrote "Kurtz isn't a bold or great writer," I immediately thought Christopher Hitchens.

"I will always believe: Our nation's best days lie ahead" — the line that makes George Bush cry.

Closing his speech today at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

"Coach is a good proxy for mid-to-upper-income and so-called aspirational spenders world-wide."

"Coach is 'a style that conveys a sense of treating oneself,' said Paul Swinand, retail analyst at Morningstar Inc. MORN -0.49% 'There are a lot of people that find it very compelling.'"

The link goes to a WSJ article that requires a subscription. I can give you a link that will work in case you want to do some aspirational spending. Or maybe you'd just like to talk about the concept of aspirational spending.

Is aspirational spending something we should be happy to see — a signifier of optimism — or something we should decry? Here's an article from 2010 declaring the "aspirational consumer" dead:

"Aspirational marketing is a technique in which the goal is to sell items to people who can’t afford it." Ouch.

"Marketers have long known that we have an aspirational society, and they've gone heavily after those consumers," observed Claire Ratushny, a brand-positioning consultant based in Eastford, Conn.

"Now, 'aspirational’ is a dirty word."

Should we buy a slightly expensive handbag as a way to say it's 2013 and we're feeling fine? The audacity of hope, baby! "Hope" is the thing with feathers... and handbags.

***

Do aspirationalistas leave the tag on?

"If we’re going to be successful, part of what we’re going to have to do is get out of the formulas and habits that have blocked progress."

"Both sides are going to have to think anew."

Obama, at a news conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority.

What was surprising, given how much Mr. Obama appeared to give up on the peace process at the end of his first term, was how ready he seemed to take up the challenge once again of trying to broker a deal that creates a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

“I absolutely believe it is still possible, but it is very difficult,” Mr. Obama said. “If we can get direct negotiations started again, I believe the shape of a potential deal is there.”

I don't see why it's "surprising" that he'd say something bland and minimal like "still possible" when he's actually taken the trouble to go over there. It's not like before he'd said "I absolutely give up." He merely "appeared to give up." Has this appearance changed? He'd never gone to Israel before, not in his entire first term. Now, at the beginning of his second term, he's getting the visit in, so you won't be able to say he never went. What is "surprising"? There's nothing new. But, he says, "Both sides are going to have to think anew." Is that new or is the same old hopelessness?

ADDED: It just crossed my mind for the first time in a long time: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That took a lot of pressure off him to make the usual gestures at solving the Palestinian problem. Or do you think he feels he ought to justify the prize retroactively?