The Billiken's Bluff

Why I want to vote for Barack Obama for president and Charlie Wilson, Congressman (D. Texas) for an MTV Movie Award or whatever.




Someone from Fox News or Georgetown Law asked me to justify, to flesh out, flush out, my support for Barack over Hillary, to translate superficial groupie love into issue-based Lincoln Douglas factoids.

The problem with presidential statistics here in the U.S. of A. is that there are more facts presented on NPR re: Pakistan's Bhuttos and Mushareffs and a Mighty Heart than on our presidential hopefuls, veritably Ishmael. So in our country (as opposed to Pakistan where I can draw on facts and character, if I were allowed to vote in the general election next month) I will draw on gut feelings, rap lyrics, references, and the sound of a man or woman's name.

I, Gotim, want to vote for Barack Hussein Obama and am trying to get my 92 year old Grandma to vote the same way. She's old school in all the right ways. She understands what life was like before the internet and before WWII.



From what I can gather we both appreciate Obama's college basketball prodigy, Indonesian worldliness/schooling, Harvard Law school education, and ability to speak in well-constructed paragraphs. All of those facts translate from NY Times print to NPR radio to blogs. But there is something we can't agree on because of Hillary and his age.

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.

I like the fact that my elder still whispers that Obama is "black". But she is wise enough to know that she likes that she can potentially elect someone that she whispers is "black". That our options now are a 1st Lady or a negro with, what feels like, hundreds of North African Arab names. Ultimately this is a beautiful thing for a 2nd generation Syrian Country Club Catholic who has always been told that she is so much alike everyone else that you'd never know she was Syrian or Arab to begin with.

What choices!



She remembers when Kennedy wowed crowds with his best Brad Pitt before anyone tried to be a movie star besides the president.

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

So when I'm asked why Barack over Hillary or Obama over Clinton I respond Pitt over Stone. Right? who wouldn't? Barack could potentially be Denzel and George (Clooney) and some new actor with all of the Middle East and Africa in his surname. Or a Gabriel Garcia Bernal. All billikened into one parcel, perfectly.



He made dog fighting indie cool before Michael Vick made it main stream not so cool.

Cannes believed in this before CNN and CSPAN didn't.



Barack more eloquent than the current incarnation. He's as eloquent as the previous incarnation. Bill Clinton was almost black, Barack Obama is black enough. Bill was flying along with too little turbulence so he was corralled for marital indiscretions. Barack Obama, due to blogs and DVR HD cable has already been uncovered. He's human in that he has written his biopic. He's mentioned that he's snorted. He's had mild property issues. He's tangoed with Oprah. He's born of reality and doesn't need to reference earlier generations. Bill Clinton was ordained before America went Online. Barack Hussein Obama has already been discussed in chat rooms, blogs, and photoshopped on Perez Hilton with coke in his nostril. He can campaign and be president without scandal because like Gotim or N. Dot he has a Facebook profile.


Heros warts and all.



If he had a tattoo we'd have seen it already.



Someone the liberals and the youth will always be fascinated with. Like Darren McFadden or LaDaian Tomlinson playing QB. Some unorthodox shit the crowds love.

He is Hussein unhanged, he's almost Osama. He can't be blamed. He is our antidote. Born with the surname Alexander the Great. Not George or Bob. His parents didn't quite understand how this would work, but somehow they did. His name would solve problems, not create them.

A president like the last scene from Shawshank. That is absolutely all we need. One scene like that. One quotable line like a true author. One crystal blue sea from the president even though we've seen this all in HD previously, remastered.





The audacity to be inspired. He or she must inspire this time around. My father didn't understand why Reagan won or why things like Arnold winning California could happen.

We grew up on this shit. This is what we are, who the world is actually. Hollywood isn't American it's global, English speaking.

This is what cultured persons speak about in Mumbai or Bombay, Manhattan or my house. My uncle and grandma bought a LCD TV with HD quality and rented Unfaithful. I saw Richard Gere in Central Park introduce the Dhali Lama before traveling to Bangkok and before taking up power yoga in my living room.

A human like bill and jfk and matt damon. We need a superhero who can inspire greatness - walking on the moon and moonwalking, micro waves, rhymed couplets and iambic verses. And we need their alter ego someone who has sinned, or more importantly someone who has lived and knows better than to apologize for that.

This is why Barack Hussein Obama, the most spectacular of the candidates, unafraid to tell the auto union that they need to be dismantled, eloquently, must be elected.

I'm reading Charlie Wilson's War and then I’ll seen the movie, but from what I've heard already, Charlie is pissed that Tom Hanks isn't cut out of a more debonair fabric, the Greeks hate a Hoffman - too pasty and paunchy, the Saudis need an Obama; and we have him. Charlie is better looking than Tom Hanks. Gust is more shadowy than Phillip Seymour Hoffman could ever be; even in an Oscar worthy performance. But Barack Obama is better than imagined. He is what the directors and the producers dreamed about for this scene, race mixing and mixing until you have a perfect blend of everything.

Now pull your straws and cross your caucuses.

Sometimes rap and politics intersect on the way to work. Flipping between sports radio, Imus (returned), NPR and Power 105.1.

Kanye's latest:

If somebody would've told me a year ago
it'd go, get this difficult
Feeling like Katrina with no fema
Like Martin with no Gina
Like a flight with no visa

Later at the gym, DJ Clue and Ghostface repping Desert Storm, the record label, not the early 90s military operation, on my ipod.




Later leaving gym, back in the car, on N to the P to the R (you know who you are):

Oprah endorses Obama and I think this makes sense for everyone involved.







All reach the same conclusion - DESERT STORM sounds imposing, street strong, good way to body an opponent and attract a constituency to post yellow ribbons on their doorways.



Oprah sells.
Oprah hates rap music, she does not endorse it.
She does endorse Obama.
Obama played basketball in college.
Basketball is intertwined with hip hop, clearly.
David Stern does not endorse hip hop.
Stern does however endorse Outkast who he enlisted to perform at halftime of the 2004NBA All Star game.
Andre 3000 at times has embraced hip hop.
He is certainly responsible for the only song that I have ever encountered that has caused multiple tables of diners at a restaurant in NYC to burst into spontaneous gyrations during their meals.
2004 Democratic candidate General Wesley Clark referenced Hey Ya during campaign stops in 2004.

There is a thread somewhere here. Pop culture, maybe, or American culture, rather, (dan). All from the same tradition, translated differently, reinterpreted maybe and reused for varying purposes but all born out of comic book nuclear fallout. Satellites and kaleidoscopes. Chaos, watermelons, clocks, everything.









Kevin Garnett's I Got Seven Mack 11’s, About Eight 38’s Nine 9’s, Ten Mack Tens reported here years back.




Rap music and military missions the same target in their infrared - shock and awe.

This line from Jay-Z's American Gangster inspired from a movie screening (not directly from the Blue Magic of Frank Lucas) of Denzel's Frank Lucas, rings true and false just the same.





[not an optical illusion my man, verily, that is a Window's Vista styled pocket square in Jigga's left breast pocket]

So do we care if Oprah tells us to vote for Obama if we might have anyway? Why not get your news from Jon Stewart? [writer's strike and outdated reruns not withstanding.] Do we care if the American government borrows pop culture, employs comic largesse in the naming (and dreaming) of its military operations? Is it insulting to those who are killed in those operations (specifically those not from the American pop culture tradition), or is it to be expected - as American as Apple Pie (fight power with power, cliches with cliches, you shake what yo' mamma gave you so to speak - curse US political leaders while wearing an I Love NY baseball hat and applying for exit visas from Morocco)? Do we care if Jay-Z borrows screenwritten crime from the silver screen, which in turn borrowed from real crime, drugs, misery, poverty and Vietnam?

"Actually believe half of what you see/ None of what you hear, even if it's spit by me/ And with that being said, I will kill niggas dead."

Talk more.