The Sacred Puritan: Hillary's Tears of Eros

January 12, Portsmouth, New Hampshire Ostensibly shedding sacrificial tears on behalf of her supporters, Hillary's sacred tears this week revive the cruel profanation of the Lewinsky affair, wherein, ten years later, she is here re-staged as a victimized lover–– as Hillary's welling up during a Q&A re-minds her voyeuristic panoptic "followers" of her status as the jilted, cuckolded wife (and now, post-Iowa, the jilted, cuckolded Democratic candidate) which is to say, that the Bill Clintonian seduction and "staining" of Monica is now re-placed by Obama's (libidinal "yes we can!") seductions, his Iowan "staining" of Hillary's otherwise "clear" (predestined/predestination) path to the White House: Barack's Midwestern orgy, his Bacchanial caucus-conquest over the "hearts" of Iowans, his virile orality made his American auditors "weak at the knees" and trumped Hillary's Calvinistic anal-posture of do-goodiness, underscored by her hamp-shiring, qua, her sobs in a New England (public-puritan) "kitchen" , qua the Cafe Espresso of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Corn and Obama's Slender Margin

January 3, 2008, Nevada, Iowa: Working toward a primary victory that requires his body be immersed in that primal North American plant long since loosened onto the United States in a post Colombian, post Native American fury (cf Pollan's exposé An Omnivores Dilemma). Seeking a path to his nomination, his Naming, here in Iowan fields, Barack Obama stands in the field on behalf of Big Corn, Zea mays, maize, ethanol, the phallic husk: that ubiquitous seed/ingredient that underwrites the poisonous "variety" of American super-markets: fast food, freedom, shelf-life, high fructose corn syrup, fat. Hence Obama's obvious leanness stands as a paradoxical contrast to the heavy-set dietary corn-fed American excess of his would-be voters and the diabetic, high blood pressure national obesity generated largely by the very corn products that will help this rain-thin Obama win Iowa voters by a "slender" margin.

The Obamian O

Des Moines, Iowa, January 2: *Obama calls for change [Hegelian anderen] that is itself a turning away [sich abweden] from power proferred in the public arena as a turning round [sich umdrehen] from that which already has been dreamed, qua, an imaginary American/Edenic origin which has yet-to-actailize. Which is to say [dire] that the Obamian politics of change implies that which already is, a transformation ahead of itself which is already past [beyond primary] even as it asserts futurity.*

W: The Genealogy