More on the barns

The Washington Independent writes up further developments of the Barns for Obama story.

Link: Obama Porn

Thanks to Matt Hedstrom and Andrew Sullivan for alerting us to this really funny site of Obama "porn." Like SemiObama, it is interested in images of Obama--both real and invented--in popular and internet culture.

The Semiotics of Egalitarianism

The Washington Post earlier this week had an article about the way Obama's office runs, similar to the articles Rolling Stone and Time ran earlier this year, though with a little more of the traditional journalism's "good points and bad points" model (aka "fairness" and "objectivity").  

There does not seem to be much disagreement that running an office in an egalitarian manner, with a good control of information, is a good thing. But let's think about why. It signals to us that the candidate or the candidate's political leaders have control and flexibility. Such control is obviously necessary to running an even larger organization--the United States. Listening to many voices also can strike us as being democratic and American, and it also shows the confidence Obama has in himself and his team.

It raises more meta questions as well. When supporters of Obama read this pieces on process in the campaign, it's likely heartening; they want a president who listens and has control. Because they feel this way, they may be curious about whether the campaign wants them to feel this way. In other words is the process both a strategy to win a camapaign and a meta campaign in itself?

If it is, it shows a campaign working on multiple levels toward the most difficult of goals. 

--J.S.

Insider view of the semiotics of the McCain campaign

This article focuses on the way John McCain is using  coded symbols against Barack Obama.

Barack Barns

Over on DailyKos, farmbo posted this dairy on barns painted with Barack Obama logo in Ohio. 

It's an interesting (if perhaps inadvertent) comment on the perception that Democrats generally and Obama specifically have difficulty with rural voters. If a farmer is willing to paint a barn with Obama's logo, that probably indicates a comfort with how his community will receive it. 

While the job is quite professional looking,  advertising on barns is not limited to politics...

The McCain Advertisement

"Is John McCain calling Barack Obama a dumb blonde?"

This is the lead question by Garance Franke-Ruta in her funny review of the new John McCain ad for the Washington Post's blog. For those readers who haven't seen the video, its purpose seems to be that Obama is more like Paris Hilton than Paris France--that he is all show and no substance.

Not long ago, SemiObama contributor Dean Rader published an op-ed in The San Francisco Chronicle that explored the importance of Obama semiotics in popular culture, ultimately making the case that Obama was more of an icon than a celebrity. One of Rader's assertions was that figures like President Bush and Paris Hilton are popular but not icons:

What it means to be an icon in today's visually oriented world defies easy explanation. George W. Bush's image is everywhere, as is Paris Hilton's but neither is an icon. Both are popular and both carry cachet, but being iconic in an icon-obsessed world is about more than mere presence. It's about stature and transcendence. It's about transformation, which means there is a big difference between being a celebrity and being an icon. The former merely indicates media omnipresence; it is value free.

Yesterday's advertisement compares Obama to both Hilton and Brittney Spears, with a particular focus on his celebrity. As Franke-Ruta notes, it is difficult to figure out what, exactly, the McCain camp is arguing. Is it that Obama is too popular? Is it that he is vapid? That he's a bad parent? That he shouldn't have made those sex films? Maybe it was that time he kissed Madonna?

Si SE Puede!

Location: Non-descript window, Southpark Street, San Francisco, July 29, 2008. 1:45 pm

No one knows what day of his 25-day fast in 1972 Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta came up with "Si se puede"--one of the most famous slogans in U. S. History.

Though it means "yes, it can be done" in Spanish, it has migrated into English with the more direct, more communal translation of "Yes we can." Barack Obama has rather ingeniously seized on both meanings of the phrase, but the latter, more succinct version has emerged as his standard catch phrase. See, for example, one of the very first SemiObama posts on the now-classic video.

The poster to the left, though spotted in San Francisco, was designed to appeal to Latino/a and Chicano/a voters in Texas. Obama even looks a little Latin here, as though merely bronzed by the hot Texas sun. What's interesting is how the poster bounces back, un-translates the motto, returning Chavez's assertions to its original impulses.

Si se puede is more political than "yes we can."

The latter connotes community, optimism, and cooperation, while the latter carries connotations of revolution. In fact, it is actually closer in spirit to "We shall overcome" than it is to "Yes we can."

But, the magic of Obama is his ability to transform the verbal into the vision. He can make any linguistic concept part and parcel of his politics. For him, it is all vernacular. Which is why the absence of the soft Obama blue and the standard logo "O" so pervasive on his campaign texts doesn't feel missing on this poster.

Still, we will have to see if the passion and politics of Chavez are enough to break the decades-long fast Texas Democrats have endured as they have been waiting to feast at the grand buffet that is the U.S. presidency.

---D.R.