AlchemyToday

Don’t know why I put myself through this, but I just counted several instances where Taylor Marsh accuses Barack Obama of playing the “hoodwink” card in South Carolina and Mississippi–presumably some sort of political crime because he’s been caught speaking in coded language to his black supporters. Now, I saw Obama throw this line out, which has been a standard part of his stump speech for months, in Baltimore in front of an audience that was probably half-or-so white, but Baltimore’s a majority black city and Obama was trying to get out the vote for his largely black supporters in Downtown and West Baltimore, so I decided to see if there’s any veracity to T. Marsh’s claims (from what I gather, there generally isn’t, but let’s give her a fair shake).

Turns out, Obama’s used that exact language in practically every state he’s campaigned in since South Carolina.

Alabama

However, he rebutted efforts to besmirch his character in Birmingham, a cradle of the civil rights movement, where he addressed a cheering, racially mixed crowd of 10,000.

“That’s just the same dirty tricks. That’s old-style politics, trying to bamboozle you, trying to hoodwink you, running the okie-doke on you.”

“This election … it’s not a black or white issue, it’s not a young or old issue it’s a past issue versus a future issue,” Obama said in an impassioned speech at the University of Alabama. “… This is our moment. This is our time.

California

On stage in front of a “change” banner at a fund-raiser at the Avalon club in Hollywood, Barack Obama reprised his his ‘bamboozled” line last night for an audience that included celebrities. (Quentin Tarantino!). “It’s the typical response against a movement for change,” he said. “[It] happens, by the way, every time. It’s fascinating, you know, Bill Clinton was confronted with the same stuff back in the 90s. And now, you know, things go full circle.”

Missouri

Browsing the language news online recently, I found a lively debate under way at the MSNBC politics blog. The item sparking the discussion was a note on Barack Obama’s colloquial language; he was already telling voters not to be bamboozled or hoodwinked by his opponents, not to fall for the okey-doke. And in St. Louis, the MSNBC reporter said (mistakenly, it now appears), he added hornswoggled to the list.

Different context; don’t know where

Obama wants multi-year prison sentences for bankers and others who “hoodwink” poor people into homes beyond their means, and as with some in Congress, he wants bankruptcy judges to be able to change the terms of mortgage contracts.

Osh Kosh, WI

“They will try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you, run the okey-doke on you,” Obama likes to warn of his foes.

Boston, MA

I am not going to cower and quake because the big, bad Republican machine is coming. Because they practiced that old politics. Yes, we have had it with ???. We know the games, the tricks, the bamboozle.

 

Not only that, but look at this:

Camp Clinton shot back Tuesday that Obama was trying to hoodwink people into thinking Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., doesn’t want to start pulling out. “Sen. Obama is mistaken,” said Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson, who fired off an e-mail listing Clinton’s repeated calls for a “phased redeployment.”

And in South Carolina, Obama wasn’t saying anything about Clinton, just responding, in jest, to the absurd e-mails that were going around at the time. Although he did not accuse the Clinton campaign directly of smearing him on race and religion, Mr. Obama referred to emails that brand him a Muslim fifth columnist as part of a broad attempt to “hoodwink you”.

In the end, the only conclusion I can see as a dedicated Obamabot is that Taylor Marsh is the one who can’t see anything but race in this. Of course, the history of this is absurd as well:

Is hoodwink related to the KKK? one suspicious commenter ventured. No, or do I mean “duh”? Hoodwink is first recorded in 1562, some 300 years before the debut of the Klan. It meant, at first, “to blindfold” - “We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,” says Benvolio in “Romeo and Juliet” - and later “to fool, deceive.”

As for bamboozle, it was the trendiest new slang in London back when Jonathan Swift denounced it, in the Tatler, in 1710. It may or may not have been a favorite with the real Malcolm X, but Disraeli used it, and Walter Lippmann, and Frank Zappa. Not to mention Chris Matthews, who last year asked, “How can the president continue to bamboozle the public?”

A couple of blog commenters insisted that the combination of hoodwink and bamboozle was the giveaway; where else but in the “Malcolm X” speech would you find those “rare” words together?

Well, in Lord Greville’s memoir: “Palmerston never intended anything but to hoodwink his colleagues, bamboozle the French, and gain time” (1885). And in H.L. Mencken: “He does not merely tell how politicians hoodwink, bamboozle and prey upon the boobs; he shows precisely how” (1928). And even in “Some Facts about Treating Railroad Ties” (1912): “‘Quick high vacuum’…and other imaginary words, intended to mystify, hoodwink and bamboozle the uninitiated.”

Does this mean Obama’s not recalling, genuinely/cynically/naively, some of the language of Black America? Of course not. Is it still absurd that Taylor Marsh is bemoaning the media for not paying attention to Obama playing the “hoodwink” card…

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 1:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized.