Listen hard. There is more than one controversial word in this interview with one of my favorite comedians (they’re all political, so no point in pointing that out). And it’s not just what the NYT published this morning about Obama using the “n” word.
Obama has reached the last stage in his second term — the lame-duck-presidency part, where he gets to start quacking truths that hurt (along with Michelle’s heavy-hitting commencement discourse, of course).
At the same time, Obama is clearly passing the identity-politics baton on in time to Get Ready for Hillary. Hillary and Barack are both beneficiaries of LGBTers, only after having done their own turnarounds. LGBTers will remain the social movement to follow, march for, and simply watch as they show women and members of different races and ethnicities how to move this conservative nation leftwards, particularly if the Roberts Court strikes down same-sex marriage this week.
Sad to say, if I wanted to profit from personal misery, I’d have to guess this is how the Roberts Court might well rule with a small majority.
The good news about this potentially bad decision is that at least Hillary Clinton (and the country) will benefit again from the might of this rainbow of a social movement that, given all its cosmopolitan colors, knows how to effect change. So I’m holding out for my rainbow, or my unicorn riding off into that rainbow, if not this week, then at least in 2016.
Professor Ruth O’Brien, who earned her Ph.D. in political science at UCLA, joined the Graduate Center’s doctoral faculty in 1997 and, in 2004, founded the “Writing Politics” specialization in political science. She also serves as an adjunct affiliated scholar with the Center for American Progress. In her research and books, she focuses on American politics, law, political theory without national borders, globalism, and American/global dichotomy. She edits the award-winning “Public Square” series for Princeton University Press, showcasing public intellectuals such as Jill Lepore, Jeff Madrick, Anne Norton, Martha Nussbaum, and Joan Scott. O’Brien is also launching “Heretical Thought,” an Oxford University Press political-theory series that is global in outlook. Her latest book, Out of Many One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition (2013), with a foreword by journalist Thomas Byrnes Edsall, distinguished professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism, was honored with a 2013 “Author Meets Critic” American Political Science Association convention session. She also wrote Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care (2005), Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (2001), which received an honorable mention from Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry (“Meyers Center”), and Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of the New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935 (1998). “Writing Politics” emanated from two books she contributed to and edited: Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination (2008) and Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act (2004), which earned another honorable mention from the Meyers Center. O’Brien’s controversial blog led Rush Limbaugh to dub her a “professorette.”
