Sorry, the incoherence--though typed and reread and left as incoherence--is sincere.
I am referring to the alleged Clinton campaign leak of a picture of Obama dressed as a Somali elder on a 1996 trip to Kenya...
According to Tuesday's Ohio debate, Hillary denied knowing about the photo or anyone on her campaign leaking it, and Barack believed her. And they moved on.
Um, that's fine, but pictures of Rudy Giuliani in drag this is not.
An article in Reuters has this quote, which at last echoed my initial reactions to this "controversy:"
The dispute has angered many in Kenya, especially ethnic Somalis from the northeast, who resent the implication that Obama did anything wrong during his visit.
The story explains that a venerable elder dresses a visitor in these clothes to honor the tribe's guest. "We give special treatment and respect to any visitor."
It came up in the debate, and both Hillary and Barack played it cool and acted above the pettiness of it. I guess when an issue is weird and stupid, that's the smart tack to take. But it was a missed opportunity to touch on what it means to be a guest in a foreign place, and to participate in someone else's guest-host culture, accepting it as the honor it is. Especially since doing that gracefully is something seen as so very un-American. Obama is all about crossing boundaries, right? And dissipating the image of America that is arrogant and unresponsive to the local scenery.
I know, I know. I mean, I get it. It's a float in the Barack-wears-a-turban parade, which was supposed to gather a crowd of people nervous that we are about to elect a terrorist to the White House.
I guess I just want to take this chance to point out that this picture represents a notion about how Americans should carry ourselves when we go abroad. In the case of a potential US president, this attitude will serve us at the negotiating table as well as at a dinner table. Our efforts to participate in the development of the rest of the world would be more successful if we were better at the kind of exchange pictured above.
Oh, but here's the next phase of this story (also from the Reuters article):
Mohamed Ibrahim, who attended one of two crisis meetings held in Wajir on Thursday by clan members who hosted Obama on his trip, said Washington must immediately make amends to them and especially to the elder pictured with him.
"The U.S. government must apologise to us as a clan and the old man," Ibrahim told Reuters by telephone. "We have been offended and we cannot afford to just watch and stay silent."
He said it was essential Clinton "clear her name" too....
If there was no apology, the elders said, they would demand the expulsion of U.S. troops based near Garissa town.
Apparently our dumb political tactics are being taken personally in Kenya. Phillip Kennicott in the Washington Post validated my bewilderment, which somewhat assuages my embarrassment over this American cultural moment. He writes:
By the end of the day, the only clear message from the strange episode is that whoever was spreading the image was not particularly sophisticated about the way images work in our new media world...
An image such as this one also needs to circulate first among people inclined to believe the worst about its target. For a smear photograph to function properly, it must begin its journey into the body politic with what one might call a "Have you seen this?" phase. As it circulates under the radar, it gains a kind of credibility momentum, as people inclined to believe begin to think it is actual, documentary evidence of something that is being suppressed. The idea that it is being suppressed -- that it hasn't broken out to a larger audience -- actually helps it build credibility momentum.
If the image debuts to the larger world without that momentum, its smear message will be drowned out by a chorus of other story lines: Where did it come from? Who distributed it? Why did they do it? And that seemed to be case yesterday.
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