The fuss over whether Obama plagiarized missed what was really brought into focus by his “borrowing.” Exposing the “borrowing” was just pulled back the curtain a little on Oz -- American marketing. Obama is superbly marketed. Something was teasing around the edges of my consciousness for a couple of weeks after I started looking at his speeches and videos. It finally came into focus: United of Bennetton (sp?); that old Coke ad (“I want to buy the world a Coke . . .”), and the song “We Are the World.” All of these assure us that we can change the world, bring peace, etc. by buying sweaters or singing a song. “Yes, we can.” You can do what? You are going to change what? I kept wanting to ask. If it’s changing the Bush years, how does that distinguish Obama from any other Democratic candidate? Or: what exactly about the Boomer agenda (women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, environmentalism) do you want to turn the page on? But my questions were sort of like asking how drinking Coke is going to make the world a better place. The point is not to think too much.

Obama’s most telling lack of acknowledgement is not his failure to name Deval Patrick (or his political adviser). It’s his failure to name the farmworkers for “Yes, We Can.” Slaves, suffragettes, generic immigrants and workers – all this is very, very safe stuff. Farmworkers, not so much. But there’s not going to be anything discordant in the Obama world. Obama likes to say that he stood up for gay rights in his 2004 speech. What he must be referring to, as far as I can make out, is that he said that people in the red states have gay friends. True, as far as it goes. But the fact is that while he was saying those words, the red states were working very hard to pass anti-gay marriage acts that were profoundly harmful to gay rights. In the face of that, Obama’s words were hardly real advocacy. (And Obama’s gay friends didn’t stop him from selling them out for a pottage of votes when he provided the platform for an anti-gay screed at the end of his “Forty Days of [Christian] Faith and [Heterosexual] Family” tour.)

Considered at all, the comparison with Martin Luther King just doesn’t work. Not only do King’s speeches have the intellectual depth and challenge that Obama’s lack,

King appealed to Americans’ ideals by telling us we were not living up to them and challenging us to do so, not asking everyone to feel good about themselves. When, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, he told religious leaders he was disappointed in their complicity in racism and that he was proud to stir up aggravation, this was light years away from the safe, market-tested Obama tactics. Obama is about saying he’s challenging you, when in fact he doesn’t ask anything of his listeners (beyond voting for him). Or saying he isn’t beholden to special interests (while refusing to answer questions about changing a nuclear regulation bill after getting money from the industry).

The issue is not that Obama relies on words (words do matter). It’s that he uses words to lull or excite people in the same narcotic way that marketing does. That’s why his candidacy doesn’t prompt any discussion anywhere about substantive change – just monosyllabic chants. That probably says more about Americans than about the candidates.

What Obama does is PERFORM MLK, JFK, etc. He copies not just words, but specific cadences, intonalities, etc. to make you FEEL that he's just like them without actually saying anything specific.

Yes We Can is not that different from Nike's Just Do It.

He's a talented performer, but that won't get us out of Iraq or get universal healthcare. And for all those who say that he'll just have "his people" take care of all that - haven't we had enough of anonymous invisible wonks that we don't know at all to run this country? I want a leader who understands the problems we face and know how to implement solutions.