SOLO-International Press Release: American Airhead Part 2

Lindsay Perigo

January 30, 2008

The contest we have dubbed "American Airhead" because of its intellectual kinship with American Idol just became even more vacuous with the Kennedys' vainglorious "torch-passing" to Barak Obama, notes SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo. JFK's daughter Caroline says a President Obama could inspire people the way her father did; brother and accomplished swimmer Ted Kennedy says it's time for a new generation of leadership and Barak's da one. Not to be outdone in the fatuous platitude stakes, Obama himself says America is "ready for change" (from what to what?) and "ready to believe" (in what?).

"There's no doubting the man has charisma reminiscent of JFK's," says Perigo, "but charisma should not be a primary in the primaries or at any time. It's dismaying to see the kind of comment one airhead voter makes on YouTube: 'I have no idea what his policies are but his speeches are awesome and I'll be voting for him.'

"JFK began his presidency with a frontal assault on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather what you can do for your country,' he exhorted in his first Inaugural Address, heedless of the fact that no self-respecting American would ever ask what his country could do for him as opposed to what he could do for himself, and every self-respecting American would lay down his life for liberty in a heartbeat if it came to that. The point of Kennedy's foul exhortation was make every American believe his life belonged to the state, which it was his duty to serve. No wonder Ayn Rand described Kennedy's 'New Frontier' as 'fascist.'

"Obama is keeping up the rhetorical tradition, telling voters: 'Your own story and the American story are not separate - they are shared. And they will both be enriched if we stand up together, and answer a new call to service to meet the challenges of our new century ... I won't just ask for your vote as a candidate; I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am president of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a cause of my presidency.'

"Obama, just like 'It-Takes-a-Village' Clinton, is beckoning Americans to greater fascism. This, it turns out, is the nature of the change he espouses. 'To be a socialist,' said National Socialist fascist Joseph Goebbels, 'is to submit the I to the thou.' Obama's version of the American Dream is an Orwellian nightmare in which every American so submits.

"If this be the politics of charisma, Americans would be well advised to seek out the dullest candidate they can find," says Perigo.

"As it is, the vacuous in pursuit of the visceral in American Airhead are delivering singularly unedifying results."

ENDS

© Scoop Media