Oozing the Energy of Cool

So Barack Obama is now the president-elect, and Barack Obama is cool. This is true regardless of whether you’re from the right or the left. It’s not about politics, it’s about culture and it’s about sex. The dude just oozes the energy of coolness. Look at Jezebel. They’re speechless, and who can blame them?

The particular kind of cool that Obama embodies goes back a long way in America. Bix Beiderbecke had it—if not when he was alive, then for a time after—and god knows Elvis and James Dean had it. Too many black people to name have had it, but Ebony did well to narrow it down to twenty-five. But where does it come from exactly? I’m reminded of something Lee Siegel wrote in the New Republic a few years ago, referencing Michael Jackson:

In many ways, Jackson presents a grotesque parody of Elvis’s quintessentially American appeal. The great American icons are racial, ethnic, and sexual hybrids, hybridity being an American purity. Brando had a woman’s face buried in his features (Elvis idolized him)—so did Miles Davis and James Dean. The macho Pollock’s gossamer skeins of color have a feminine delicacy. Even Marilyn Monroe had a hybrid quality in the way she seemed both absolutely corrupt and absolutely innocent. American energy has a miscegenational source.

So true, and as you might know, I’m a big fan of miscegenation. I’m an even bigger fan of how what was implied in Bix has become real in Barack. He is a mutt, indeed, but aren’t we all?

• Obama Ubarikiwe – Samba Mapangala [Mp3]

Comments

[Michael Smolinsky]

Barack is cool, for sure, and I think it made him appealing in the end. McCain seemed to be lurching left and right throughout the campaign, while Barack kept his composure.

Good to have you back. I've been checking for a while and wondering what happened.

[Brendan]

Thanks, Mike. It's nice to be back, assuming I am and this isn't a one-off, as they say. It's been a busy but fun summer -- getting married and immersing myself in Civil War reading for work. Now I'm back to the Bix book. Really I am. I'm going to finish it this time. Really. I'm not just saying that.

Really!

[Mike Smolinsky]

Admit it, B, you've been spending all of your time reenacting the Civil War.

[A Fan]

Please keep writing and posting. As an Irish girl whose also from Iowa, your observations and stories transport me home. I'm so glad I stumbled on your blog.

[amba]

hybridity is an American purity -- I LOVE that thought, as a patriotic cosmopolitan (see Kwame Anthony Appiah's book Cosmopolitanism, if you haven't already) who loves America because it are the world.