The audacity of “nothingness”… and plastic, and popovers…

I just keep on trying to find something– something anywhere, where I can find some “substance” to Barack Obama as a candidate.  But I can’t.  Even today in my paper, The Los Angeles Times, the biggest article on the guy is about his political consultant David Axelrod.

It’s obvious that Axelrod is well-schooled in the Marshall McLuhan “medium is the message” style promotional hypefest for this candidate.  Look at the logo.  Look at the placards.  Look at the web ads, and strategic placements.  Look at the movie star klieg light effect coming off that white pearl web ad that is central to the “message” –or is that a symbol of nuclear power we are supposed to be seeing rotating hypnotically?

Axelrod has caused a plasticine nightmare.  Pure Plastic Waste.  All I can think about are the Obama lawn signs.  They’re made of plastic.  How many of them are going to end up in landfills or choking marine life?  Doesn’t this dude understand California?  We hate plastic and plastic bags.  How audacious to be using plastic while claiming to be Green.  Sorry but, there goes that ol’ nothingness again.  Where is the substance beyond the spin?
Ever made popovers?  I think I’m going to make some this morning.  Just for fun.  Or maybe because they remind me of Obama.  That thin crispy shell on the outside and nothing but a cavern of hot air inside.  Popovers — another example of something with all of the audacity of nothingness.  They taste good while you are consuming them, but there just isn’t a whole lot there is there?

One more thing.  They collapse under too much pressure.  Like a candidate who is full of hot air.

You might want to catch this piece by  Daniel Henninger over at the Wall Street Journal: it’s an excellent analysis.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120295124554366927.html

Another excellent read is here, by Armando Iannucci over at Guardian.  He’s riffing on plastic too, in a way you won’t want to miss, especially that last graf.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2240115,00.html

And don’t miss this, if you read just one thing today.  Glen Ford on “Barack, Hillary, and the Sinister Nothingness of Change”

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=491&Itemid=1

Why we don’t like plastic, much…and what California is doing about it:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/28/SFSUPES.TMP

Don’t miss this on Plastic:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/06/63699

And last but not least, a fab popover recipe from SFGate:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/04/FDG83LG6CQ1.DTL

Contemplate that space inside, as you open up your popover.  It’s steamy, fragrant and airy.  And it holds all the promise of being filled with something real.