Whoz Your Daddy: Barack Obama and the fall of the Crone

In times of national crisis the country often turns to one of two male archetypes in order to feel protected:  the benevolent or the bellicose father.  If it is the benevolent father, it usually means that psychologically we are in desperate need of healing and hope.  If it is the bellicose father, it usually means we have a desperate need for revenge and revival of a masculine war code.  Barack Obama and John McCain fill these positions perfectly.

In particular, Barack Obama daddy has this mouth:

1.  he takes on a christlike quality because he extends hope and forgiveness to everyone–includng white people–without requiring an apology or reparation in return.

2.  he comforts and calms voters with a national narrative that kicks ass, telling us there is power in words and in convictions (abraham lincoln lines).

3.  he references himself inside a “lineage” of male leaders who “took good care of us..”  Roosevelt and MLK.  And he calls himself the “American Ideal,” since he is the fulfillment of this lineage.  If you vote for him you can be part of the resurrection and the transcendence.

4.  he talks about his rise as a “quest,” a symbolic journey that we can join him on; if you are not on that path with him you are a nay-sayer, a cynic, a hope-hating loser.

Who wouldn’t want that daddy?

Why, the question arises for me, don’t we have a feminine archetype we turn to in times of national crisis?  Where is the pattern of turning to the mother healer or the mother warrior in times of national crisis?

Maybe the answer is we don’t have any experience with a woman leader–experience we could draw from and recognize as a viable option during times of need.  America isn’t Britain, nor any other country that has successfully chosen a woman leader.  How would we know what we were choosing?

We have no experience to draw from except this:  Mothers.

I know everyone is gonna say we all love our mothers.   But the problem with how we love our mothers is that the more we value them as mothers, the less they have any “worth” outside the box of the home.  And so the more experience they gain as mother healers and mother warriors and mother intellects, the less worth they have out in the world, since those “powers” are limited to the sphere of the domestic.

Even worse, once they get a little age on ‘em, crows feet forking out their eyes, tits bloated and sagging, ass expanding into a continent, a laugh that, by rights, has taken years to emerge labeled a “cackle,” unrehearsed facial expressions (gasp), and a tone that, even though it should reflect wisdom, experience, and intelligence, just sounds more and more like a crone-shrew–once her age emerges, she’s even more devalued, and so her moment of power becomes a big fat bull’s eye on her ass.

Take the crone OUT.  She’s OLD.  as in OLD SCHOOL.  OLD REGIME.  part of the OLD SYSTEM.  OLD CYNIC.  married to the OLD WAYS OF DOING THINGS.

And listening to Hillary is like, well, listening to your mother or grandmother when you want to do whatever you want.  You know it is.

How the first woman running for president lost her chance to a young charismatic male orator doesn’t seem that difficult to understand…and it says a hell of a lot about our endlessly clusterfucked feelings about women, in ADDITION to saying a lot about our primal needs for men.