From Thomas Friedman's New York Times column this morning:
Barack Hussein Obama would present another challenge for Iran’s mullahs. Their whole rationale for being is that they are resisting a hegemonic American power that wants to keep everyone down. Suddenly, next week, Iranians may look up and see that the country their leaders call “The Great Satan” has just elected “a guy whose middle name is the central figure in Shiite Islam — Hussein — and whose last name — Obama — when transliterated into Farsi, means ‘He is with us,’ ” said Sadjadpour.
Even for a man who has made a lucrative career out of oversimplification, this is a pretty asinine statement, better suited for a Coca-Cola commercial than the NYT's op-ed section. Barack Obama's familiar-sounding name will compel Iranians to abandon their concerns over American hegemony, like lazy children following the Pied Piper? "He is with us" will make Iranians forget that the United States currently occupies the border states of Iraq and Afghanistan, with not-very-subtle designs on Iran? By that logic, if America elected a president named Santa Claus, Iranians would stop worrying about an impending invasion and start waiting for gaily wrapped gifts to be airdropped from a rocket-fueled sleigh. By that logic, the election of Charles Taylor as president of Liberia should have compelled Americans to fundamentally reassess their opinions of and relationship with the continent of Africa. By that logic, every time I read a column by Thomas Lauren Friedman, I should feel extremely confused about gender roles.
Certainly one hopes that Iranian citizens start putting pressure on their ruling mullahs. But it is grossly optimistic to think that this pressure will stem from the pronunciation of Obama's last and middle names.
I think you should have at least considered the charitable interpretation of Friedman's Obama-Iran column. I'm not saying that he's correct at all, but I think criticism of his column should entertain the possibility that Obama's names are metaphors. Of course they won't directly soothe the mullahs, in other words, but they might represent a new American tolerance and respect for diversity of opinion and belief that would make it incrementally more difficult to preach blind hatred of us infidels.
I don't think that Obama-as-metaphor holds any influence next to US-policy-as-reality. The material I've read indicates that most ordinary Iranians -- educated and fairly cosmopolitan -- don't blindly hate the United States (and those who do aren't necessarily blindly led into this hatred by the mullahs' rhetoric), and Friedman's point presumes that they do, and, furthermore, that this hatred is so insubstantial that it would be defused by a metaphor.
Ugh, why do we have to finesse the argument?
I'm absolutely not defending Friedman, but his point most assuredly does not presume that a metaphor itself can defuse hatred, however insubstantial. In a certain charitable light, his point consists of a metaphor and is that this Obama guy projects such good vibes that he might begin to defuse hatred.
If you want to call to carpet some of the writers of the nation's most influential opinion page, you should (a) just tell them clearly that they're pissing away intellectual responsibility that they might laugh at someone else's wet shoes and (b) not take short-cuts about their actual claims, which by virtue of their stature, even if not their substance, deserve some charity.
Tom Friedman started out talking about the real economic implications of a vertiginous drop in the price of oil. That was good, and I especially appreciated the historical note about USSR's over-reliance on oil. Then we got some pablum about carpets, backed up by what was probably the least interesting statement made by the Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And, yes, we finally got some empty-calorie closing paragraphs about Obama's name, complete with a mixed metaphor involving "deflating" and "ripe." I guess basketballs and apples are both sort of round, but ripeness usually indicates palatability, not outsized air pressure.
Still, you need to take the time, imho, to argue that Obama-as-metaphor doesn't hold.
Ugh, indeed. I think your light is far too charitable, and I think you're absolutely wrong in saying that Friedman's point doesn't presume that a metaphor-in this case, Obama's name as a metaphor for a kindler, gentler, more tolerant United States-can defuse hatred.