Obama is the new Pope. I wonder what name he will take?

Innocent, perhaps?

This has to be the comment of the year. I plucked it from the Huffington Post.

The user name is keriheb. And he offers for our consideration the following tidbit:

“Darwin’s theory was that species with the most genetic variability has the best chances to survive. What we see in Obama is Darwin’s theory in play on a host of levels. Emotionally Obama has been grounded and sensitized by his white mother from youth. Genetically Obama has been given the best from both his parents. He has more than an European and he has more than an African. Culturally Obama has had the opportunity to see the world from an American European, Indonesian, Asian, Hawaiian, African, Islamic mixture. Rather than see the worst in all of the above, we need to recognize the greatness in all of the above.”

A little too much kool-aid perhaps? The Darwinian thesis of Obama. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I am currently working on a book that is half on oil and half on Darwin. The book is titled 1859: Shifts in the Human Paradigm.

I am going to have to find a place for that quote. It is too precious. He has one incomplete sentence. I love the line about being given the best genetically from both his parents. Perhaps not just infallible but also immortal. Pity Obama skipped South America and Australia, he would be complete then.

And I suppose Mrs Rodham didn’t ground her daughter. Honestly, the things people say.

The full thread is this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis…

1. The next “dialogue” after the interchange I quoted was Dan Savage saying (I’m paraphrasing), “So, you’re voting for Pope?,” and the young man agreeing, with a tiny chortle.

2. You may not believe that I’m serious here, but that Darwinian quote you note may be the most compelling argument I’ve heard for Obama’s exceptionalism.

Here’s why: I’ve long recognized that my artistic heroes are all hybrids (at the surface level, a very un-diverse list, yet all are hybrids at heart): The Beatles, four white British lads playing American roots music; Alfred Hitchcock, a super-staid Brit making larger-than-life American movies; Edward Hopper, an American in Paris-style impressionism.

Actually, Obama has been conflated with The Beatles more than a few times. The only problem is, of course, that saying “Love Me Do” isn’t the same as writing it — though perhaps he could cover it like he did the Deval Patrick classic, “Just Words.” And, his wife’s name is a Beatles song.

Obama’s appeal and “promise” is undeniably fueled in part by his multifarious background. Straddling the Boomer/Gen X divide, as well as his ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity all contributes to a way-cool mojo.

But thus far he’s a no-hit wonder, less-accomplished than the Oneders, so perhaps we’re a little premature if we decide he’s the one variation who will propagate our species.

One oneders wonders how well evolution would have worked if, instead of survival of the fittest, it was directed by cable-news networks, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, et al. I guess our descendants will find out.

I suspect we are living through a time very similar to the mid-late 1850s now. The whole era fascinates me…probably the biggest period of change (in US-Euro areas anyway) in a shorter time than ever in history.

Everything from cooking to transportation (related in many ways) to science to religion to gender relations to technology to steelmaking to…hell, I shoulda just stopped at “everything”—was in a state of flux. You pick two damn good examples to focus on though.

There’s a great Darwin quote in the movie “Gettysburg” (based on the novel “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara) which I can’t remember all of right now, but consists of several Confederate generals sitting around the campfire on the night of, iirc, July 2. The punchline is something like “The one thing of which I am absolutely sure is that General Robert E. Lee is not descended from a monkey!”

The book is a novel, not a history, so I know of no verification that any such conversation ever took place. But it’s a cute line and ties in with the way attitudes have changed about the use of “Darwinism” in relation to those we think of as “great men.”

and reproducing like mad. Ditto their memes, as well as their genes.

The point is to change the environment. Until the last few months, I had some hope the blogosphere could help do that. Obviously, in its current form, it won’t able to.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

… the Village is reproducing, but that the Village — in its collective wisdom — is engineering the course of unnatural selection.

with Stein’s Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

It would be really nice if “not forever” meant “in my lifetime.”

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

about Obama is his experience living abroad and his travels. It mirrors mine. I spend a year in Indonesia on a peace-corps like project called Volunteers in Asia during college. On Sumatra, right on the equator in a village where it was a six hour walk to the nearest road through tropical rain forest. It was something special

However, the conversion to religion trumps that. Any person with eyes can see the damage that missionaries do in the developing world. And even he admits that he doesn’t quite know why he converted. He parents were both atheists. I don’t have children but if I did and child of mine starts flirting with religion, I call a therapist. Even he happens to 28 years old at that time.

But that commenter gets Darwin wrong. Your hybrid comment is spot on. So I do see your point. I am hybrid. Most of my family is from Spain though one branch arrived with the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. One of my ancestors was part of the group that went with Pizarro and conquered Peru.

I am more proud of another ancestor, Jean Matheron. He was a minor French figure of the Enlightenment. His thinking permeates my maternal side to this day. Old Jean, whose father was a Royal Minister to both Louis XV and Louis XVI left the Alps and trade them for the Colombian Andes in 1770. He was a medical doctor and got caught up in the noble savage craze. He went to New Granada as Colombia was called then and did two things. He founded a utopian society, which failed quickly, and he founded a leper colony which lasted until the 1950s when it closed for lack of lepers. His utopian thinking is clearly in our genes. Over the years, my family, my maternal family through my maternal grandfather, has done the following: we help found Colombia’s Liberal Party, the world’s first anti-clerical party and I think the fourth or fifth or sixth oldest party in the world; we imported the first printing press into Latin America and founded the first Liberal newspaper, the leper foundation grew into a hospice foundation that now runs 60 some odd hospitals from Colombia down to Chile; my mother was the chairperson of the Colombian Red Cross the first woman to hold that post.

We have a very simple rule. To change the world, we need to educate young girls. My non-profit works exclusively with rural poverty and one focus is the education of young girls. Boys I ignore. Every girl that I give but 5 years of schooling makes that girl have fewer children who lead richer lives.

I can only tell you the experience of our maids. Because generally they become part of our family. My aunt Maria Antonia had two petite Indian girls who started working for when they were still not quite ten. Reja and Doma went to Europe. Their 50th anniversary was a cruise in the Caribbean. They worked hard no doubt. A better experience was that of our washer woman, Blanca Grisales, who my grandparents hired. Her one son, out of wedlock, Luis is like a brother. He became an agronomist and has a Masters from Texas A&M. His mother washed our clothes he works for the United Nations. Or Ofelia Varela, black as coal, she was a cook for my mother and she went on our diplomatic missions. She opted to stay in New York after our three-stint at the UN was over. Her son is a computer engineer, lives in Orlando, and once worked for IBM.

Matheron’s impact on us lasts to this day. Most of us have PhDs, we are well-off but not wealthy. One of my cousins runs a business that builds wells in poor rural areas. Many of my cousins are doctors and dentists. One of my uncles founded a medical society similar to Medecins sans Frontiers. We are not but weird. And yet homosexuality in Colombia was a little tough to handle so I left the microscope and settled in California. I am open about being gay. My family has no problem with it and while Colombia has come a long way. Being gay in Colombia when I came of age was not possible. They understood. I worked for UNICEF in my first job out of Stanford, went back to school got both a Phd and an MBA/MA in public policy. Worked ten years on Wall Street, wrote a cookbook and lots of other little diddies on travel, food, and now politics and poverty over on onegoodmove.org. It is Norman Jenson’s site but I am a contributing writer there now. Sort of happened by accident. I discovered your site because Lambert linked one of my articles, Crossing the Mara, to your site noting that words matter. The piece was more about the work of Elias Canetti and how he might think of Obama’s crowds. It actually has traveled the world, two blogs one in England the other in Japan picked it up. Somewhat amazed by it. I need to rewrite and tighten up though.

So vastleft I think you are right but that commenter did get Darwin wrong. You resurrected it. Perhaps you are the Messiah we have been waiting for?

Love,

Charles

As it happens, today is my second blogiversary.

Hard as it may be to believe, it’s taken precisely that long for anyone to suggest that I might be the new messiah. I pledge to do better during the next two years! :v)

Wow! Sometimes this blogging thing isn’t so bad!

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.