It Is A Sad Commentary But A Lurking Reality

Obama 'would be killed'
The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing says she believes Barack Obama would be assassinated if he were elected president.



Charles Adler: The ghosts of Obama

Posted: February 11, 2008, 11:45 AM by Yoni Goldstein

Charles Adler

"They will kill Obama." It's a headline in London's Daily Mail, put there by an interview with Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Doris Lessing. The 88-year-old British writer is quoted as saying, "He probably would not last long They will kill Obama if he becomes U.S. President." Now you don't have to possess the imagination of a Nobel Prize-winning writer of fiction to be thinking about a young charismatic American president being assassinated. History takes us there. And while the conversation may not be fully engaged on the air of radio and tv, it is very much in the air. And there will be those who are reading and listening to this, who will say these thoughts should never be published or broadcast because they trigger evil in the minds of the sordid. Now if only we could live in a world where the forces of darkness could be arrested by silence. Imagine what a wonderful world this would be if we could eradicate domestic violence, random violence, serial violence and genocide if only we could resolve to stop talking about them. Doing the opposite might actually produce better results. Perhaps if we shone the hot lamp of 24/7 TV and it's cousin YouTube on the slaughter in Darfur, there might be enough worldwide outrage against the governments of Sudan and China to stop it. Perhaps if the "civilized" world could get less interested in the hourly updates on Britney Spears and more interested in stopping the hourly spearing of African children, we might start really believing in that hope medicine that Dr. Obama is dispensing.

If we can liberate ourselves to use the "A" word, as in Assassination, can we discuss the three American icons whose ghosts are awakened by the politics of hope — Lincoln, Kennedy and King?

Barack Obama launched his campaign on the same steps of the same legislature in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln began his presidential journey seven score and eight years ago. The symbolism which creates so much hope in the minds of many, also creates loathing in minds of some. Lincoln, the agent of change in his day, declared war on his own countrymen. 600,000 died, as did the institution of slavery, as did Abraham Lincoln at the hands of a man who wanted revenge on the president who drove Old Dixie down.

The poetry and prose that is the recipe of the cake that Obama serves up several times a day is boiler plate John F. Kennedy. Much of it is inspired by the man who wrote most of JFK's most memorable words, including, "Ask not what this country can do for you. Ask what you can do for this country." Retired Kennedy speech writer Ted Sorenson is part of the Obama campaign. He is nearly as old as the Nobel Prize-winning novelist who had the temerity to ventilate publicly what so many are thinking privately. But his mind is still capable of applying his old boiler plate phrasing to the contemporary events. When Obama was spending time, at the beginning of the campaign, discussing policy, he was euthanizing his campaign. There is no policy wonking when he is speaking to the tens of thousands in rallies that make lesser candidates green the envy, in the kinds of venues that make secret service people cringe in fear. Some are old enough to remember November 22, 1963, when the young president who gave wings to the professor's words had his own flight of hope shot down from the Dallas sky.

There would be no Barack Obama White House dream if a black man named Martin hadn't talked about his dream only three months before the assassination of JFK. It was at the Lincoln Memorial on a hot August day in Washington, when the Baptist preacher from Georgia said, "We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating For Whites Only."

The chief occupier of the White House has always been a white man. If and when the world sees a black man's hand on the Bible at the swearing-in of the next American president, it will force us to face the fear of a white hand on a weapon now visible only to the ghosts of Obama.

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