Obama’s Cracked Image

There is a tradition of self-deprecation that is overplayed by American presidents, and Barack Obama is no exception. In a fundraising visit to Facebook’s headquarters in California, he began his speech by saying: “I’m the guy who got Mark to wear a jacket and tie.” “Second time,” Mark shyly replied (that’s Mark Zuckerberg, leader of the pack). “I know,” responded Obama. “I will say — and I hate to tell stories on Mark, but the first time we had dinner together and he wore this jacket and tie, I’d say halfway through dinner he’s starting to sweat a little bit. It’s really uncomfortable for him. So I helped him out of his jacket. And in fact, if you’d like, Mark, we can take our jackets off.”

It’s all there. Obama’s reference to his distant (and young, and cool, and nice) predecessor Kennedy (“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” he joked during a visit to de Gaulle in the 1960s). The cronyism between the two icons, friend “Mark” and friend “Barack,” is nicely qualified by formal adherence to antiquated roles: Zuckerberg still made the effort to wear a tie, Obama authorizes him to drop the jacket. Appearances are saved. The president next responded to all the questions from his Facebook friends. To ask a question, you had to have clicked the button to “like” the White House. Nothing disturbs the show.

The next day, continuing his fundraising tour, Obama participated in a breakfast with donors from the Democratic Party. He should have also been among friends there: The donors paid $35,800 to nibble on toast. Suddenly, an entire table of diners stands up. It’s a group called “Fresh Juice Party,” presumably making a reference (and in opposition to) the reactionary tea partyers. Without Obama’s permission, they sing a song for Bradley Manning. Manning is the soldier accused of giving WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of confidential cables from American diplomats. Manning is detained in a U.S. prison in humiliating conditions (forced to sleep naked and stand naked during the morning call, only allowed to have one hour of exercise per day, etc.). He has just been transferred to a new prison in Kansas, although no one could tell if the transfer reflects the administration’s response to criticism about his detention conditions, or if it will exacerbate the isolation measures. The former constitutional law professor, the cool Obama, who joked so deliciously with “Mark,” has refused to publicly criticize Manning’s detention conditions. A spokesperson from the State Department was even fired last month because he described the conditions as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

So, the table arose. And sang a pleading song for Manning. “We paid our dues, where’s our change?” they sang. This could be translated as, “We paid for your campaign. Where is our money, our change?” The leader was promptly expelled by the Secret Service, but the diners succeeded in interrupting the president, who was forced to wait until the end of the song. While acknowledging the “creativity” of the singers, Obama, according to a pool reporter allowed to attend the meal, appeared to have had “a little set back.” In response, he insisted that change, in the past 2.5 years of his presidency, had proved “tougher than we expected.”

What to say? Manning and Zuckerberg each participated in their own way in the Arab revolutions. Readers of Time Magazine had in fact chosen Manning as “Person of the Year,” before the magazine team opted finally for Zuckerberg. Can we compare, or evaluate, the respective roles of both men in the march toward freedom and democracy? Did the ability to call for meetings and demonstrations on Facebook do more to “trigger” the revolutions than when the Tunisians read in the WikiLeaks cables about the harsh judgments passed by U.S. diplomats on the Ben Ali clan’s corruption?

History will perhaps evaluate the merits of both men. Today, one sleeps naked in prison while the other jokes with his friend, the same president who refuses to condemn the humiliation of the other, explaining that it’s not simply an exercise of power (which means, if we understand correctly, that he is forced to deal with his top brass military friends). Draw the conclusions that you want, like this one: Just as in the last century, coolness stops where the empire’s interests begin. That silly song, between friends, is perhaps the first real crack in Obama’s image.