Letters to the Editor
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you know what they say...
"All nuts roll west."
This kind of idol worship is dangerous, he's a GREAT candidate, but a mortal none the less.
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And these are the kinds of articles...
...that make people outside the Bay Area less inclined to be an Obama supporter.
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Ahh..
That's my wacky city!
(SF residents.. don't forget to sign the petition to rename our sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush..)
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Let's not give him too much credit
Obama is a leader. But leaders can only lead people where they want to go. Otherwise they are tyrants. So the real credit, and I'm sure Obama would agree, goes to the people who have this vision he has articulated and are willing to take the steps to get there.
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I hope to be forgiven...
for seeing a Lightweight, instead of Mark's Lightworker.
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Disillusionment
Well, they are probably right on one level, but I'm afraid they're in for some disillusionment once he has to compromise about something crucial. Politics is not lightwork.
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WOW!!
This is why I moved away from the Bay Area. Too many crazy people, especially at the Chron.
So is this why the fist bump is suddenly such a big deal, because the Obamas do it on TV it is suddenly the next thing? People have been doing it for years. What's going on with the MSM? Are they that clueless?
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@edittv
Heh! Love the "nuts" line. On the other hand, I was thinking this morning about his apparently mindful approach to things (see http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/06/history.html, read that and follow the "wonky reasons" link back to 2006 -- hilzoy has done her homework), and his background in constitutional law and his having been a teacher for, what, a decade? And I was wondering what he might have to teach us. I'm listening, like I never have before.
I mean, why the hell not.
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Gosh - he sounds like Father
My dad teaches Yoga (the mental/spiritial kind - although he is surprisingly spry for a 75 year guy) and talks like this, although not so far about Obama. There is a very large movement of New Age type people roaming around who don't let on to the "less spiritially evolved" about their beliefs unless they sense a kindred spirit. Many of them are highly successful people by any measure who have a view of the Universe that does not revolve around an authoritarian deity who needs to be appeased by carefully following the rules laid out in old books, but taken a more philsophical approach to spirituality centered around self-improvement and the concept that the entire than the human race as a whole is also evolving. Their views are quite a bit less odd on the whole than those of the main-line religious as they don't tend to look for supernatural events to explains things, but more arm-chair self-analysis and as yet untestable theories about the ways of the Universe which they modify in keeping with the latest scientific theorys. Anyway, the ideas put forth in this article may be new to Salon readers, but you would be surprised how many people hold them.
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That's pretty racist
...They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
So, is this the columnists' sly way of calling Obama a soul brother? Pretty sneaky, if you're asking me.
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Yeesh
I'm a San Franciscan and an Obama voter, and I did not approve that message. Get as dreamy as you like, in the privacy of your own home!
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@everybody else
well, a few comments flew in as I was composing mine. And probably a few more in the interim. Just want to say that there's no denying the airy-fairiness of the QotD! But still.
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Methinks ...
... the author has already found "a new way of being on the planet". Or maybe being somewhere else. NASA should talk to this guy, he's probably not as expensive as most of their other missions.
Oh well. At least his "insights" are less offensive than Hagee's, Parsley's, etc.
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Mark Morford, always the cynic but not about Obama
Hey you all, I live in San Francisco and read Morford alot. I sent this article to my sister this morning and she sent it all over Hawaii. I was 20 years old when JFK was shot but I was 17 when he got elected. He was so beloved. Our world changed over night with the death of Kennedy. He wasn't the greatest president and with 20/20 hindsight, that's easy to prove. But our world changed because his presence was snuffed out. Those early 60's were heady days and JFK led the parade. He lit people up, he made people feel good. It's been a long time since then but let me tell you we are ready for Obama and the world is changing, can't you feel that headiness? He makes one feel good, he's not the Socialist I dream for but I sure do like the high.
McCain and Bush look decadent and dead next to Obama. Let's remember that!!! We're due a change.
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Lightworker?
I am sure all the unemployed auto workers feel the same way. Is this guy smoking crack?
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*giggle*
This kind of thing is endemic to the Cult of Personality. Every young, fairly good-looking guy who gets famous will attract this kind of talk from a few starry-eyed "spiritual" types, usually women. I've seen this kind of thing from fans of several cutie-pie Hollywood actors, for instance. (When The Matrix came out, Keanu Reeves of all people was being touted as the New Messiah. If THAT isn't absurd, I don't know what.)
*shrug* It's not important. There will always be some folks looking for the Space Brothers to usher in the new Age of Aquarius. They're harmless.
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Creepy
Just plain creepy.
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I live in SF
And I'm honest in my reporting that it is indeed the land of fruits and nuts. This reporter is a little off the reservation. But I still love me some Obama.
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yeh, not so fast
religion is a way of thinking and being in the world, and this observation wears the garb of new agey stuff it's popular to mock, but hell, people like pageantry.
if you leave out the mysticism that makes you so jittery, this is a sort of personality type endorsement
-Obama has charisma that people are drawn to
-he is the kind of leader who inspires people rather frightens
even if you don't believe in concepts like spiritual growth, there might be something to trying to climb Maslow's ladder to self-actualization
religion is an awful lot about pyschology anyway
but there are many things we don't understand in the world
the placebo effect
quantum nonlocality
no i'm not selling crystals, i'm just dismayed that in our sondbyte/culture war world everyone's so quick to jam others into categories and dismiss their ideas out of hand, and so reluctant to look beneath the flashy surface of things