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September 14th, 2008 6:27 am

Jean Valjean = Obama: Who knew?

We all know that Barack Obama believes he is “the One we’ve been waiting for.” He told us that in Chicago in February 2008.

We know, too, that, according to Obama, we can look back on June 3, 2008–the date he wrested the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton–as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

A new age needs a new hero, and Obama was not shy about putting himself forward for the job. But who is Obama? Is he Moses, commanding the oceans to recede that his people may escape from, and then obliterate, their oppressors? Or is that all prolegomena for the advent of “the One we’ve been waiting for,” namely . . . Who? A sort of Messiah? Maybe. Or maybe the actor and comedian J.D. Walsh comes closer in this glimpse of Obama Headquarters on November 3, 2008. Maybe Obama is not the Messiah, precisely, but a suffering martyr for liberty–Jean Valjean, in fact, Victor Hugo’s hero in Les Miserables signing “One Day More” with the rest of the cast: “One more day to revolution,” etc. etc.

[Update: As Faust's Blog points out, "if you have seen Les Miz on Broadway you’d know that the eager revolutionaries got wiped out right after that song. NOT a good metaphor for any electoral campaign." Indeed.]

Here’s a question. Is Mr. Walsh’s skit about life at Obama’s HQ just before the election a spoof, as it some people have described it? Or is an homage?

I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. It seems like a parody to me–but then so does much of the Obama campaign. It is silly, no doubt about that: all those fresh-faced campaign workers bursting into tuneful revolutionary solidarity in the midst of their PCs and xerox copiers. But is it, really, any sillier than Obama’s “we’re-the-ones-we’ve-been-waiting-for” riff? Is it any sillier than his faux-Presidential seal, his follow-the-yellow-brick-road, somewhere-over-the-rainbow-bama logo, his vacuous invocation of Change, his school-boy, Bob-the-Builder Latin motto? The brief answer is, No, it isn’t any sillier or more extreme. And the fact that Mr. Walsh ends his little entertainment by flashing across the screen the English translation of the Bob-the-Builder motto–”Yes We Can”–tempts me to conclude that, sadly, his creation was meant in earnest. An English friend sent me the link to the performance and included this comment: “Obama. Or there’ll be blood.” That, mutatis mutandis, is approximately the message of Les Miz. It is the message, heard with increasing virulence, of the far-Left blogosphere. Perhaps it is also the message Mr. Walsh has endeavored to convey?

Maybe, And yet, and yet: J.D. Walsh, as I said, is an actor and a comedian. Could he, just possibly, be a comedian with a sense of humor? Stranger things have happened.

A final question: what does it tell us that we cannot say with any confidence whether the performance is a spoof? Nothing good, of that you can be sure.

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13 Comments

1. Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » Jean Valjean = Obama: Who knew?:

[...] Kimball has a hilarious take, Jean Valjean = Obama: Who knew?, on Les Misbarack: Maybe Obama is not the Messiah, precisely, but a suffering martyr for [...]

Sep 14, 2008 - 7:01 am 2. srlucado:

It must be a spoof. It simply *must* be, a weird joke from America’s “Let them eat cake” candidate, Barack Antoinette.

(Then again, there’s “An Inconvenient Truth: The Opera”, so I guess anything’s possible.)

Scott

Sep 14, 2008 - 10:24 am 3. ahem:

There may be something to that ‘there will be blood’. if the Left loses, it isn’t going to be pretty at all.

Sep 14, 2008 - 1:28 pm 4. dragonfly:

Was not Les Miserables about the Audacity of Hope?

Whereas Obama’s is the Audacity of Hype, with a bit of “The Little Machine That Could” thrown in

Sep 14, 2008 - 1:44 pm 5. Steynian 246 « Free Mark Steyn!:

[...] bigger than her: utopias bubble all around us: the EUSSR; ObamaMessianism; UN utopianism; International Courtism; soft Marxism; Jackboot ideologies of all shapes and sizes, [...]

Sep 14, 2008 - 3:12 pm 6. heather:

(I’ve posted this comment at Rosenbaum’s place too:)

the tragedy of Obama (win or lose in November) is that the Democratic Party is – to its core – racist. Obama has all the attributes of the ideal Black Guy: Harvard educated, cool manners, great oratory.. and he is good looking in a Caucasion manner (as a friend noted, his ancestry is EAST African). And he was played the Democratic Racist game really well, working his way up and through the Chicago political machine, never making any waves that are more than skin deep. He has never questioned the verities of Leftist assumptions, and I think has found them irrelevant anyway, to his real passion: Making It to the Top.

The Democrats have seen him as nothing more than a vehicle to prove to themselves that -by jove! – they are not racists, like those republicans!

Have you never heard something so cynical and heartless and RACIST as Biden’s remark that Obama ‘cleans up’ well??? Obama has lived with this hypocrisy every day since he moved to Chicago.
Sep 14, 2008 – 12:16 pm

Sep 14, 2008 - 3:21 pm 7. mtraven:

I wonder why Roger writes such obvious lies which can be checked simply by following his links? For instance, his first sentence is a lie. Barack Obama did not say that “he is the one we’ve been waiting for”. He said “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, and also explicitly said that “it’s not about me”. In other words, Roger has completely distorted the import of Obama’s statement, or in other words, Roger is a pathetic, whey-faced, sack of lies. Nothing he says should be taken seriously.

Sep 14, 2008 - 3:27 pm 8. Keith L.:

You can tell it’s not a spoof because the campaign workers are Beautiful People and therefore intended as proxies for Obama’s radiance and hipness. If it were a spoof, the campaign workers would be as fat and ugly as Democrat campaign workers in real life are.

Sep 14, 2008 - 8:02 pm 9. ic:

mtraven: “it’s not about me” is always about “me”. Similarly, it is not about money, is always about money.

Dems are not racists: Clarence Thomas was not black, Sarah Palin was not a woman. Dems are racists and sexists. They stereotype how a black person or a woman is to behave. If they don’t behave, they will be destroyed. If the slaves didn’t behave, they would be whipped. Obama appeals to them because he is “clean”, i.e. light skinned, an almost white.

Sep 14, 2008 - 8:27 pm 10. Steve Skubinna:

“Obama. Or there’ll be blood.” That, mutatis mutandis, is approximately the message of Les Miz. It is the message, heard with increasing virulence, of the far-Left blogosphere.

A disconcerting thought, and one I have pondered off and on the past few weeks. Always, though, I come to the same conclusion: today’s firebreathing leftist revolutionaries are physical cowards, wedded to their own self indulgence.

What will they do if Obama loses? Rampage through their urban strongholds? Torch Restoration Hardware, Whole Foods, and Caribou Coffee? They don’t own guns, and even if they have copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and The Poor Man’s James Bond tucked away behind the Joseph Campbell and Sartre, they’re afraid to use any of the recipes in them because, like, everybody knows, man, that those books were written by the CIA to sabotage revolutionaries.

Nope, there will be a crescendo of high chair banging and flinging their strained beets against the wall. Plenty of solemn vows to move to Canada. Threats to tie up the country through massive passive resistance. A major boom in weed (look for the Urban Economic Stimulus to hit your local dealers) and Doritos.

Then they will return to waiting for the change that they’ve been waiting for. Punctuated, of course, by sporadic episodes of incoherent rage.

Sep 14, 2008 - 8:46 pm 11. Michael Lonie:

You could see riots by blacks protesting that their candidate lost. Blacks have done that before, though not for that particular reason. A few white radicals might join them. Together they’ll prove their revolutionary and anti-racist bonafides by attacking Korean or Indian owned stores.

Sep 14, 2008 - 10:24 pm 12. mtraven:

heather: Democrats are racist, because they nominated a black man.

ic: Obama meant “it’s all about me”, because he said the opposite.

Roger et al: because someone made a video spoof of Obama based Les Miserables, liberals will resort to violence if he loses.

I detect a certain pattern of thought here. One might suspect there isn’t enough real mud to fling at Obama if you have to make shit up from whole cloth. I guess the Ayers/Wright/Rezko stuff isn’t getting the traction you would like.

Sep 15, 2008 - 7:30 am 13. John N. Frary:

A retired terrorist, a racist pulpiteer and a convicted crook? Flower petals fluttering down from gilded clouds. No mud there.

Weaving whole cloth from shit? Um, I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

Sep 15, 2008 - 7:45 am