Obamlet?
Sam Schulman offers an interesting notion of Obama as Hamlet. We differ on certain things; Schulman does not believe Obama to be a radical, whereas I currently strongly favor that interpretation.
But the following sounds about right:
[Obama] is a 20th-century liberal of a very conventional type: incurious, superior, and vain. What is unique about him is what is unique about Hamlet…He deliberately prolonged his youth, avoided responsibility and serious challenges, put his great gifts to work in the tiniest possible ways—all in order to protect his illusions from contact with very much reality. And now, in this particular job, he is up against the real world for the very first time. Obama’s trajectory is Hamlet’s, a youth spent as the recognized, indulged, and inevitable Prince, untrammeled by responsibility or experience.
Let’s just hope it ends better than Shakespeare’s play did.
“avoided responsibility and serious challenges, put his great gifts to work in the tiniest possible ways”
Obama hardly prolonged his youth, at least not in any conventional way that men are prone to. Obama got to work as a political climber and socialist organizer immediately after college. Seems to me he succeeded admirably as political climber. The rest remains to be seen.
Can I be the first to note that “You can’t make an Obamlet without breaking yeggs.”
Rimshot.
“Let’s just hope it ends better than Shakespeare’s play did.”
IIRC, in the end of Hamlet, the protagonist died… 😉
Alas, poor Kerry. I knew him, Biden: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times.
And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.
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