Giddy Over Obama?

WASHINGTON (USATODAY.com) — Justin Timberlake, the pop star known to many Americans primarily for exposing Janet Jackson's breast at halftime of the Super Bowl, is tone deaf when it comes to American politics.
"Now more than ever," he told Oprah Winfrey on the eve of President Barack Obama's inauguration, "it is a call to action to every American to put your nose to the grindstone, roll up your sleeves, and get to work. Because we have some rebuilding to do."
This may come as news to you good Americans who are unemployed, working two jobs, worried about losing your job or struggling in a dead-end job you are overqualified for. You simply have not been working hard enough.
And by the way, in your spare time, get out there and volunteer. It's cool again.
Ordinarily, the banal pronouncements of pop stars are not worth time, ink, paper or a microburst in cyberspace. But Obama has embraced the Hollywood left, and vice versa. The Academy Awards could have had a quorum at Obama's inauguration.

From many of those in Hollywood, the script has been this: Americans are good again after eight years of George W. Bush.
But the message that suddenly America has become togetherland by virtue of Obama's election is such a fundamental misreading of where the country really is on some very tough questions that it will make this young president's job that much harder.
Americans are more united than they normally are on wanting him to succeed. Yet that definition of success, and how the country might get there, is nowhere universally held. As Congress begins to wrestle with the nation's tough economy, we are about to see some honest and deep differences in upcoming battles on such nuts-and-bolts topics as taxes and federal spending.
Timberlake's mini-sermon on Oprah was so arrogant and so contrary to Obama's central campaign theme that it raised questions about whether the pop star has been paying any attention at all.
In his somber inaugural address, Obama paid homage to the work ethic and values of Americans. On any scale, Americans already work harder, volunteer more and give more in charity and foreign aid than virtually any country on Earth. This did not begin with the election of Barack Obama.
The last thing Americans need right now is lectures from the playground rich about working harder.
They need more jobs.
They need saner federal fiscal policy.
They need to say no to things they, collectively, can't afford, for the sake of future generations.
They need honesty in the boardroom.
And they need less swagger, more humility — less preaching and more listening.

Yet Timberlake told Oprah that "all of a sudden" Americans have "swagger" and that America is "cool now" because of Obama's election. Timberlake said he woke up the day after the election with more "swagger in my step." He must not have been listening over the last two years to Obama's call for humility in foreign policy, and elsewhere.
More than anything, swagger damaged Bush's presidency.
Swagger enabled Timberlake to think he could do what he did before millions on that Super Bowl stage. The episode was a prime example of why many people around the globe, especially in the Muslim world, think American culture is crude and corrosive.
And since when did it take an election of anyone to make rebuilding or volunteering or working hard or rolling up their sleeves suddenly swag-cool? Was there a moratorium on any of this during the Bush administration, or the Clinton administration, or any other time?
That's enough dallying on this topic. Time to get the nose to the grindstone.

Contact GNS Political Writer Chuck Raasch