To terrorize an audience, stimulate its imagination to work overtime. Hitchcock understood this—we never do see a knife pierce flesh in Psycho‘s famous shower scene. Similarly, conservative auteurs base their claim that Barack Obama is an unconstitutional alien in the Oval Office not on a birth certificate that says he was born in a foreign country but on the lack of one meeting their high standard for authenticity that says he wasn’t. And the case that Obama is a dangerous socialist hell-bent on destroying the capitalist system that allows any man, no matter how poor, to dream of getting rich hangs on—
And down at the very bottom, crawling across the poster in small print, it mentions the panel discussions that will follow the Sunday performances. The panelists are that era’s usual “progressive” suspects: Leon Despres, Monsignor Jack Egan, Studs Terkel . . .
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Obama was on the panel that talked about Alinsky the last Sunday of the play’s run at the Blue Rider Theatre in Pilsen. Neither Pam Dickler, who directed the Terrapin Theatre production, nor Gary Houston, who played Alinsky, can remember a word Obama said. But he impressed them. “You never would have known he was a politician,” says Dickler. “He never said anything at all about himself. He came alone, watched the play, and during the panel discussion was entirely on point and brilliant. That evening I called my father, who’s a political junkie, and told him to watch out for this man, he’s going places.” Houston was just as taken by Obama—though he remembers him arriving in a group.
The other is to see it as subversive. The best way to do this is to tie Obama to Alinsky. Alinsky was an organizer all his life; Obama did it a few years, pronounced himself exasperated at how little he was accomplishing, and went into politics. But then, so did the Manchurian Candidate.
Aaron Klein is a senior reporter and the Jerusalem correspondent at WND, the website formerly known as WorldNetDaily and the self-described home of “uncompromising journalism.” He’s also the author of the book The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists. Klein wouldn’t have much to write about if it weren’t for the afternoon Obama went to see The Love Song of Saul Alinsky.
That Obama, as president, will be hosting the meetings that his ideological sidekick is plotting to blow sky-high was not a consideration Klein allowed to ruffle his analysis. (Klein didn’t reply to my e-mail.)
