On the other hand the relevant passage, while not gushing over Clintons' "blackness", does attempt the rhetorical ploy of _itself representing_ aspects of Clintons' character - _real_ and not 'representational' characteristics, such as "single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas" - as displaying "almost every trope of blackness" so that, Morrison claims, "African-American men seemed to understand it right away".
Oh really? Put aside the unprovable statement about whether African-American men really understood it this way. It is more important to see that it is Morrison who mobilizes racist "tropes of blackness" in the service of rallying middle-class liberals (African American or otherwise) to support a politician who just happens to act out these stereotypes in his own real life. But for Clinton these stereotypes are, instead, his own lived behavior.
In itself, Clintons' behavior is not a "representation" of anything. It was only due to the accident that this character also happened to be President that the Morrisons of the world could utilize this character as a - precisely racist -"representation" of "blackness".
And we wonder why Reagan and Clinton were so popular. What else does one expect here in the society of limitless self-loathing and low self-esteem? Liberals love this stuff as they love all suffering, as a vampire loves blood.
-Brad Mayer
Oakland, CA
>I remembered Morrison's piece as "gushing" too, but if you look at the
>relevant passage it's a little more complicated than that---more about how
>representations of Clinton display (racist) "tropes of blackness," how he's
>criminalized/sexualized, etc. in the same way that black men are. Now it's
>mutated into something positive for Bill to gloat about, which doesn't seem
>to be what Morrison or Chris Rock had in mind.
>By the way, note that Morrison attributes the notion to unnamed "black men"
>during Whitewater, so maybe it was Chris Rock's idea in the first place.
>Gary Ashwill