Obama the Cereal Killer

 

When I first heard the name, “Barack Hussein Obama,” my immediate thought was, “Oh no, now we’re going to be barraged with ‘twilight language.’” My public comment was, “Sorry, but Barack Hussein Obama sounds a bit too NLP for my taste.”

I expect you to do your own research on twilight language and neuro-linguistic programming. If you don’t, you won’t get much out of what I’m going to say here. They exist, they’re real, they work, and if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t be used in the advertising that sells products. If you’re unfamiliar with them, I’ll sound like a stark raving loony to you, but so would an advertising agency brainstorming session…or a discussion between a political speech writer and a campaign manager.

You’ve been warned!

Let’s start with something simple because that’s how our brains work, simply. Serial and cereal. Someone says out loud, “He’s a serial killer.” Your brain hears that a man is killing cereal. That’s odd, but not threatening. Your brain begins to examine the context in which you received the news. How quickly your brain transforms the mental image of a man cutting down cereal into the image of a man killing people in a sequence depends a lot on whether, and how often, you’ve heard the term, “serial killer” spoken before. 

Most of us have heard of serial killers so our brains will flash the correct picture of a serial killer to us pretty quickly. However…and this is the part you need to really think about…the first thing that entered your brain WAS a picture of a man killing cereal.

Why? Because your brain processed the word “cereal” long before it encountered the word “serial.” You might even have been sitting in front of the TV, eating Sugar Frosted Flakes right out of the box, with Tony the Tiger by your side, the very first time somebody on the news said, “serial killer.” You might even have wondered if someone was going to take away your cereal and your good bud, Tony.

Okay, whatever. The point is that the word “serial,” which sounds exactly like “cereal,” always enters your head as a grain product commonly eaten for breakfast BEFORE it morphs into an act done in a series or sequence. Your brain presents you with information in the order it received the information. Which kinda explains why some mothers “call the roll” before they hit upon the correct name for the child in front of them, doesn’t it? 

So what do serial killers and Barack Hussein Obama have in common? I don’t know of anything beyond the fact that the words make us think of other things. Which things depends on what we heard in our lives before we heard “Barack Hussein Obama.” 

Here’s how my brain processed “Barack Hussein Obama” the first time I read it:

Barack = barrack, a place where soldiers live.

Hussein = an evil dictator.

Obama = Osama bin Laden, an evil terrorist

The name, for me, initially meant war (military barracks,) enemy (Saddam Hussein,) and enemy (Osama bin Laden.)

After I heard it pronounced out loud the first time it meant:

Barack = barrack, a place where non-english speaking soldiers live. (Note the accent on the second syllable and the sound of the second “A.” Definitely not an american way of saying, “barrack.” Although, just to muddy the water, some do pronounce it like a place for American soldiers to live.)

Hussein = the name of an evil dictator.

Obama = oh bomb uh, still reminds me of bin Laden, but now also a bomb.

After hearing the name spoken, my perception changed a bit. It became a place where soldiers of many different countries live, to fight evil, by bombing something, possibly evil terrorists and evil dictators. I can’t be sure, but I definitely heard an exhortation, “Oh, bomb a….”

But, that has nothing to do with Obama!

Sure, you and I know that! But try telling it to your CPU, your brain. It’s simple, remember? It has to process a whole bunch of stuff more recently received than “Osama bin Laden,” “Saddam Hussein,” “barrack,” and “bomb,” before it gets to “presidential candidate.” 

Now, let’s factor in his appearance. Well, the first thing I noticed about his appearance was that he didn’t look like a WASP. My first thought was, “Ahh, so the Democrats figure we Americans are finally ready for a little public ethnic diversity, huh? Good for them. I wonder who the Republicans will run, in case the majority of American voters aren’t ready for ethnic diversity in a president.”

My second thought was, “Naw, Americans have been well trained by now in how to act Politically Correct, PC. They fall all over themselves pretending they don’t see color.”

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed to me that Obama’s ethnicity would work in his favor via the American penchant for public PC-ness.

So, where are we? Well, we have “an ethnic” man, “named after” ethnic enemies of America, also “named after” war paraphernalia, running for president of the most guilt-ridden, PC spouting, war mongering, paranoid country in the world, America. I say he’s a shoe-in!

His name reminds us of the CIA-created monsters we’ve gone to bed with (and loved to hate) on the nightly news for over 20 years, AND it reminds us of the current war against those monsters, and other to-be-named monsters. His ethnicity is from our media-created enemy..the Middle East AND from our most feared and oppressed citizens…African-Americans. It reminds us of the fun part of war…communal living and bombs; and we, the offspring of immigrants, malcontents, and goobers, are looking for a quick easy answer to the Bush regime, so…Obama’s perfect! 

Luckily, this perfect presidential candidate looks good and has a pretty wife AND they’re young! Okay, not actually, but compared to our other choices…. You see my point.

In fact, the simple part of our national brain, the part that watches “American Idol” and carries too much debt, is probably so happy about Obama that we don’t even notice the cognitive dissonance that follows him like an army of hungry rats leaving a sinking ship, sniffing out their next meal. 

If all that I just wrote sounded like gobbledygook to you, you could always do your own research. Or, you could just get off the internet and go back to watching TV. Or, better yet, I hear there’s a 12-year-old nymphet sticking her tongue down chicken throats over on YouTube. You could just run on over there and check out her ethnic heritage.