Barack "Empty Stool" Obama: Birth of a Legend

This article was previously published on Al Fin blog, on the occasion of the Ameican Labor Day holiday

Empty Chair?  Empty Stool?  Empty Suit?  Empty Skull?  Obama's Many Faces

America Celebrates National Empty Chair Day

Barack Obama: The Empty Stool

President Obama has consistently been absent, more concerned about branding than leadership, with image and atmospherics than truly rallying the troops and harnessing our resources and solving our most pressing problems.

...According to most accounts, even friendly ones, President Obama is haughty and surly. To those with eyes to see, he is an act. A vacuous promise. An illusion. An empty stool. _EmptyStool

As a legislator in both the Illinois Senate and the US Senate, Obama became known as "Senator Present," even though he was most often absent -- out campaigning for his next election. Perhaps he was warming up for his role as "the empty stool" even then.

Even when he appears to be sitting in the chair, there is something clearly missing. It is not exactly that the emperor has no clothes. . . It is more that the clothes have no emperor. "There is no there, there" as Al Fin once remarked to Gertrude Stein, sitting in an Oakland cafe in a previous life.

Perhaps America should send out an expedition of scatologists in search of "the real Obama." The fate of the next century may just depend on what is discovered.

Outside observers may blame American voters for electing this mystery man, but if the American media failed to do its job of investigation, it deserves a large share of any blame to be placed.

It is not entirely clear as to why America replaced the Labor Day Holiday with National Empty Chair Day, other than the general lack of jobs. Some claim that it has something to do with what is depicted in the photograph to the left.

Since the image depicts only a single person -- an American cinema star -- it is possible that it is a scene taken from a motion picture. But if so, where is the rest of the movie? Historians may fight over the question for decades.

No matter. The change may represent a coming trend of changes to American national holidays. It is rumoured that up until now, efforts to change the Christmas Holiday to "O Holy Bama Day" have been rebuffed. But now, who can predict such things?

One thing is for certain: If US President Obama is re-elected in November, Thanksgiving Day will receive some serious scrutiny for change, if not hope.


Photo credits: Top, Bottom