Community Organizer

[Weyoun42]

You'll have to pardon me if this topic is trite. I've been watching the widespread mocking of Barack Obama's touted years as a community organizer in Chicago and having my little chuckle along with the crowd. However, I want to know why I'm laughing, so I've been trying do some research to nail down just what being a community organizer means. It's about as nebulous and slippery as one would guess. There are all sorts of undertakings he has been a part of, but why and for whom (besides "the people") is not precisely clear. I've come to one conclusion, on which the precise reasons I cannot quite put my finger--due to it being both so non-corporeal and fuzzy and also because it can be so large that a finger can't cover it properly. My conclusion is simple: To be a community organizer is to attempt to be Ellsworth Monkton Toohey.

So, too simple? Not accurate? I am only half way through my first reading of The Fountainhead (Having finished Atlas Shrugged a couple weeks ago and cleansing the palate with Yevgeniy Zamyatin's We in between) and probably do not have a complete picture of Toohey's character. However, I just finished the chapter dedicated to Toohey's life story a matter of moments ago, and whenever I tried to label any "career" that he pursued, the only title that would come to my head was "Community Organizer." So, the tall, thin man with the soft, but sonorous and commanding voice is once again trying to appeal to the angels of our better nature; to shame us into being our brothers' keeper.

As one can see, this is only my second post and I haven't even finished The Fountainhead yet, so the title of "n00b" would be accurate, but I thought it worth some discussion (unless it has already been covered in a previous thread, in which case, merely direct me).

[fletch]

I think if you are looking for some kind of parallel, I would say that Rev. Wright is more the Toohey type. Obama is Keating.