Barack Obama is a child of the 1970s. He is one year older than Wesley Snipes.
The number one song when Obama was 18 was Blondie’s Heart of Glass.
He was also 18 when the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was released. This means he was young enough to have listened to rap in high school.
When Obama was at Harvard Law School, Public Enemy dueled with NWA on the hip hop charts.
He probably saw Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever at the Harvard Theater on Church Street, just like I did.
It’s shocking to think about how young Obama is. He’s four years younger than Spike Lee. If fellow Hawaiian Don Ho were still alive, Obama would be 31 years younger than him. Tom Selleck, who played Hawaii’s Magnum P.I., is 16 years older than Obama.
He could very likely be the next president of the United States.
Dispatches from Seth Gitell 
February 21, 2008 at 4:09 pm |
Nice work Seth. It hit me the other night when Obama was asked if he would go negative in response to Hill’s recent barbs, his response was, “Nope. We don’t play that.”
February 26, 2008 at 1:36 pm |
That certainly puts things in perspective, Seth. And gives hope that he may even share worldviews with some of the folks in our generation. Is Barack a proclaimed old school rap fan or might he have been up the street at law school jamming along with us to Dead or Alive and Sweet Child O’Mine?
March 6, 2008 at 8:07 pm |
[…] month, I posted an item about Obama’s place in the broader cultural world. I wrote “He probably saw Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever at the Harvard Theater on Church […]