Obama’s Falstaff: Why the Senator should banish Jeremiah Wright
Listening to Senator Barack Obama’s measured, careful and slowly increasing rhetorical acts of distancing himself from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s dizzying flights of intemperance and just-plain craziness, I keep finding myself wanting to hear more bite from Obama. Obama came close when he mentioned, yesterday, that Rev. Wright “certainly wasn’t thinking of me” when he reopened his mouth in public, but, alas, it sounded more petulant than angry… and we need a forceful, angry and unequivocal rejection of Wright for this topic to go away.
This morning, I found myself thinking of Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff from Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays. A quick search on “Obama Falstaff” picks up many pundits citing Hal’s rejection of Falstaff when he finally becomes king at the end of Part II: “I know thee not, old man, fall to they prayers!”
But why is Wright doing this in the first place? And for insight into this, let us move back to the start of Henry IV Part I, where Hal pretends to be his royal father and Falstaff pretends to be Hal in Act 2, Scene 4.
Sir John, pretending to be the prince, says:
To say I know more harm in him [Falstaff] than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity: his white hairs do witness it. But that he is (saving your reverence) a whoremaster? That I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord. Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins. But for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff — and therefore more valiant, being, as he is — old Jack Falstaff… banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack. and banish all the world.
To this, the prince (again, pretending to be the king long before he actually becomes the king) replies, “I do. I will.”
The massive self-absorption of Falstaff here — throwing his compatriots under the rejection bus in an attempt to save himself from what he knows must one-day come — seems like a good fit for Rev. Wright.
Did Wright know that it was coming anyway and just decide to have a little fun… to provoke the rejection on his own timetable and terms? It would be a hugely selfish thing to do.
And quite in character.
Has Obama read his Shakespeare?
Leave your comment