«POP ART IS FOR EVERYONE»

Obama’s presidency will undoubtedly influence the tone and substance of pop culture. But what’s most pop culturally interesting about him is not so much Obama as cause but Obama as effect. He strategically harnessed pop culture, he produced it with two best-selling books, he avidly consumes it. In our Balkanized era, Barack Obama simply is the pop cultural colossus.Three big trends made his ascension possible. First there was the steady blackening of American popular culture. He was 4 when “I Spy,” co-starring Bill Cosby, first went on the air, and 6 when Sidney Poitierstarred in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” In the early ’80s, just as Obama entered adulthood, Jackson released the best-selling record ever, Bryant Gumbel was the new “Today” show anchor, Michael Jordan became the greatest American athlete, “The Cosby Show” was the most popular show on television, and Oprah went national. Then came Tiger Woods and white youth’s embrace of hip-hop. This transformation had been happening incrementally for more than a century, as Leon Wynter explained in his great book, “American Skin.” “The future,” Wynter wrote pres­ciently in 2002, “is not about black people leading black people,” but “about black people leading all Americans.”

New York Times
June 5 2009