Last Friday, President Barack Obama came to Marc Maron’s garage for an interview on the WTF podcast (the show ran Monday), days after the unspeakable tragedies in Charleston, S.C., and days before the Supreme Court determines the future of the Affordable Care Act — and, by extension, determines a large chunk of Obama’s legacy.
Maron was unusually nervous during the introduction to Monday’s episode. But as we’ve come to expect from Maron over roughly six years of podcasts, he created a comfortable channel for Obama and the show found its footing within minutes. Obama noticed Maron hangs a lot of pictures and drawings of himself in his garage, joking that it was a bit narcissistic of Maron to do so. And away they went.
Maron was taken by how even-keeled Obama remains publicly, despite Congress’s routine of opposing anything and everything the President proposes. Blessed with a number of cultural perspectives during his youth and born in a place that many refer to as paradise, Obama credits his home state for grounding him. “I have Hawaii in my mind,” he said.
Obama has needed that over the years. It’s been troubling for him to see mass killings puncture our society year after year during his presidency while, as he told Maron, Congress has done absolutely nothing about it. Obama specifically pointed to our government’s inaction during the Sandy Hook shooting, where 20 six-year-olds were murdered, as “disgusting.”
After Wednesday’s heinous shooting at a historic black church in South Carolina, Obama put his foot down:
“I’ve done this way too often,” he said. “A couple times a year I end up speaking to the country and a specific community. … It’s not enough just to feel bad. There are actions we can take to prevent these attacks. … No other country puts up (with this). In some ways, this has become normal.”
Obama believes that hunting and teaching sportsmanship with guns is important, an American pastime and a point of bonding for fathers and sons. But he begs the question: Isn’t there a way to pass legitimate gun legislation that protects responsible gun owners AND stops mentally unfit citizens from having access to these weapons?
With a matter of months left to go in his final term as President, Obama is convinced Congress will continue to ignore gun legislation reform — as well as other important, complicated issues — so long as they can get away with it. Obama was adamant to Maron, however, that his faith has never been higher in the American people.
“There is a big gap between how we are as American people and how our political system reflects that,” Obama said. “The media is splintered. There’s a profit to simplifying, polarizing. … This detaches the political system from the people. Then the public withdraws and it strengthens the gridlock.
“Progress in a democracy is never instantaneous and always partial,” Obama continued. “But you can’t get cynical.”
Obama mentioned early in the conversation that Maron’s basement in Pasadena, Calif. is close to Occidental College, where he attended school for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York. Maron pressed him on an array of existential inquiries: Do you feel like the same person? Do you have access to that younger man? What did you experience in your twenties that shaped who you are today?
During his second year at Occidental College and through his twenties, Obama kept a journal. At 53, Obama told Maron he still recognizes the young man lurking in those entries 30 years later. But he admitted that he suffered from an identity crisis as a teenager and during his years at Occidental. As a man of mixed-races, Obama felt a pressure to discover his blackness. That meant taking up smoking, wearing leather jackets and emulating Richard Pryor.
“I was trying on a bunch of hats,” he said.
During his sophomore year, Obama finally had the vision that changed his life. He realized social justice, fighting poverty and racial conflicts were what was important to him. He decided that being a black man didn’t mean he had to be “one way.” Obama grew to accept his diversity.
His mother, he said, was “one of the last great secular humanists.” Obama said that she instilled in him a love for everyone regardless of their creed or color. This belief system drives Obama and he said as much when he asked the American people to stop checking for someone’s race or religion before deciding whether or not they care about an issue.
As you may know, the big news floated in advance of the interview with Maron was that President Obama said the word “nigger” while talking about race relations and the history of racism in America. In context, Obama was discussing his approach to discussing racial history with younger people, saying that it’s impossible to know just how much America has changed in 50 years unless you were a black man living in the 1960s.
“What is also true is that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow,” Obama said. “That’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. … Racism, we’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether or not racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies, overnight, don’t completely erase everything that happened 200 or 300 years prior.”
I was 16 years old when my high school health teacher ended class prematurely, turned on his television and let us watch Barack Obama take his oath as President of the United States.
Four years later, I was pounding away on some basketball blog post in a Tim Hortons when Beyoncé sang the National Anthem at Obama’s second inauguration. I stepped away from my laptop and savored the moment, surrounded by half a dozen senior citizens sipping their morning coffee.
Obama has had an up-and-down six-and-a-half years, a pair of terms defined more by the turmoil surrounding his tenure than his production at the position. His work in the Oval Office is nearly complete, and inevitably his eight years as President will expire leaving more questions for the future of this country than answers. Such is the nature of the job these days.
I will always love Barack Obama, though. He’s an American icon. A symbol of hope in the purest sense, a man of reason in a world full of wackadoos. In no hyperbolic way, Barack Obama is truly an inspiration.
When Rembert Browne interviewed President Obama in March, it was a critical opportunity for a young black man to ask an older black man a question about their future — as men, as people, as a community — during such a tumultuous time. I love reading Rem, and I love that Obama sonned him.
Both the Grantland piece and the Maron interview presented Obama as a man and not as a political figurehead. When Obama, arguably the most famous man of the young 21st century, talks about his struggles at 20, reading back over old journal entries, or wearing leather jackets and imitating stand-up comedians, it speaks to me.
I’m reminded of just how easy it is for institutions to deify a man, or destroy them, depending on what the shot is.
As Maron so often pulls out of people, Obama was real in the garage. He talked about the depression of becoming an uncool father to his children. Losing his ability to play competitive basketball. He urged the American people to seize the moment, to take back their country, to listen and to love.
What a cool guy.
