Arushi Sharma | Deconstructing Obamania

David Cordero has been written about by most national news outlets over the last week. He displayed a sculpture depicting a clay-like Barack Obama dressed as Jesus Christ with a thin blue halo encircling his head.

Throughout the past week, his work has been labeled as religiously offensive, but Cordero has maintained that the goal of his artwork is to illustrate the politics of the 2008 presidential race as he sees them.

As reported by MSNBC on April 3, the 24-year-old student thought that Obama had come to be regarded as a "potential savior that might come and absolve" the United States "of all its sins."

Pablo Picasso said that "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."

While my first glance at a picture of the sculpture rattled my aesthetic sensibilities, according to Picasso's definition, Cordero has made some pretty good art.

Support for Barack Obama has been growing, at least in part, due to his unique iconic appeal to minority communities.

But Obama has also gained popularity among American youth who are frustrated with the performance of the current administration. To them, he is the antithesis of President Bush.

College "Obamania," as it was termed by "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart, has led to the membership of over 1.3 million students in a Facebook group that was supposed to reach the million target by May.

While those numbers may include a large number of non-committal supporters, they are significant to the extent that the Internet has facilitated an unprecedented level of discourse among college students about the presidential race.

Alex Lebowitz of The Cornell Daily Sun, quoting Ben Wallace-Wells of Rolling Stone, pointed out that "No candidate since Robert F. Kennedy has sparked as much campaign heat" among college-age students.

I had a series of discussions with Penn students about the presidential race to determine just what this heat was about.

After questioning students about Obama's political track record, only three out of the thirty-something I spoke with knew that his role in national politics commenced with his election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.

Many students could, however, talk at length about why Obama represented something exciting for the American people, especially students. He was closer to them in age, charismatic, a perfect replacement for Dubya. One student who recently gained U.S. citizenship and wished to remain anonymous, said that he hoped Obama would create a turnover in U.S. policy so that family in his native country would stop "making fun of him" for becoming an American.

The nature of the conversation reminded me of another leader who took the youth by storm. I was living in New Delhi when the media began sensationalized coverage of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi's 2004 nomination for the Prime Ministership of India.

My politically apathetic college classmates, sick and tired of the decrepit behavior of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party, suddenly began to engage in many fiery discussions about Gandhi. But I never quite found out what their consensus was on her ability to lead the nation, because they were too busy debating her "Italian-ness" or admiring her fashion sense.

As one particular group of college students extolled Obama's oratory skills and how good he looks on television, I felt like I was in New Delhi all over again.

Desperate to stop the nonsensical jabber, I posed the killer question - what can Obama do about Iraq? A confused silence followed until one student suggested that Obama's administration would do everything that Bush's did not ... and somehow, that would solve the problem.

Perhaps it was just bad luck that I got stuck with the politically uneducated bunch to interview, and it is with good reason that I shall decline this week to mention any names.

I am sure there are many students who can actually tell me why I should vote for Obama and not McCain or Clinton. But I am also certain that Obama is fast becoming a cult leader for this generation of students. Disenchanted with the state of the nation, they are falling prey to the following irrational logic: The polar opposite of the Bush administration is exactly what the United States needs to get out of domestic and international quagmires.

But Obama is not the antithesis of Bush; even if he was, that proves nothing about his competency.

I can't decide whether it is better for students to be uninvolved in the voting process, or deeply involved, but completely miseducated.

Cordero's statue may not be religiously accurate, but it has certainly proved to be a revelation.

Arushi Sharma is an College junior from Rockville, Md. Her e-mail address is sharma@dailypennsylvanian.com. A Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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