Lexington loves Obama

This week's Lexington column in The Economist speaks of hip-hop and rap (apparently this is a redundancy since rap is a kind of hip-hop according to Lexington) and the effect such "music" has on politics. The column is informative -- there is much about hip-hop that is new to this old fool -- until the penultimate paragraph, in which Lexington reverts to form. "Political change requires hard and often tedious work, as the thousands of weary volunteers working for Barack Obama can attest," says Lexington, without specifying what political change Obama volunteers think they're working for. Is it electing a half-black man? A relatively young man? A politician whose words sound good but have almost no meaning?

Lexington then quotes the chairman of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention (whatever that may be, whomever he might be) who "shrugs" that even if elected president, Obama "will be powerless to implement progressive policies because the corporate power structure will not let him." (Presumably, Lexington subscribes to that thought, otherwise he or she would not have used the quote.) Either that or the American people will. Since the American people are relatively conservative, progressive policies do not sell like hotcakes.