Being politically apathetic hasn’t shielded me from dozens of exultant SMSes about president-elect Barack Obama. Many of my left-wing friends are astonished by the apparent newfound liberalness of the US. Surfing about randomly, it occurred to me their reactions were summed up in this post by blogger Gawker (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comgoose-egg.blogspot.com/):
“Okay, get this. Eight years after America gets attacked by Mohammed Atta, s#$!s in its pants and re-elects President Doofus McBombDaMuslim, they elect President Barack Obama as president.
“Barack H.U.S.S.E.I.N Obama.
“What are you smoking America, because I would love a sniff. Or was I wrong about you all this time?”
At the other end of the spectrum, Fox News has invited responses to the question “Why did Obama win?” on its blog (http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/), and the comments reveal the full range of Republican angst. The reasons are roughly as follows:
Because he is black
“The vast majority of those who voted for him didn’t care for his qualifications…only that he was black. This is truly a case of the pied piper leading the lemmings toward the cliff.”
More From This Section
(Also a case of mixed metaphors: lemmings jump off without assistance from pied pipers.)
Because the wrong people were allowed to vote
“Obama is an Arab-muslim-terrorist-socialist-cheater elected in by communist-black-homo-godless cowards!”
Because Armageddon cometh
“He won bcoz he’s the antichrist and it’s destined. thats why people would vote knowing there is coinsidences, him NOT being a natral born citizen, and his family living here illegally. better party it up new years eve 2011, bcoz that’ll be the last new years we will have. The world will end now. Still, I hope obama isn’t a terrist.” [sic]
Others concede that he might be a minion of God rather than Satan: “Remember God has put in the person he wants to occupy the president seat. Your vote don’t count when God says this is who he wants.”
Fear of Sarah
“The very thought of President Palin struck fear into a lot of moderates.”
I think anyone should be terror-stricken by a woman who decides she is worthy to rule the world because she can see Russia from her balcony in Alaska.
Also on the Fox website, blogger Greg Gutfeld pronounces that the new president “is delicious” and “an amazing messenger” but adds: “If the message is fundamentally flawed, I don’t care how great the messenger is. What’s Obama’s message? I don’t have a clue, and neither does anyone else.” More approving is the humorous blog Stuff White People Like (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/). Known for lengthy posts on such subjects as “frisbee sports” and “bumper stickers”, they decided to keep it short this time: above a photograph of the beaming president-elect waving at crowds, and just under the blog heading, was the single word “America” — implying that white people might have made the right decision for once.
However, my own favourite response comes from the satirical The Onion (http://www.theonion.com/), which has a story headlined, “Black man given nation’s worst job.” It says: “African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country when he was elected president of the USA. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, cleaning up the messes other people left behind and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans on a daily basis…It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”