I’m not sure how I’d feel if I were a black man watching Barack Obama win the Democratic presidential nomination and reading the eulogies pouring in from whitey. I have the suspicion that I would take myself off to the bathroom sharpish. Obama’s victory has been cheered much as one might cheer a labrador that can balance rich tea biscuits on its nose – and with that slightly sickly tone you get from news reports of the Paralympic Games. Oh, didn’t he do well! And he’s, you know, black! Bless him!

Obama’s blackness is the least remarkable thing about him. Indeed he spent much of the campaign insisting that race was a non-issue, of no consequence, and being hawkish on immigration. Unlike his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who at certain opportune moments during the campaign blacked up as if she were about to break into a rendition of My Mammy.

Such is politics, I suppose. Obama ran a good campaign but he was helped by the fact that he was pitched against an opponent who had nothing whatsoever to commend her except for her gender – that, and the fact that she was one of the fairly large number of women who very occasionally had sexual intercourse with a popular president, Bill Clinton. None of Bill’s magic washed off on her; she appeared shrill, stiff, disingenuous and even vicious.

In the battle of competing beleaguered and supposedly unelectable minorities – blacks v women – Obama won for the perfectly respectable reason that he is charismatic, eloquent and has appeared less opportunistic than his rival. Aside from an unhealthy minority, people judge politicians not according to their skin or their gender, but by whether they suspect that if left alone in your drawing room for five minutes they would nick the silverware. Hillary, they thought, probably would. And the antimacassars. And the sideboard.

Now we have Obama v the representative from another equally disparaged minority: the elderly. John McCain is 71 and his bowels have been displayed for the edification of the American public, revealing “precancerous polyps”. The electorate has also been enjoined to consider the melanomas that previously afflicted McCain’s shoulder and the problems with his lymph and carotid glands. So the election itself may be a close call – blackness v infirmity.

You hope the American public banish this from their minds and, on more rational grounds, go for Obama. Strip away the Vietnam hero stuff and the incontinence pads and McCain is revealed as a politician further to the right than a fish knife. You might hope, too, that Obama politely rejects the ministrations from his former opponent to become a running mate. They don’t like Hillary much, the electorate, and it’s not because of her race, age or gender.

*****

Students from a London university hockey team have been ticked off for having called Cornish people “inbred” on a website, having recently played a match against a team from west of the Tamar. This grotesque insult came to light when Cornish councillor Graham Hicks tapped “Cornish” followed by “inbred” into Google to see what came up. He pronounced himself “horrified”, adding “this is not harmless banter”.

Well, yes it is – but never mind that. Poor councillor Hicks is presumably still sitting at his laptop working his way through the 15,400 entries which do indeed spring up when you tap those two words into Google – and firing off letters of admonition; hard work. Luckily Mr Hicks will be able to accomplish the task quicker than most of us due to having seven fingers on each hand. And a long grey beak. Probably.

Clearly the councillor already felt there was some likely connection between the words “Cornish” and “inbred” or he wouldn’t have entered the words into Google. Just as when I entered “Rod Liddle” followed by “arsehole” and was horrified to discover 580 entries. The connection had already been made in my own mind; Google merely confirmed it.

Now Mr Hicks should try tapping into Google the words “Cornish” and “petty, sententious busybody”. There’ll be at least one entry today.

*****

O Big Brother, why art thou?

Like a dog returning to its own vomit, Big Brother is back on our screens once more, the whoop-de-doo publicity accompanying its arrival sounding ever more like the barking of a madman in an empty mental hospital bedroom. The audience is, of course, down – well down. Only 5.4m people tuned in to the first instalment, compared with 6.1m last time around and 7m back in 2006. Actually, when you think of it, 5.4m is a lot of people, isn’t it? Statistically, it’s almost certain that you’ve met some of these people over the course of your life, perhaps while they were queueing for lottery tickets in front of you in Budgens. I sincerely hope you spat on their shoes.

It is not just the audience that is dwindling; the reservoir of exhibitionist cretins from which they draw contestants is now down to drought level. This time around we have a strange man with pink eyes, a chap who thinks he’s a “comedian” and a woman who professes to be a Muslim but who dresses and disports herself in a manner which, I respectfully suggest, might incur the righteous vengeance of Allah. On this issue, I’m on the side of Allah. How desperate would you have to be to go on Big Brother today? Even George Galloway and Pete Burns would give it a second thought now.

*****

An awful knight for Lord Hurd of Amnesia

Poor Lord Hurd of Westwell had a terrible blank moment on BBC1’s Question Time last week when asked how Robert Mugabe had come by his honorary knighthood. With evident glee, David Dimbleby was able to help: Big Bob was knighted in 1994, well after it was known that he had murdered 20,000 people in Matabeleland. And who was our foreign secretary back then? Yep, Douglas Hurd.

Hurd burbled that Mugabe had at that time recently hosted a Commonwealth heads of government conference and had probably received the KCB for that. So you might expect Mugabe’s citation to read: “Although he has killed a lot of people, held fraudulent elections and bankrupted his country, he puts on a hell of a good bash.” But it doesn’t. It commends him for contributing to greatly improved relations between Britain and Zimbabwe – something which is, frankly, beyond satire.

Douglas Hurd, meanwhile, was honoured in 1997, for services to selective amnesia.

****

The government’s new tax increase for older cars is not merely a cynical con, it’s also antigreen. Studies suggest that raising car tax on existing vehicles actually increases passenger journeys, as the car owners attempt to squeeze more value for money out of their expensive old heaps. Further, there is a negative environmental impact if they sell their cars and buy a more leniently taxed new one, as the energy and raw materials required to produce a new car can outweigh sticking to the old petrol-hungry model.

So to sum up: a tax which both damages the environment and hurts the poorest sections of society twice over – once with the tax itself and then when they try to flog their old cars and buy a new one. Excellent.

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