July 18, 2008
The
Blessed Child - Gerard Baker
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the
Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the
shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the
wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family,
offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an
African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of
righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a
little blow.
When he was 12 years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago,
arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah
and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said
among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and
minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary,
wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic. And so it was, in the fullness of
time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured
forth to bring the light unto all the world.
August 18, 2008
Mudcat
speaks - Tom Baldwin and Matt Spence
The sea of hope-filled faces that routinely flooded the rallies of Barack
Obama would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and
tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders.
His preferred habitat is up a tree, gunning down deer, or on the mud flats –
which lent him their name – catching catfish, part of an endless struggle
with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the
stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he
would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera
wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party’s few (some say only) rural
strategists, this might just be part of Mr Obama’s problem.
“The Democrats talk of tolerance, but in reality the only tolerance they ever
exhibit is for their own intellectual arrogance – and they don’t have
tolerance for my culture,” says Mudcat. “They . . . think we’re a bunch of
hillbilly heathens who go out and burn crosses and do crazy bulls***.
Sometimes they remind me of another bunch from Chicago, the Blues Brothers:
they seem to think they’re on a mission from God.”
October 8, 2008
Just
like Oscars night - Chris Ayres
It looked like Oscars night. A big ocean of red carpet, and flashing lights on
the cameras that told the celebrities when to stop congratulating
themselves. Only this wasn’t the Oscars – it was Presidential Debate: The
Sequel. Or as the NBC television network laughably billed it, a “town
hall-style meeting”.
In reality the event was just another rigidly staged set-piece, only with some
of the questions being supplied by trembling members of the public. The
nominees kept speaking for so long beyond their allotted times that you
almost expected an orchestra to strike up, Academy Awards-style.
All in all, however, the evening was pretty short on Hollywood moments. It
revealed two likeable and capable candidates. On only one occasion, when
John McCain referred to Barack Obama’s “cronies”, did the mood threaten to
become acrimonious.
October 17, 2008
An
American Choice - The Times
Barack Obama has shown the character, intelligence and judgment to be
president. He is the better candidate for the White House.
It is for the American people to choose the next president of the United
States.
Yet it would be naive to think that readers of a British newspaper have no
stake in the outcome of the contest. The economic and foreign policy of the
White House incumbent have a big impact on other nations.
If the United States were to choose its first African-American, Britain’s ally
in the fight for liberty and democracy would be sending out a message. It
would be that through peaceful struggle, and democratic protest, oppression
can be overcome, freedom can be won and tolerance can be victorious.
An Obama inaugural presidential address would deliver an eloquent sermon on
Western values before its first word had been uttered.
November 5, 2008
I
have a dream . . . - Ben Macintyre
When the first African-American cast a vote in 1870 he thought that the world
had changed. On Tuesday the US proved it had.
Thomas Mundy Peterson’s humble and courageous act reaches forward to the
election of Barack Obama, and back through the generations of black people
taken from Africa and forced to live in American servitude.
The dream of black democracy swiftly evaporated. The Ku Klux Klan had aleady
come into being and when Reconstruction collapsed black voting rights were
suppressed, racial segregation was imposed, lynchings, race riots and school
burnings spread.
Campaigns of civil disobedience and direct action evolved into the civil
rights movement. The rising hope was personified by Martin Luther King. More
than quarter of a million people massed in Washington’s history to hear King
deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. In it King said that “America has given
the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked
‘insufficient funds’.”
This week American voters – black and white – honoured the unpaid debt in a
way that King could only have dreamt of.
November 5, 2008
A
new type of First Lady - Sarah Vine
That rather sad, muffled noise you hear behind the whoops and cheers of
Democrat America is not the sound of defeated neocons; it is the sound of
sobbing in the Élysée Palace. For Carla Bruni, queen of First Ladies, the
game is up. Cindy McCain would have been a push-over; even Sarah Palin she
could have coped with. But in Michelle Obama, Ms Bruni has truly met her
match. This is a First Lady like none before.
In truth, from the moment Michelle Obama stepped on to that podium at the
Democrat convention we all secretly knew which way this race was going.
Sure, he had big, sticky-out ears; sure, all those luvvies made that
embarrassing YouTube song about him; but if Michelle thought that he was OK
– if she chose him – then he just had to be a good man.
Everything about her speaks to the modern, postfeminist woman: she is
manifestly clever, independently minded, attractive in a normal, accessible
way. Most of all, however, she appears to be the personification of sanity,
a woman who, while clearly supportive of her husband’s quest for world
domination, is not afraid to point out when he is danger of drinking too
much of his own Kool-Aid.
