The Race Race

I've been following the political news for the past couple of days and after an American election that lasted 94,286 years I have encountered something that I didn't think possible: I was surprised.

It wasn't the sycophancy of the news media basking in its sucess in putting Barrack "he whose middle name may not be uttered" Obama into the White House at the cost of their own credibility. That was to be expected. What I didn't anticipate was that after so much finger wagging and scolding about how the "race card" was aboslutely forbidden and the campaign had not a jot to do with Obama's melinin content, I now see miles of news sheet and hogsheads of ink being disgorged on how the single most important thing in this election is that Obama is America's first black president.

Some of it I understand, though deplore. The news media has always had a taste for the sensational and superficial and I should have half-expected all the oil poured over the "historic" elevation of Obama. Not being American, I can't see the novelty of a black head of state myself, but reporters are a parochial breed. What really surprised me was story after story, interview after interview with supposedly intelligent people who were not only over the moon about a black US persident, but had voted for him for that very reason.

During Obama's acceptance speech he used the rhetorical device of punctuating his remarks with his campaign slogan "Yes, we can". That's a perfectly good bit of public speaking and very effective. But then, about the second or third time, the audience started chanting along as if they were a congreagation reading the responses out of the book of prayer. That, to me, was unnerving as a man whose seen his share of personality cults and their unwholesome fruits, but it was as nothing to finding out that huge blocs of voters, apparently millions of people, chose Obama to become the most powerful man on Earth on the grounds of him being relatively more difficult to pick out in a dark room.

If this is true, then it speaks very poorly for democracy.

I understand that America has a legacy of very nasty and violent race relations that have resulted in everything up to and including one of the bloodiest wars in history, but after months, if not years of being assured time and again that this was about choosing the most competent person for office, I am now, with a perfectly straight face, being told that it is about "fulfilling Martin Luther King's dream" or "healing the divide" or giving black Americans a massive ego boost. In other words, it was a great symbolic gesture of racial reconcilation that everyone can wallow in.

Fine. Good. Wonderful. I'm all atingle. Thing is, the office of President of the United States is not a figurehead position. It is not that of a head of state with no real powers. The President is a man who can rain radioactive death upon half the planet with a single order and governs a country whose every economic stumble can put the rest of the world flat on its back. That's a bit much to waste on a bit of race relations theatre.

Still, now that the point has been made and everyone has had a heartfelt Kumbaya moment, can Mr. Obama please resign so the Americans can get on with actually picking a president (skin colour irrelevant) instead of a prop for a historic tableau?

I thought not.

Update: Now the media is going stark, raving bonkers with articles clamoring for a black prime minister, a black Doctor Who, a black James Bond, and a black Pope.

Next up: When will the Queen be black?