If The Truth Fits

Yes, I know that most people would have reported this story yesterday when it actually became a reality, but I thought that it would be a pretty good idea to wait a day to let it all sink in, and to make sure that Barack Obama was in fact the President elect, and that this wasn’t all some cruel hoax and that George Bush was going to have a live address to the nation in which he decides that his Presidency is going to turn the corner right around 2011 and that it’ll probably be for the best if he just stayed in his current job. To be fair to GWB, with the job market the way it is at the moment (especially as a man over 60), its probably going to be easier for him to change the constitution to allow him a third term than to try and get another job that isn’t being a greeter at Walmart.

Okay, Barack Obama is really going to be the President of America, as long as he spends the next few months surrounded by bullet proof glass (come on, not everyone in the US has made enough ’social progress’ quite yet). The official party line here at Pop Vulture was that we weren’t backing one candidate over the other, but I think it was pretty obvious whose side we were on, which is why I had goosebumps at around 11pm (EST) on Tuesday night. I mentioned in my last post that I was staying up here in France to watch the election, and I made it all the way to the end (or the beginning, if you’d prefer), and I think that the tiredness of staying up until 6:30am heightened my emotions to a level that Americans were feeling. When Obama came out an made that speech in Grant Park, and my God what a speech it was, I’m willing to admit that at moments I was welling up, and I’m well known for my heart of stone, so Barack Obama has done something pretty there, in terms of emotion for me, he’s reached the heights of the OC series finale (yes, I went there).

A lot of people on the news that are rather older than me have been saying for the past couple of days that they never thought they would see a black man as a President in their lifetime. Most of them have probably got 20-30 more years ‘experience’ than I do, but I didn’t think that I’d see it in my lifetime either. I just kept thinking that something was going to go wrong, millions of people going into voting booths and with a pen hovering over the Obama/Biden box, they thought “sure, there’s no actual evidence that Barack Obama is a muslim/terrorist/elitist/socialist/communist… but… I dunno” and lowering their pen to McCain/Palin, or deciding to just throw their vote away altogether and vote for Bob Barr.

I think that 10 years ago, no matter how well qualified or deserving of the office, a black person could not have been President, I realised that technically they could, but I don’t think America was ready for it. Even a couple of years ago I think it would have been a much tougher task, which is why I think that the Onion (yes, the website dedicated to news that isn’t true) hit the nail on the head with their article ‘Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress‘. Still, way to go, America.

Pop Vulture T-shirt