Some years ago, a guy told me a funny story. Apparently, a caller reported a curious incident to the police. He had left for work one morning, but, before he left, being the organised bachelor he was, he carried his laundered garments, including a pair of blue pants, out to the clothesline in the back yard to dry in the midday sun.
On returning from work, though, the guy made an odd discovery when he went to the back yard to collect his pants: The blue pants that he had hung on the line that morning had turned white. Frightened, he did the one thing that anyone faced with such a bizarre event would. He called the police to investigate. Perhaps he had made a mistake and laundered his clothes in bleach, or maybe someone with a serious grudge against him skulked into his back yard while he was away and exacted a little vengeance on him by tampering with his clothes. I doubted that the police department wasted precious resources on this matter as it was also very likely that he was stark mad, which is the widely accepted conclusion.
In another personal incident, one night as I was about to turn in to bed—except for my bedroom, the lights in the rest of the flat had been turned off—I heard keys turning in my front door. No one else, at that time, had access to my apartment, only my landlord, and he wasn’t allowed in without prior permission, and certainly not after midnight. Before I reached the door or managed a helluva scream, four uniformed officers had already made their way into my apartment, shining their torch light around the flat.
“Mam, did you know you left your keys in the door?” one officer said, as he switched on the light at the door.
I didn’t respond, at least not verbally, but I just extended my hand to collect my keys from him.
“Is this flat 4?
“Yeah.”
“Do you live here alone?”
“Yeah.”
“We received a call that there’s someone here with a split throat…”
“No; Not here.”
“Mind if we have a look around?”
“No. No problem.”
After they conducted their investigation and confirmed that there wasn’t someone bleeding to death from a slit throat in my flat, they turned to leave, but not before one officer gave me a kind of stern warning about the risks forgetting my keys in the door as it was unsafe and an invitation to be victimised. I thanked them and they bounded down the stairs with all their emergency medical equipment.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
“My friends”, in case you did not hear, Barack Hussein Obama is now the 44th President of the United States of America. “America has elected a skinny man with a funny name,” one of my esteemed colleagues, a Nigerian, with an equally funny name ( I still don’t know how to pronounce after working in the same building with him for months) told his Food Technology class the morning after the big win. He had a scowl on his face. For whatever reason (jealousy?), the guy is not happy that Obama has achieved an American dream, for some the ultimate dream.
The victory celebrations are in full swing round the world and no doubt little Obama’s will scream into the world nine months from now. A few months from now, Malia and Sasha will have discovered the White House’s nooks and crannies in which to play hide and seek or just to hide away when they do not want to clean up after the First Pooch that Daddy promised they would get. They will have probably gotten tired of it as well and will probably have done mean things to it that would only be revealed decades from now under tabloid headlines such as: “What really happened to the First Pooch, Sasha’s Story.” or “In her own words: Malia on the night the First Pooch disappeared.”
Michelle will have chosen a cause that ‘always has been dear to her heart’, the patronage hires will have settled into their new, cushy jobs and the New York Times obit section will have updated the new President’s obituary many, many times and, hopefully, only with credits. But we know that the debits are coming, don’t we? Indeed his obituary was written before he ran for the Illinois senate seat in 1995, perhaps when he became the ‘community organiser’ and began hobnobbing with Chicago’s political elite. It’s a common practice at the New York Times—they pre-write the obituary of famous and infamous people so that when they die, save for a few last second edits, the obituaries go to press and wires, etc, quickly.
Soon, and I am sure it has already begun, members of the MSM who have been notably pusillanimous with the then presidential candidate during the campaign period will be fighting like hungry hyenas to secure the first television network interview in which they will publicly fawn the new president. I hope to God that he ignores the big networks and instead do an interview with Springfield’s television anchor of The Simpsons fame, Ken Brockman, as the gaffe-prone anchorman may conduct his best interview yet slapping the President with a journalistic dirty washcloth of ‘hard-hitting’ questions. (Actually, this would make a great Simpsons episode. I can imagine the headline: Springfield’s Brockman exposes new U.S President for what he really is—a POLITICIAN.)
Indeed the pundits have already begun to remind the public of the great task that lies ahead of the new president. And, unlike during the campaign, the President-elect has already begun practicing the politics of doubt. As he reminded the audience (or crowd) at his victory speech, there is a lot of shit to clean up and this may take more than one term. (The confidence, eh?) He is unto saving himself, fast. In other words, he is saying, if I try to fix this (or that) and I end up making it worse or leaving it as is, don’t go blaming me and stuff because I already told you that this thing that we are in is going to take some time to clean up. If I screw it up in my first term, I hope that you would understand and give me another chance to make it right. I would have realized by then that the ‘change’ that I promised to give you was not the right ‘change’ and I will be asking you, the American people, to give me a chance to make a ‘better, more improved change’.
George W. Bush did the same thing. But instead of telling the American public that he would need two terms he told them that it would take time—and patience—and they believed him and voted him in.
Then when the same man became the 43rd President, he said the same thing and they voted him in again and, later, afflicted by a severe case of buyers’ remorse, they mercilessly decried him.
For eight years, Americans have been patient. Their patience has run out, and they have decided to give ‘change’ a chance. Now they are being told that it may take another eight years to fix what is wrong with America. The question is are Americans willing to give Obama eight years to revive the American economy, to improve the healthcare and education system, and in between that bring home the troops from Iraq, which he promised, and still fix everything that is broken?
I am happy that Obama won because he is a black man who chose to run as an American. I cannot say that he won me over with his policies because when one compares McCain’s and Obama’s policies they are like half-siblings. They share characteristics though not always obvious. The rivals said the same thing on many issues only with different wording. For example, McCain vowed that he will not pull out American troops from Iraq until victory is won, and Obama said that if elected he will bring the troops home but omit to say how and when.
Americans looked beyond the criticisms of Obama for not ‘separating or distancing’ himself from a pastor who married Michelle and him and baptized their girls, a preacher whose sermons—or excerpts of them—were labelled un-American and unpatriotic. Perhaps like Obama they saw a man who was woefully stuck in an America of a different era. They looked beyond the blatant scare tactics of the Republicans who tried to paint Obama as having terrorist aspirations by linking him with William Ayers and the Weather Underground.
Apparently, if elected, they feared that he would nuke the U.S in his first week in the White House. They also rebuffed the suggestion that Obama knew and condoned the nefarious activities of a Chicago businessman, who was indicted and convicted of fraud and bribery. And then they went after Michelle for saying that for the first time in her life she was proud to be an American. And Americans looked beyond the hoopla made by the media because they understood exactly what that woman meant.
McCain was too old and many saw this as a limit. But more than anything, Americans were tired of hearing an old rich white guy with an ice queen planted behind him call them “my friends”.
The victory celebrations are in full swing round the world and no doubt little Obama’s will scream into the world nine months from now. A few months from now, Malia and Sasha will have discovered the White House’s nooks and crannies in which to play hide and seek or just to hide away when they do not want to clean up after the First Pooch that Daddy promised they would get. They will have probably gotten tired of it as well and will probably have done mean things to it that would only be revealed decades from now under tabloid headlines such as: “What really happened to the First Pooch, Sasha’s Story.” or “In her own words: Malia on the night the First Pooch disappeared.”
Michelle will have chosen a cause that ‘always has been dear to her heart’, the patronage hires will have settled into their new, cushy jobs and the New York Times obit section will have updated the new President’s obituary many, many times and, hopefully, only with credits. But we know that the debits are coming, don’t we? Indeed his obituary was written before he ran for the Illinois senate seat in 1995, perhaps when he became the ‘community organiser’ and began hobnobbing with Chicago’s political elite. It’s a common practice at the New York Times—they pre-write the obituary of famous and infamous people so that when they die, save for a few last second edits, the obituaries go to press and wires, etc, quickly.
Soon, and I am sure it has already begun, members of the MSM who have been notably pusillanimous with the then presidential candidate during the campaign period will be fighting like hungry hyenas to secure the first television network interview in which they will publicly fawn the new president. I hope to God that he ignores the big networks and instead do an interview with Springfield’s television anchor of The Simpsons fame, Ken Brockman, as the gaffe-prone anchorman may conduct his best interview yet slapping the President with a journalistic dirty washcloth of ‘hard-hitting’ questions. (Actually, this would make a great Simpsons episode. I can imagine the headline: Springfield’s Brockman exposes new U.S President for what he really is—a POLITICIAN.)
Indeed the pundits have already begun to remind the public of the great task that lies ahead of the new president. And, unlike during the campaign, the President-elect has already begun practicing the politics of doubt. As he reminded the audience (or crowd) at his victory speech, there is a lot of shit to clean up and this may take more than one term. (The confidence, eh?) He is unto saving himself, fast. In other words, he is saying, if I try to fix this (or that) and I end up making it worse or leaving it as is, don’t go blaming me and stuff because I already told you that this thing that we are in is going to take some time to clean up. If I screw it up in my first term, I hope that you would understand and give me another chance to make it right. I would have realized by then that the ‘change’ that I promised to give you was not the right ‘change’ and I will be asking you, the American people, to give me a chance to make a ‘better, more improved change’.
George W. Bush did the same thing. But instead of telling the American public that he would need two terms he told them that it would take time—and patience—and they believed him and voted him in.
Then when the same man became the 43rd President, he said the same thing and they voted him in again and, later, afflicted by a severe case of buyers’ remorse, they mercilessly decried him.
For eight years, Americans have been patient. Their patience has run out, and they have decided to give ‘change’ a chance. Now they are being told that it may take another eight years to fix what is wrong with America. The question is are Americans willing to give Obama eight years to revive the American economy, to improve the healthcare and education system, and in between that bring home the troops from Iraq, which he promised, and still fix everything that is broken?
I am happy that Obama won because he is a black man who chose to run as an American. I cannot say that he won me over with his policies because when one compares McCain’s and Obama’s policies they are like half-siblings. They share characteristics though not always obvious. The rivals said the same thing on many issues only with different wording. For example, McCain vowed that he will not pull out American troops from Iraq until victory is won, and Obama said that if elected he will bring the troops home but omit to say how and when.
Americans looked beyond the criticisms of Obama for not ‘separating or distancing’ himself from a pastor who married Michelle and him and baptized their girls, a preacher whose sermons—or excerpts of them—were labelled un-American and unpatriotic. Perhaps like Obama they saw a man who was woefully stuck in an America of a different era. They looked beyond the blatant scare tactics of the Republicans who tried to paint Obama as having terrorist aspirations by linking him with William Ayers and the Weather Underground.
Apparently, if elected, they feared that he would nuke the U.S in his first week in the White House. They also rebuffed the suggestion that Obama knew and condoned the nefarious activities of a Chicago businessman, who was indicted and convicted of fraud and bribery. And then they went after Michelle for saying that for the first time in her life she was proud to be an American. And Americans looked beyond the hoopla made by the media because they understood exactly what that woman meant.
McCain was too old and many saw this as a limit. But more than anything, Americans were tired of hearing an old rich white guy with an ice queen planted behind him call them “my friends”.
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