Obama-love is not embarrassing, even in New York's most jaded circles: I got an invitation to a downtown book party last week with two URL's at the bottom: one for the author, the other for www.barackobama.com. On the bulletin board of the Lower East Side building where my boyfriend - along with half of the other self-employed artists downtown - keeps a studio, a postcard shows a picture of a grinning Obama surrounded by thumbtacks arranged in a heart. There are all sorts of groovy Obama T-shirts, and celebrities have taken to wearing them down paparazzi-dense Robertson Boulevard in LA: one a silk screen of his face above the word PROGRESS. Another declares: OBAMA IS MY HOMEBOY.Embarrassing stuff. Problem is, these people don't realize how silly they look.
Mike at the Monkey Tennis Centre has some fun with the empty t-shirts for the empty suit.
But my favourite Obamaniac is Tony, a 30-year-old… wait for it… community organiser! Tony is a Che Guevara wannabe who, in his peak cap and combat jacket, could also pass for an Obama action figure, and here's what he has to say about the man who's clearly his role model:
"I wear the T-shirt because I admire Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric; he is just cut from a different cloth from most politicians. After everything that went down in Florida in 2001 I was very cynical about the whole political process. He has revived hope in me as well as others."
Got that? Tony, who professes to be 'cynical' about politics, admires Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric. It's clearly lost on Tony that rhetoric is, by its very nature, anything but forthright and genuine. Tony is also frightened by the 'threat' from people who might be resistant to the 'change' Obama would bring about.
Tony wears his ignorance like a badge of honour.
Read the whole thing, and shudder at the naivety, and outright stupidity, of some of the people who will be voting for Obama in November.
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