Aftermath

Before I get down to business, I just want to say that "aftermath" is one of my favorite words in the English language. I may never make it on Inside the Actor's Studio, largely because I am not an actor, and as such I may never be asked by any interviewer, his gravitas virtually dripping into his beard, to name my favorite word. But if I was, "aftermath" would be on the short list. It just sounds cool. Plus, it provides a wonderful implication about math - that it can be done later.

Okay, enough of that. Welcome back! I know, it's been a while. You haven't gotten your regular dose of the 'Bulb in a while, and for that I apologize. I've been taking some time to mull over the results of last Tuesday's election. And you know what I discovered? Barack Obama being elected the next President of the United States? Still awesome.

Of course, I could go on and on about what he's been up to since the election, his travel habits, his diet, his meeting with President Bush, how he has looked a little tired in recent appearances (and after nearly two years of brutal campaigning, who wouldn't?), who he has already chosen for his cabinet, who is still left to be chosen, what kind of puppy he's going to get his girls, and so on and so on ad nauseum. But the nice thing about taking a break for a little while is that all the newscasters, anchors, reporters, and pundits who actually get paid to follow this stuff take care of writing about it for me. And so far, they have proven one thing about our President-elect: 24-hour news coverage can suck the excitement out of anything.

Seriously, I was so psyched about Obama winning the election that I was actually hoarse the next day from all the screaming. And how long did those feelings of elation last? Almost through the next day. Granted, my waning excitement can be attributed partially to the passing of three propositions banning same-sex marriage and one banning same-sex couples from adopting children, and I'll get to that in a later post, but that's not it. And sure, I was really pulling for Al Franken to win his Senate seat - still am, incidentally - and having no actual result there is more than a little frustrating, but that's not it, either. Honestly, I blame 24-hour news coverage. While I admire the dedication to journalism, sometimes there just isn't enough news to fill all that time. The election was huge, of course. Lots to talk about there. But if you're talking all day long, even if you factor in time killed by repetition of stories from earlier in the day for the benefit of people just tuning in, you still have to come up with an awful lot to talk about. People dancing in the streets from Boston to Kenya makes for heartwarming stuff, but before too long, everybody has already seen the clips. We know people are happy. We may even be happy ourselves. But it can't last, not the way we're being inundated.

Have you ever tried a new food and thought it was the most delicious thing you've ever eaten? So then you seek it out wherever it can be found, consuming it at every opportunity, until you suddenly find you just don't want it anymore? In fact, the last thing in the world you want to do is eat that food, even if you still believe it's the most fantastic thing ever? That's how I feel about Barack Obama right now. I love the guy, I'm absolutely overjoyed that he won, I think he will make a terrific President, Michelle will be a tremendous First Lady, and their kids will be the most adorable First Kids ever, but if I eat any more of him, I will puke.

We still have over two months before Barack Obama takes office. That's not such a long time, but it is an eternity if you have to talk about it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And if you think it's hard on the legitimate news outlets (and for the purposes of this one post, I'm including Fox News in that category), it's even harder on the poor schmoes like me who don't report the news, but rather report on the reporting of the news. I caught The Daily Show last night, and although Jon Stewart was great as always (did you watch him and Colbert on Election Night? Brilliant!), the show just felt flat. Much of the show was about Obama, of course, which meant that we saw plenty of clips from other news organizations as they relentlessly followed him and his family, desperate for anything that could be even remotely considered a story. How he's traveling, for instance (by vehicle, if you were curious). One clip, from Fox News I believe, was of a camera crew endlessly waiting outside the White House to see what Obama would look like when he came out of his meeting with President Bush, only to discover that they were waiting outside the wrong gate, and the President-elect had already left. The news organizations are stalking the Obamas to fill time, and the satirists like The Daily Show have been forced to stalk the news organizations. It's bad enough when people who want to consider themselves serious journalists have to settle for being red carpet commentators at a one-man Oscar preshow, but who wants to watch a show about what the commentators are wearing?

Things were easier on the humorists before the election, of course, when President Bush still had at least a fair share of the spotlight. At least he was always good for a bizarre malapropism or at least a quality awkward silence. Obama is golden, at least for now. The most embarassing thing he's said so far has been confusing the cast of Good Times with the cast of Sanford & Son. And you have to forgive him for that one. It's not Obama's fault if his white half thinks all black people look alike!

(Oh God, I'm going to hell.)

Still, this constant coverage threatens to take the shine off the Obama apple before he even gets sworn in. The public loves celebrities, but we idolize them for shorter and shorter periods of time, now. We get sick of talking about how awesome someone is, and then we quickly move on to how much we hate them, and how we can drag their every private moment through the mud. I really, really don't want to see that happen, here. We need some other news to change the subject. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are still the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq. The economy is still in the crapper. Something needs to happen.

Thankfully, a few people have stepped up to the plate to deliver at least momentary distractions and prove that the most immediate effect of Barack Obama being elected President is not the easing of racial tensions in America, but people's brains breaking.

Leading the country in a way he has failed to do in the last eight years, President Bush started things off with his Election Night call to Obama, in which he congratulated Barack on his victory and on his "good bride." Sadly, reports are unclear as to whether the President then went on to praise Obama for his well-mannered spawn, so we must assume that he did.

But President Bush was not the only national leader who was so flummoxed by Obama's charisma that he temporarily forgot how to speak. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi described Obama as "young, handsome, and tanned." Now, I'm not saying he was wrong on any of those counts, but still, that's just a little iffy. First of all, it sounds like a bit of a come on, but Berlusconi has a history of making flattering remarks about the physical attractiveness of other politicians, so we'll let that one slide. "Tanned," though... that's a tough one. I've never been to Italy, so I don't know, maybe they don't have black people there. But surely the Prime Minister has at least seen them on television. Do they not even have black TV shows and films in Italy (insert "Tyler Perry's House of Panini" joke here)? Does he see them and think, "Mamma mia! How did all those people get so fabulously tan? I must know their secret!"

But you know, it's easy to criticize people from around the world for perhaps being a tad racially insensitive, because we live in a country that is so obsessed with not offending anyone, at least not with anything that could be perceived as racist. I don't think Europeans have the same stick up their asses that we have firmly entrenched in ours. When the Spanish Olympic basketball team posed for a group photo while pulling their eyes into slants, they were surprised when some other nations thought they were being racist assholes. They thought they were just having a good-natured joke with their Chinese hosts. So maybe in Italy it's okay to complement black people on their tans. I'm not sure. Still, I'll let this one go, too. Some things just get lost in translation. And besides, there are some perfectly good instances of people putting their feet in their mouths right here in the U.S. of A.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Ralph Nader, although I do like him. I think he's dedicated and passionate about overhauling our country's reliance on, and coddling of, giant corporations that treat their employees, and frequently their customers, like crap. I can get behind that. I just don't think he always uses the best judgment. For instance, he stayed in the race all the way to the end in 2000 despite knowing he had no chance of winning, because he wanted to get enough votes to increase the funding for his causes, the largest of which turned out to be running another failed Presidential campaign four years later. He cost Al Gore the election, putting George W. Bush in the White House, and I think Nader himself would agree with me when I say that America under George W. Bush was not a bad place to be if you were a giant corporation who liked treating people like crap. So Nader kind of shot himself in the foot, there.

Again, I respect Ralph Nader for his decades of public service, and I believe in many of his goals. However, just because I am young and hip and I am giving him a nod should not convince Nader that he himself is young and hip. He is neither of those things, nor is he a media darling, or a glamorous icon who can get away with doing and saying anything, and people will just go, "Oh, that's just Ralph." He is a dedicated crusader, but he is far from untouchable. So I don't know what the hell he was thinking when he said about Obama, "he is our first African American President, or he will be. And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations."

Once again, Ralph, your tireless dedication to your cause shines through. Take on the corporations at all times, in all things, without end. But this was Election Night. Less than two hours after Obama had been elected. Obviously, there was much more at stake in this election than just the issue of race. Our country needs a liberal democrat to change things up. But at the same time, it would be foolish to overlook the racial aspect of what happened last Tuesday. A monumental blow was struck for racial equality that will echo in the history of our nation for all time. It was kind of a big deal. So perhaps ol' Ralph could have given it another day or two before referring to the President-elect as "Uncle Tom."

I know, I know. Nader didn't actually call Obama "Uncle Tom," he simply said that time would tell if Obama was going to become an Uncle Tom. Even that he hopes Obama doesn't become an Uncle Tom. Doesn't matter even the tiniest little bit. There are some things you just don't say. It doesn't matter if the "Uncle Sam/Uncle Tom" thing makes a nice sound bite. The words "Uncle Tom" are racially charged. I have never heard the term applied to any non-black person, and I can't imagine a reaction of anything other than puzzlement if it was. Nader couldn't have made this comment if John McCain had been elected. Nor could he have said it about John Kerry if he had won in 2004. It wouldn't have made sense. So let's face it, race was an issue, here. This was not just a comment of, "Okay, we've finally put a genuine liberal in the White House, let's see if he's as good as his word." This was a racially charged statement, and there was absolutely no reason for it to be.

What's even more amazing about this whole thing is that Nader said this little gem on Fox News, an organization that is not typically thought of as being big Obama supporters. And yet, Shepard Smith gave Nader repeated chances to take it back, to apologize, to change his wording, anything. This was one white dude reaching out to another white dude and saying, "No, no! Don't do it! Jesse Jackson will eat your face!" No dice. Nader wouldn't budge. Yowza.

But surely Nader is the only person who has gone on the news and used a totally unnecessary metaphor laden with negative racial implications to talk about Obama, right? Well, not quite. CNN's Jeanne Moos was reporting on the media frenzy following Obama's every move. As the video cut to a clip of an aerial shot following the President-elect riding in an SUV, Moos commented that Obama was "traveling to the airport OJ-style." The allusion, in case you missed it, is to the famous White Bronco car chase in which media outlets filmed a fleeing OJ Simpson from helicopters as he led the police down the freeway. As Jon Stewart so eloquently put it, "OJ Simpson has ruined SUV travel for black people." (A fantastic line that miraculously emerged from the metatextual quagmire of satirical reporting on the reporting of the reporting of Barack Obama's every move.)

What the hell, Jeanne Moos? You couldn't have just said "traveling to the airport?" You didn't call him dropping his daughters off at school, "dropping off his kids Brandee Skinner-style." There was no need for the reference, particularly one that brings up so many memories of the first OJ trial and the introduction of the phrase "race card" into the national lexicon. Christ almighty, people, these are not hard gaffes to avoid.

See, Barack Obama's victory was a massive step forward for race relations in this country, but it also highlights just how far we have to go. We need to overhaul our thinking at the basic level of the language we use. A white politician would have never been referred to as an "Uncle Tom," even in saying that he will hopefully never become one. A white politician who happens to be riding in an SUV would have never been described as traveling "OJ-style," unless the SUV was a White Bronco, which has to now be the least popular car on Earth, or the politician was at least trying to evade the police. We need to learn to talk about Barack Obama not as a black President, but as our President. Sadly, because we can look forward to another two months of reporting on Obama before he actually steps into office and has the chance to actually begin making changes on the governmental level, the racial significance of his election will continue to overshadow the political significance. That means we can continue to look forward to gaffes like these. We need soemthing else to talk about. Either that, or we need the gaffes to be really, really funny.