Black and White

Happened at a late night BBC comedy quiz show (Have I got news for you!). The quiz master asks a question : "What did George Walker Bush told Obama on his first ever visit to the White House?"... A black comedian from the US, sitting in one of the panels, is like: "Boy, put my luggage in the back"...

It takes some getting used to a Black President. Especially one who is half white and by the same token one could have said (if one is black) that the new President elect is White... You know, like the half full half empty thing...

As far as I am concerned I couldn't care less whether the dude was even purple or green. What really counts is the cabinet he's about to put together (in honesty, I'd have liked to have seen Paul Krugman participate in this, but I guess Paul's pretty 'communist' by US standards...), the policies he plans to implement, how he'll deal with the Economy that keeps going downhill, and how he'll make sure that some minimum regulation comes to play in Wall Str. to protect us from future greed of its players. Because, the way we see them behave to this moment, I am not so sure that they got the message yet. As Rachel Maddow mentioned in her show yesterday, Wall Str. mavericks use government funds out of the $700B bailout to pay themselves some hefty bonuses! Pretty cool! Talking about their solidarity with the millions of those facing foreclosures... Welcome to the land of opportunity, folks. 

It is true that Barack Obama has somehow written a new chapter in the US history by having been elected the first Afro-American (Black) President. Funny thing though, anything he does nowadays, as a Black President-elect, seems to be characterized as 'historic'... like Obama's historic visit to the White House in Washington. If you define as historic even all trivial things that a Black man elected to President does for the first time, then I'll buy it. And 'historic' becomes the most popular adjective on Internet for months to come. But many of these things are plain irrelevant... to be historic you must have some impact to the rest of the world... like, you can't paint 'historic' Obama's first visit to the White House rest rooms because the dude just happened to be 'pressed'! In fairness, no reporter yet mentioned that, but it's simply my way of getting the point thru... right?

Anyways, one of the best expressions I recently heard was from Bill Maher, a known US comedian, who said the following at the Larry King show the other night: "You know Larry, the thing is, we've proven that America is a country where, if things seem to go no more, we can simply reboot!" I believe that to be true. And it smells like the sixpack Joe had a jump in his IQ from double digits to above 120. Well done America! You rock!