| I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Due to a strange stroke of insight I figured out what upset me most about the recent New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas in such an unflattering light. Master of subtexts that I am, I understood, at first glance, the satirical value the New Yorker had hoped to add. I also understood that most of America would not get it. Of course I understood it showed particularly poor taste and would hurt Obama politically. I did NOT understand, until 4:30 this morning, why it rubbed me so particularly wrong.
So anyway, very early today it came to me. I hate the fact that it depicts the Obamas engaging in their characteristic fist bump. Yeah yeah yeah, so many other parts of that picture deserve my ire. But to me their action, not their costume, stings the most.
I like the Obamas, in part, because we currently have two remarkable, intelligent, educated and capable people strongly in the running together to make Barack Obama the next president (the second is Michelle, not McCain, although he gets an honorable mention). And they like each other. Not in a canned designed-for-a-photo-shoot sort of way, but in a fist-bumping, mutually aligned and motivated manner.
And now they'll stop. Bumping fists will remind people of the cover of the New Yorker. They'll become just a smidge more "presidential" and a lot less cool. So that picture killed part of what I liked the most about this election. The first election ever where a non-politico like me actually cares enough to read more than the the first line of political news.
So anyway, if you feel like I do, don't waste your time explaining to your REALLY uninformed friends that the Obamas aren't terrorists. Instead, explain why they bumped fists, and why you hope they won't stop. |
