"Ya gotta control your smiles and cries."
Points to whomever gets that reference first.
Anyways, I've been hearing an awful lot from a lot of people that the sky is caving in, now that we are about to have President Obama (or as his buddies call him, President Barack). Alternatively, I've heard that PO is going to solve world hunger, end all wars, and fix the economy all before yesterday's breakfast.
My take is that Obama won't be nearly as bad as his opponents are afraid of, and won't be nearly as good as his proponents are sure of.
All that said, it truly is an incredible day for the democratic process. And when it is all said and done, Obama's 2008 election campaign will go down as one of the greatest political performances in history.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Probably the only sentence of Training Day that did not contain profanity. Of course, the guy was high on PCP when he said it. Good reference.
And come on. What's with the "he won't ruin the earth, but neither is he the Obamessiah" copout. I expect some out on a limb commentary when I come here. What do you think he WILL do? I guess the big question is will America get the guy who campaigned the last two months on things like cutting taxes, not leaving Iraq too soon, opposing gay marriage, etc. or the guy who spent the last two decades of his life as a textbook liberal. I expect the Obama of the last two months. Once a politician lets the Say Whatever It Takes To Win guy in the door, he doesn't go away.
Also, I was thinking today, the most "ethnic" PM we've ever had was John Diefenbaker. I don't think it necessarily means anything, but it's kind of funny.
Yeah! Away with this middle-of-the-road opinion, give us something more controversial...
Haha. Called out on the carpet, huh? Well put though.
I'll deal with this in backwards order.
Ethnic Prime Minister - it is certainly strange that for a country that prides ourselves on being significantly better than the USA especially when it comes to the whole "mosaic" versus "melting pot" theory, that the USA beats us to having a person who could really be considered an "ethnic minority" leader. Very amusing.
And I'll save the Obama commentary for a later full length blog post today. But well put.
No racial minority has ever politically organized in Canada, since the same sort of institutionalized oppression hasn't existed. The banal, everyday crap that minorities put up with in Canada doesn't exactly produce MLKs.
Natives are a possible exception, but they've largely been complicit in their own segregation.
Would it be a historic landmark of Obama's magnitude if there was a black PM? I'm not sure, because race simply hasn't been as politicized.
Mike, I agree that the perceived breakthrough would not be the same here. However, racial minorites do organize, just at the local level (check out any major party nomination race in Mississauga or Vancouver). One theory I'll put out there is that national leadership in Canada requires a certain amount of fluency in French, which a child of an East Asian immigrant, for example, would presumably be less likely to learn than the family's native language.
I'll also add this with regard to the mini-breakthroughs of Hillary and Palin: the most electorally successful female leader in Canadian history is Alexa McDonough. ALEXA McDONOUGH! Amazing.
Ryan - excellent point on the French issue. One could argue that it basically means that in order to be considered a viable candidate for PM, you need to be either a francophone or an anglophone with an extreme grasp of the French language. Which definitely narrows the field, alot.
No love for Kim Campbell, huh? Just Alexa?
Post a Comment