Posts

Don DeLillo has a good term for what happened last night: "world hum." Even if you think (as I do) that the messianic aura surrounding Barack Obama can only lead to disappointment, you’d have to be an ostrich not to have noticed the global reprecussions of his historic victory. I went to bed at 6, got up at 9, and have been scouring the Internet for the best morning-after items to share with you, dear reader:

1. Best headline. The Onion:

Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job

 WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break."

2. Best Photoshop job. Gawker:

3. Best right-wing event horizon. Atlas Shrugs:

PRESIDENT HUSSEIN

Good luck with that Amerikkka!

UPDATE: 12:55 am And so it begins :

[Un-indicted Co-conspirator] CAIR CONGRATULATES PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA U.S. Muslims offer support for ensuring a safe and free America

“CAIR, America’s largest Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, offers its congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama on his historic election to our nation’s highest office. President-elect Obama’s victory sends the unmistakable message that America is a nation that offers equal opportunity to people of all backgrounds.

“We look forward to having the opportunity to work with the Obama administration in protecting the civil rights of all Americans, projecting an accurate image of America in the Muslim world and playing a positive role in securing our nation.”

Obama’s victory speech ….. so empty. He was still campaigning. The same stale rhetoric, same vacuous message. He even had the audacity to intimate that his one term would not be enough. He’d need two. He is now campaigning for ’12. Now that’s audacious!

 

4. Best photo. Huffington Post, featuring Martin Luther King’s sister, Christine King Farris, reacting to the called election from a church in Atlanta, Georgia.

5. Most unexpected news story overshadowed by the election. Michael Crichton died.

Crichton died Tuesday at age 66. He had been privately battling cancer, his family said.

6. Biggest reality check/portent of things to come. Russia likey to deploy short-range missiles to the Baltic in response to U.S. calls for an antimissile defense system in Eastern Europe:

In his speech a few hours earlier, Mr. Medvedev spoke of a “new configuration for the military forces of our country” that would include abandoning plans to dismantle some missile regiments and the stationing of missiles in Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

• Tweet
• 
• Comments (3)

• 
  A New Day: Feelings vs. Reason
• 
  About Last Night…