Klinke - Handle

Well, it’s official. Barak Obama is now the most powerful man on earth. I’m always interested when a new US president gets inaugurated, and today watched him take office in the staff room at work with a bunch of gleeful co-workers. Alas no, as the ambiguity of that sentence may not have made clear, the ceremony wasn’t taking place at my cinema, rather the pictures were being beamed live from Washington to our Freeview box. But anyway, during his speech I noticed something. I’m not sure if anyone else has picked up on this, but I squinted at the TV and, well, not quite sure how to say this as it could be too much to handle, but the guy’s not white. You might even go so far as to say he’s black. It’s quite shocking that it’s not been mentioned once by any of the reporters or news anchors covering the day’s (you might even say historic) events. It seems a waste that the news agencies didn’t get all their black reporters to roam the streets asking other black people what it meant to be ethnically similar to the new US president. Or scramble for interviews with any famous African-American movie stars for their views on Obama’s skin colour. Okay, I can’t take this sarcasm lark any further. Mainly because it’s not that funny. Well it’s about to get a whole lot less funny anyway. So there. But ever since President #44’s election victory back in November, it seems all most people can talk about his race, not character. The fact he’s well educated, highly eloquent and politically inspiring seems to be nothing compared to the fact that his black dad shagged his white mum. Truly I’m not attempting to belittle the plight of generations of horribly hard-done-by African slaves and their descendents, or the bitter civil rights struggles of the twentieth century. As well as being proof that yes you can achieve anything even if you’re not white and middle class, it’s an important fuck you to the cockends who still harbour idiotic views of racial supremacy. But wasn’t it Martin Luther King whose dream it was, and I paraphrase slightly because my Internet is down, that people be judged not by the colour of their skin, but the content of their character. When people harp on and on and on about him being the first black president rather than being the first president (in a long time) with radical ideas about healthcare and social reform, and all the other stuff I can’t even begin to list (because my Internet is down) it seems patronising and, well, a bit racist. Or whatever the opposite of racism is. Forget it, this piece has taken a nosedive and only used the word handle once and in a totally lame way. I just await the day when the first underwhelming writer-come-stand-up comic runs for office. I’d have instant employment with any news agency, being sent to scour the streets for other likeminded, miserably delusional sods who probably wouldn’t have anything funny to say either. I could definitely handle that.