a new dawn

obamamania creeps up on you, catches you unawares, and then stays with you like an annoying cold - just when you think you're past it, you feel that sneeze coming on...

i tried my best to view obama with my normal cynicism for any mass sentiment. i was given enough cause, with everyone following him with a sort of manic obsessiveness. They even served 'obama cakes' when he won. what are obama cakes, you ask? Well, :

as you can see, i reached the cakes a bit late, and the other three sugar coated portraits of america's first black president had already been devoured by hungry journalists. i'm sure that's symbolic.

anyway, my cynicism received an unexpected boost by the inane coverage of the inauguration ceremony, when everyone was waiting in breathless anticipation to see what michelle obama would wear (i mean, honestly..) and then gushed afterwards about how cute his kids looked (who cares? this man is about to rule the most powerful country in the world for crying out loud).
my cynical side was inching towards the tape...

and then he spoke.

right, so that last line was ultra-dramatic, but i'm not going to apologise. because that speech was something else. this was a no bullshit speech. no feel good lines, just good common sense, "to be chewed and meditated on, not swallowed whole", as bacon would have it. but it WAS tinged with that sense of poetry and drama - how about "if they unclench their fist, we will extend a hand to them". very dramatic, but i can't help admiring the beauty of the poetry in that line.
if you missed it, here you go.

but as obama himself said on al-arabiya earlier this week, its not what a man says, but what he does. unfortunately, it's hard to actually get hold of stories which tell you what he's upto.

i mean it's not that i don't find the following stuff interesting - where and when he took the oath, whether or not there was a bible involved, how he'll be allowed to keep his blackberry, what time the lights come on at the white house these days, and how long he meditates each morning. it's just that i'd rather have the real news, please.

as far as i can see, stuff that he's actually done include:

1) declared the closure of guantanamo bay
2) ordered an air strike on taliban-infested areas of pakistan
3) contacted isreal and palestine, and assigned a top diplomat to negotiate
4) appeared on an arabic channel, symbolic in itself, never mind anything he said on it. (i linked to this earlier)
5) revoked, or started the process of revoking numerous extreme-right measures introduced by the bush administration, including one related to abortion law.

all this in a matter of a week-and-a-half. so apparently, all that stuff he said before becoming president WASN'T just what newspapers call "election rhetoric"

The full list of what he did in the first few days is in this guardian piece titled "The first 100 hours"

my cynicism and indifference are completely cowed down now, and lie whimpering in a corner.

it's not just that he is an idealist, it's not just that he is intelligent, and it's not just that he is mixed race and a symbol of change. It's his depth. Everything about him suggests that this is a man who can act decisively, but has deep philosophical depths at the same time. For once, I'm with the whole world on this - there is hope.

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unrelated, my video for the week on the left side of this page (i ambitiously plan to post every week on this blog) is the brilliant stevie riks doing an impression of freddie mercury. its the first video on the list - does anyone know how to get rid of the other two??