Playing Catch Up, Part 1: Obamanation!

Not like abomination, instead reads like domination... perhaps that just didn't translate well into text, never mind.

So I haven't updated in over a month, and for the sake of not flooding this blog with a post as epic in scale as Obama's victory split screen with The Dark Knight, I'm going to break it up into a few posts, so expect more each day talking about my experience Momento-style temporal order.

Anyway, WE WON!  I went to a Democrats Abroad in Berlin event/party/show for election night with most of the people from my program.  Of 800 people filling the old theater, about 40% were Americans, the rest were Germans in support of Obama.  I had been invited to several other all German Obama venues for election night as well.  They seem to like him as much as we do, possibly more, as evidenced by their 200,000 person showing when he spoke here in July.  I’m told that that is larger than any of his crowds in the US, but I’m not sure.  Grant Park was a ‘mere’ 70,000 on election night.

The party was led by Cab Callaway strait out of the Blues Brothers, you know, the guy who sang Minnie the Moocher (not really, of course).  Originally, the plan had been to ‘celebrate’ every five blue states, every time a swing state went blue, and at the end result.  Thank god we didn’t do that, because of the fucking landslide!  When the final result came in around 5 am, the whole room exploded.  Everybody danced, yelled, and cheered in celebration.  Apparently the band had been playing during the announcement, but I lost them in between the chants of “America!” followed closely by, “Fuck yeah!”

We stayed there for McCain’s dignified (unlike his crowd) speech at 530 and then Obama’s BAMFy speech at 6.  McCain gave the cleanest, most dignified, and most intelligent speech I’ve ever heard him give and I was glad.  My friends felt bad for him, being an old man who’s career basically ended last night, but I did not.  He ran a dirty campaign and even if it was not his idea, he didn’t have to.  Also, Palin. 

W.

T.

F.

Mate?

I can’t wait to watch John Stewart demolish CNN’s baby coverage of the election.  They treated the viewer like children, dangling the election numbers on a pair of shiny keys for the American people to bat and giggle at.  That hologram thing?  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?  

She was in front of a poorly covered blue screen and there was no god damn 3 dimensional image of her in the CNN studio.  The Obi-Wan-Kenobi  aura around her was just the blue screen not phased out enough.  I bet it was a fluke and they thought the world was dumb enough to just roll with it.

Obama’s speech was epic, huge, monumental, moving- all the things you hear describing the next Steven Spielberg movie.  I was a bit put off by the gospel-church like ‘yes we can’ part towards the end, just because I hate when politicians bypass people’s rationales by going straight to their emotions.  I’m equally annoyed that people let that happen and getting all riled up because of it.  It was certainly great to see people moved to tears by his election, but I was wary when others were streaming tears blindly shouting along at every ‘yes we can.’  No I’m not against the message, or Obama, or hope, or emotion.  I just like to keep my head and worry when others have lost theirs.