Sen. Obama will give a major speech tomorrow morning on race. It will either put the whole Jeremiah Wright mess behind him... or not.
There will be folks in Moscow watching it live. Seriously.
In the words of Michael Idov, a writer for New York magazine: “There is a subset of young, educated Moscovites that are completely obsessed with Barack Obama. He’s got quite a fan club here.”
Idov posted this 3½-minute video on BigThink.com two weeks ago. Stay tuned for his buddy Alexei, who explains, with dry wit, the Russian brand of Obamamania:
“People do not discuss who’s winner of Grammy Awards, but discussing how perfect is the clip ‘Yes We Can,’ which we can see on YouTube.”
Evidently Obama’s charisma extends beyond America and her peculiar racial hang-ups.
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7 comments:
Very uplifting clip. Obama is a true uniter.
This is something very interesting about Obama. His appeal is almost universal. I regularly engage in an Obama discussion board and quite often we see people from around the world drop in and say how they are inspired from Obama. People from England, Australia, Canada, African countries, South Asian countries, etc.
I have a number of Nigerian friends and they seem quite excited about Obama too.
^ This intrigues me, SJ. I can see why Africans and Afro-Caribbeans would be excited about Obama.
But Russians? South Asians? How much of it, do you think, has to do with Obama's racial status, and how much is just about his personal charisma?
I think it's his racial status which is the initial intriguing part, but it's his charisma which seals the deal.
As Idov said, "young" and "educated" are the keywords here. In the US Obama has a strong lock on the young and educated vote. And as you may have noticed Obama's young supporters are extremely diverse...in the Obama discussion board we have everyone from Arabs, Hispanics, Blacks, Jews, Whites, Asians, etc. etc. This extends to other countries too. I think young people have become tired of the crap around the world, and are just looking for something quite different.
Someone on the board said: Obama is going to be the first real president of the 21st century.
I'm gonna agree with SJ's comment that the world is pretty tired of crap... Just because the president of the US isn't the president of their countries doesn't mean that they don't have to deal with the implications of who we have elected and what their ideologies and policies are and will be... Obama, charisma or race or shoe-size or whatever, is the most outside voice in national politics right now... Even if he's just the same as everyone else he can at least lend the appearance of real change from what's come before...
Does anyone else get the memory of the character, "Alex the Translator" from the film "Everything Is Illuminated"?
A friend of a friend who lives in Spain says the Spanish love Obama, because it shows how crazy in a good way this country can be: We can elect a dictator like Bush, then turn around and give a shot to somebody from our most oppressed class. It gives people "over there" the hope they look to from America.
Of course, the second Great Depression is underway, so we'll probably too busy waiting in food lines to enjoy that.
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