Obama
At last
My two favourite parts of this video are at 00:50, when he says to her, “I practised”, and she grins like an idiot.
And then again at about 02.05, when he’s trying to convince her to do a dip or some other kind of fancy dance move at the climax of the song, and she’s just like, NO WAY, and we’re all kind of happy because despite being the most powerful man in the world it’s fairly clear that despite the extra practising he cannot dance and would probably have dropped her.
The Obamas are the hott secks and I can’t believe it took me so long to figure this out. I think I was still bitter about Hillary.
Appalachia
An interesting article in the New Yorker about Obama’s pitch to heartland Appalachia, the archetypal hill-country mountain-man red-neck capital of America, and the campaign venue of Obama’s “pig in lipstick” comment. David “Mudcat” Saunders has, according to the article, had a venerable career marshalling the mountain-man vote for the Democratic party. His opinion is therefore interesting:
Obama’s “Change” message, Saunders argues, is too abstract, too vague, for the region. “Those people you were with today were screwed by the English in Scotland and Ireland way before they came over here and started getting screwed,” he said. “They’ve been screwed since the dawn of time. And you know what? You ain’t gonna do anything with them, talkin’ about change. You know why? We’re all changed out. That’s all you ever hear, every election. Somebody’s gonna change some shit. Nothin’ ever changes. We get fucked.”
For the uninitiated, Appalachia is a region broaching several states from Mississippi in the south to New York in the North, and it has a population as large as Australia’s, and it is characterised by extreme and vicious rural poverty and gorgeous wilderness. It has an intense hold over the American cultural imaginary as a lawless, backward and frightening shadow to the Eastern States’ “light” of culture and creative-industry capitalism and electricity and running water. I have been fascinated by both the place and the myth since I watched Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds crazying it up in the early 70’s film Deliverance, which is set on a river in Georgia and is one of the most disturbing and riveting films I have ever seen, in spite of some bad day-for-night camera work and an hilarious look at Reynolds’ putative comb-over.
More reading on Appalachia:
Vice’s Poverty issue (very interesting actually).
Earlier NY Times op-ed on Obama’s chances in Appalachia.
The Appalachia Service Project - Making Homes Warmer, Drier, Safer.