We on Award Tour with Muhammad My Man

by Eric Martin

Reactions from around the globe:

People across Africa stayed up all night or woke before dawn to watch U.S. history being made, while the president of Kenya — where Obama's father was born — declared a public holiday.

In Indonesia, where Obama lived as child, hundreds of students at his former elementary school erupted in cheers when he was declared winner and poured into the courtyard where they hugged each other, danced in the rain and chanted "Obama! Obama!"

"Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place," South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, said in a letter of congratulations to Obama.

Many expressed amazement and satisfaction that the United States could overcome centuries of racial strife and elect an African-American as president.

"This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten," Rama Yade, France's black junior minister for human rights, told French radio. "America is rebecoming a New World.

"On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes," she said.

In Britain, The Sun newspaper borrowed from Neil Armstrong's 1969 moon landing in describing Obama's election as "one giant leap for mankind."

The astounding thing is that there are some on the right that have actually tried to paint Obama's popularity outside of the United States as a bad thing.  Because it's really terrible when the rest of the world is awed by the realization of our exalted principles, rather than our ordnance.  The type of people that ascribe to the credo that it's better to be feared than loved, without realizing that it's better still to be both.  A little respect doesn't hurt the cause either.

Comments

[Ugh]

The astounding thing is that there are some on the right that have actually tried to paint Obama's popularity outside of the United States as a bad thing.

They don't seem to know that people will do things for someone they like that they won't do for an asshole. The U.S. has been an asshole for 8 years under Bush.

[cleek]

damn, i love that album

[matttbastard]

Midnight Marauders is one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.

[Eric Martin]

Midnight Marauders is one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.

I'd put it in the top ten.

Best of all time (not necessarily in this order but the first three are the first three):

1. Public Enemy - Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back [me: not anymore!]

2. Wu Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

3. Nas - Illmatic

4. Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die

5. Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded

6. Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full

7. De La Soul - Three Feet High and Rising

8. Tribe - Midnight Marauders

9. Outkast - Aquemini

10. Jay-Z, Reasonable Doubt

[dougie smooth]

"a world tour", not "award tour", no?

[Eric Martin]

"a world tour", not "award tour", no?

Blame Dove from De La Soul, not me.

[Cernig]

Wow...Rupert Murdoch's Sun actually used Armstrong's words like that? Old Rupe never has enjoyed continuing to back losers. Just sayin'.

[Hartmut]

The astounding thing is that there are some on the right that have actually tried to paint Obama's popularity outside of the United States as a bad thing.

Iirc the motto of the US is Oderint dum metuant (or at least was until someone overpainted it with E pluribus uranium). ;-)

[xanax]

Fewer than 12 hours later: Yes We Can the music video.

[Ted]

Of course the advice to be feared rather than loved if you have to choose is immediately followed by the advice that above all else you must avoid being hated.

[Neneh]

Right. True.

[bwaage]

Obama wants both; he wants them to be afraid of how much they love us.

[MandyW]

It's odd that conservatives (who blather on about favoring small government and limited spending, and make a big show about their "Christian" values) don't acknowledge that being popular helps achieve objectives at a much lower cost in both money and human lives.

A key reason that Republicans can still fool some middle-class voters into believing that supply-side economics will benefit them is that the theory still basks in the nostalgic afterglow of Reagan's popularity.

Given our dire financial condition, Obama's popularity around the world (whether merited or not) is a godsend. As Andrew Sullivan wrote in the Atlantic back in 2007 when Obama looked like the longest of long shots to win the Democratic nomination, let alone the Presidency:

"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."

[Jesurgislac]

MandyW: "Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."

*nods*

George W. Bush's first act as President was to prove his woman-hating, anti-health-care, let-'em-die credentials by re-instating the Global Gag Rule.

While of course I want Obama will undo that awful act, the symbolic significance of "first act in Presidency" would be something like declaring the US's breach of the Geneva Conventions at an end - and on a human scale, releasing the Uighurs and the US's other political prisoners/torture victims would be both a great practical good and a great symbolic good.

Also, of course, since naturally they'd have to be invited to the US to live, it would be a convenient first step in the prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, for crimes against humanity.

Yeah, I'm dreaming. Believe me when I say my great cynicism is right down to the fact that I don't doubt that they will all live out a contented retirement without ever being called upon to answer for their crimes.

[TSW]

The song's called "Award Tour." So I'm pretty sure the headline's right. Take that garbage to St. Elsewhere.