Still pinching myself.

[elisi]

Above picture snagged from Andrew Sullivan. He also linked to Joe Klein's latest's column, as well as looking back to one of his own articles, that I remember reading at the time (over a year ago). Just look at this quote:

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani 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.

And it's really happened! I just...

You know?

Comments

[lynnenne]

That's a great comic! Thanks for sharing it.

[elisi]

My pleasure. :)

[yourlibrarian]

Loved that cartoon.

[elisi]

'Tis brilliant indeed.

[sp23.livejournal.com]

And for his next trick, he'll part the Red Sea.

Seriously, as my President-Elect, I pray that he leads this country wisely, but I'm not joining in the adulation. I *will* give him my respect and support, and if he does something that I oppose, I'll voice that opposition and contact my Senators and Representative. I hope that I never show the blatant disrespect and downright ugliness that I've seen spewed out not only against the Bush Administrative, but against John McCain and Sarah Palin here on lj and in the media.

[elisi]

And for his next trick, he'll part the Red Sea.
*laughs*

if he does something that I oppose, I'll voice that opposition and contact my Senators and Representative.
Which is how democracy work - he is there to serve *the people*, and they have the right to call him on it when he gets stuff wrong. (Which I'm sure he will - at least he won't be able to please everyone, esp given the endless mountain of problems he's inheriting, poor man.)

Mostly, I guess, right now I'm just happy to see people happy.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

Yup! Pretty cool!

[elisi]

Indeed.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

I know. Oh, I know. :-D

I *am* a little worried that expectations will be too high, though there does seem to be a sense of very deliberately trying to *keep* them relatively low. I don't believe that in four years, we will be totally victorious and done in both Iraq and Afghanistan with everything perfect there, back to a perfect and growing economy with budget surpluses and tiny unemployment, have universal cheap and effective health care, have total racial equality - much less sexual-orientation-based equality, have highly paid teachers who produce nationally high test scores and low dropout rates, have complete government transparency and balance of powers -- but I do genuinely think we'll be closer to most or all these things. We'll have made progress.

The economy's going to suck for quite a while, and the two wars are still going to take a while, with some at-least-partial admissions of defeat. Obama will probably still be a stronger president than he *should* (relative to Congress, that is) and there will probably still be things less open than they should be, if only because Bush pushed those things *so far* in the wrong direction that it may be hard to put them completely back. (Also, the president's been stronger than he should be since roughly LBJ.) No one person, no matter how awesome, can eliminate bigotry in the country. Once I start that teaching career I'm working towards, I will still be underpaid - that one's fairly definite. But the country will be better. I do believe that.

[elisi]

but I do genuinely think we'll be closer to most or all these things. We'll have made progress.
*nods* I don't really have anything to add to your lovely comment, since I agree with all of it, and mostly I'm juts crossing my fingers, because I think he'll do his best to make things right, however long it might take!

And good on you for going into teaching - it's something I admire very much.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

What a waonderful picture.

Although I'm not 100% sure about the idea behind the quote - Pakistani boys look at young men in India, who look indistinguishable from themselves to an outsider, and still consider them the enemy... It's a nice thought though, and it can't do any harm, even if it may not do as much good as he expects.

[elisi]

It's a nice thought though, and it can't do any harm, even if it may not do as much good as he expects.
It's certainly a step in the right direction, we can hope. *crosses fingers*

And the picture I just had to share! :)