Jon Snow Tries to Get Me To Hope for a McCain Miracle

Channel 4 News' anchor, Jon Snow, has just been talking about how electing Barack Obama means "America has come of constitutional age". Yes, really. Apparently none of those previous elections were legitimate. Now of course Snow's program tilts even further to the left than the BBC so you might expect him to say something like this. But there will, alas, be much more of this sort of nonsense.

Now in one sense, it's clear what Snow means: after all, there are many people who do not expect to agree with Obama politically who appreciate, nonetheless, that his victory is a splendid and significant moment in American history. But Snow's smugness, indeed his condescension, is another matter altogether. It's rather as though there exists the presumption that the millions of Americans voting for John McCain today can only be motivated by their fear - conscious or not - of a black man becoming President. Alternatively, it's like taking the kids to the zoo so they can see those strange Americans. Look, some of them have opposable thumbs!

Over at the Confabulum, James Poulos has a fine post reminding one that it is important to reject this tripe.

It’s impossible (for me) to doubt that whatever happens, either today or over the next four or eight years, Obama will be much better for America culturally than politically. But it’s ridiculous to hold Obama’s election over the heads of those who would dare to vote against him: taking away every nonwhite kid’s shot at true self-esteem! HOW DARE YOU?!?! etc. And indeed, I’ve heard it put this way — not just a matter of inspiring black kids (which of course is an awesome idea that all of us should be more involved in), but "hispanic, native American…"... People who won’t vote for Obama because they disagree with him aren’t shattering anyone’s dreams. If that’s what politics has become in this country — you annihilated my future! – then we really do need a long collective night in the drunk tank.

Still, don't expect this view to prevail in much of the foreign media, particularly the left-wing overseas press.

Comments

[dearieme]

Dinna fash yersel'; Snow is just a twat. Some chump was declaiming the other day that it was the most important Presidential election in American history. Oh dear. RIP Mr Lincoln.

[toby]

I reject Snow's smugness and condescension, but there was some truth in what he said.

As someone pointed out on CNN, go back two hundred years, and any white man could have legally owned Barack Obama. Any white man could have sailed to Africa, seized Obama or his ancestor from his home and sold the prisoner to the highest bidder. His owner could have whipped him or shot him, if he tried to escape.

When Barack Obama was born, his parents biracial marriage was still illegal in the state of Virginia, a state he won last night. The Voting Rights Act was only passed when he was three years old.

So there is a sense in which America is "rising up and living out the true meaning of its creed", in the words of Martin Luther King. But not quite yet, not until the colour of the President's skin is an unremarkable fact. That can only happen with the next black President.

There was a poignant interview with Jesse Jackson on the BBC last night. Jackson is a link with the Civil Rights Era, and the interview was poignant because someone remarked that "Jesse Jackson had to try and fail before Barack Obama could succeed".

But no one can use this to demonstrate some kind of superiority over the USA, as if a black or asian man could move into No 10, Downing Street or the Elysee Palace without anyone really noticing. That, I think, will be a long time coming.

"go back two hundred years, and any white man could have legally owned Barack Obama." As indeed could any free black man in the slave states - and some did. (The excuse that they owned only their own kin is apparently false.) Some red men did too.

"Any white man could have sailed to Africa, seized Obama or his ancestor from his home and sold the prisoner to the highest bidder." Indeed, and essentially none did. White merchants bought slaves from the blacks who has seized them - that was how it worked. The main exception was the Muslim slave trade, where Arabs and North Africans often did do the slaving themselves - and it was the Arabs who did the slaving where Obama's father came from.

This is not to say that the gist of the point is wrong, just to puzzle at the inability to get elementary facts right.

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