Buffalo Soldier.

Does anyone else think that Barack Obama's face is beginning to mirror Madiba's?

Watching how descendants of ancient Mesopotamia affect the pulse of the world, over the last several decades, reveals a fascinating arc on the global-collective timeline.

Today, the now familiar, twice-elected American President stopped in Sweden on his way to Russia's G20 summit. But it is a looming U.S. intervention in Syria that's on everyone's tap-touch notebook-list of questions. 24hr News is in feeding frenzy.

Looking behind Obama's eyes, framed by mini Mandela-moles which I hadn't really noted before, and the lighter shading of the skin stretched over high cheekbones, I intuit a secure conscience. Gut-level diaphragmatic relaxation from reflective, reflex points-of-origin, convey confirmation in his assured speaking voice.

Words string together fluently, admirably directed by a cultured synaptic highway to his Harvard-incubated legal-eagle brain.
(Or brains, for I do believe Michelle was his tutor at one time). Visualizing tort tutorials and formal debates, and imagining academic requirement of such people, I was moved to tweet (@actualApophis) - "#Obama is in his wheelhouse."

During recent election cycles in the U.S., my comments were frequently challenged with the somewhat desperate query "Why do YOU care so much about OUR politics?" -

This is why.

America doesn't simply elect a commander-in-chief. How often do we speak of the "leader of the free world?" Barack Obama, who's in close generational synchronicity with world-citizen Ackeelover, acknowledges the greater global context.

We're watching the 44th POTUS attempt to wield a big stick while walking softly. He's deft and had better be. A deliberate delivery, comparable to Mr. Mandela's own metronome, communicates contemplativeness. And just like in his honest commentary to the Press Corps on the Martin/Zimmerman verdict, there was no teleprompter to lacquer over nuance of thought or expression.

Nelson Mandela, whose legacy will be that of peace preferring, pragmatic revolutionary, understands how to fight for the cause of right, even when defence requires a pugilist's punch.

Perhaps, as he himself avers, Obama may yet prove "unworthy"  of the Nobel Peace Prize, but to my mind, win or lose in the war of worlds, this most scrutinised second-term leader speaks like his African counterpart, confident of his Buffalo Stance.

White house. Black house.

If caution is a characteristic of conservatism, then I must own up to that side of my personality. I sometimes yield to chicken-shit tentativity when expressing observations on the racially polarised landscape we find ourselves living in. But not today.

As one who is given to frequent rumination on such issues, from a perspective of cultural complexity, I'm understandably drawn to, and opinionated on, this discourse - despite assuming a position high above the fray as a proud proselyte of an (admittedly) idealistic tabula rasa (Rasta?). The One Love philosophy.






Racism is the polar opposite of this stance, being based in bias; i.e. the principle of any race's intrinsic preferability over another. Bio-specific minutiae, such as variability in skin-tone and sundry genetic distinctions, are the props it's built on, but racism's broad purview includes cultural corollary to this precept.

Acknowledging that there's a case to be made for racism being a natural characteristic of the human species, there can nevertheless be no doubting that colonial expansion over the last five centuries, for all the wonderful countries founded, also compounded the issue and extended hegemonies, via empire.

In the United States, and other post-colonial societies with historically race-based beginnings, race is a DNA factor that colors culture and political affiliations. Variants apply but this view is through black 'n' white specs.

Sensitivities surround the word racist, even when used as mere explanation. It tends to trigger soul-denial, and render generalization and selective memory powerful psychological tools in the struggle for representative power.

This has fostered a proliferation of codified, and not so codified pejoratives. The establishment of an African-American POTUS has laid bare nerves beneath a filmy epidermis of equanimity, as this remarkable democracy seeks to retain its ascendancy.















"Communist," "dictator," "terrorist," "thief," are nouns from only one comment-thread, in one disaffected right-wing article parsing the 2012 re-election result, but I've seen several such. The same thread is decorated with adjectives like "evil" and "ruthless," with more than one bright spark styling Barack Obama as "Anti-Christ" ("read your bible") and "Son of Lucifer" ("666 - The Beast").

I'll deliberately avoid rehashing cretinous diatribes on magic negroes, bones in the nose, monkeys, makers/takers and nooses. 

So help me Jah, I couldn't make this stuff up. Wry smile. More.

One of the things I grapple with in this climate, is the reluctance of so many white American voters to draw the connection between a Republican vote and a racial slap-in-the-face. In light of palpable idiocy and ill-concealed hatred from right-wing ranks, I'm ecstatic at G.O.P. misery at the polls. Even if Mitt Romney was a financial magician, it would've been regrettable to empower the social luddites and those who refuse to take them to task.

For sure, there is no economic prosperity worth sacrificing social propriety for, and none achievable without it.

The sting in the tail here is, if anyone points out how suspicious this vitriol is, toward Obama's frequently referenced heritage, the charge of racism gets defensively leveled at them.

















Let's get one thing straight. Racists tend to use the unqualified term "reverse racism" with impunity. It deflects the onus of understanding by identifying pushback as the primary impetus. This only serves to perpetuate ignorance and impasse.

"Liberal" and "conservative" are not bad words, nor mutually exclusive from racism, but it does seem difficult for the latter to transcend or decry bigotry. So much so that Obama optimists get accused of being divisive and disingenuous when it's patently clear who really is. Witness voter allegiance.

It's sad, demoralizing, polarizing, undignifying, yet still, somehow fascinating and instructive just how much adrenaline an American election can inject into this dialectic. Nearly all of old Confederacy voted Republican, and a vast majority of non-whites ("minority" is a misnomer now) voted Democrat.

Americans, of the United States, deserve less entrenchment.
 

... extraordinary brothers-in-arms ...

... "I'm not an alien," so goes the quip, "but I play one on TV" ...

... at one point in the not so distant past, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) classified me as an Alien of Extraordinary Ability in The Arts ... my head still swells at the adjective "extraordinary," even as the ascribed primary descriptive "alien" brings to mind fanciful images of almond-eyed Hanna Barbera Martians with ray guns in plexiglassed, single-occupant flying saucers ...

... still, I'm in good company 'cos even the lofty President Barack H. Obama, elected (via rigorous, even tortuous, adult sufferage) to the top office in the-land-which-would-lead-us-all, gets the word "alien" thrown at him from time to time ...

... as brothers-in-arms we have that and more in common ...

... not least of these commonalities are convincingly furrowed brows and mesmerising, outstretched arm gestures ...










... chillin' with my actual brother Stephen last week, high above 86th St. on Manhattan's Upper West Side, we formed a fraternal triumvirate-by-proximity with the POTUS, who, if we had a third sibling, would look like the brotha-on-the-book-cover ...

... again, in the not so distant past this would have been an implausible scenario ... and, while it's not enough to profess solidarity with a politician simply because one looks like him, it's certainly comforting that such an official can finally compare to one's own valid countenance - as well as being a measuredly progressive influence on the direction of the U.S. of A. ...

... speaking as an intergalactic adversary from another dimension (legions of Stargate SG-1 fans accept this as fact, so should you), I'm reconciled to a postponement of any assault on fair Planet Earth until after the end of Barack Obama's second term in office, out of respect for his (literally) extraordinary tenure ...

... should America falter at the polls, Apophis may interdict ...

... super whose day? ...

... feels like a blink-of-an-eye since we were last here ...

... d-day on this otherwise unremarkable Tuesday in Spring when a quartet of likely lads, from America's chest-beating right-wing, rage against the machine ...

... in this latest swing of the pendulum, America's quest for democratic equilibrium, there is petty polarity and piety aplenty, which speaks of divergent camps ... ideological options before the electorate are clarified and stark ... decisions, decisions ...

... in the grand tradition of referring to national baseball championships as the World Series, Black Friday consumer frenzies and a grandiose style of doing things, U.S. politics bills this polling day as Super Tuesday, with primaries in eleven States and hundreds of electoral delegates up for grabs ...

... who'll get the cookies from the cookie-jar? ...

... the HBO release of "Game Change" is a timely harbinger ... a screen depiction of that dramatic convention stunt in 2008 when Crusty Crony (McCain) pulled Lively Rabbit (Palin) out of his hat, effectively pegging back the frontrunner ... could we have a repeat of that maverick moment this year? ...

... cynical, smart-money is on a spectacular addition to the Republican ticket in order to boost the lackluster candidate who finishes top ... should Rick Santorum, a man I first heard of in a particularly graphic Dan Savage column, emerge G.O.P. leader he'll need a total makeover and a Latina running mate who looks like Sofia Vergara to make our incumbent look sideways ...

... today's probable winner, Mitt Romney (we'll know around the time this ackeelover observation gets published tonight), carries a yoke or three around his neck and each one is extra-weighted with stumblebum gaffes and halting riposte ...

... it'll take something quite monumental for reluctant Romney to thwart Barack Obama's sophomore term but don't bet the house just yet ... plans are likely underway to co-opt an irresistable candidate, one possessed of credibility and clout ...

... in fact, they've already got the lapel buttons circulating ...

 

... buh-bye bin, bada bing ...

... a tip o' the tam to Tim for reminding me of the a propos quote, "I've never wished a man dead but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure” ... whether or not those words are wholely attributable to Mark Twain, they inspired me to vent on a vanquished villain, that surly Saudi ingrate, phantom renegade and bad egg by any measure ...

... Osama bin Laden was a larger-than-life, xtreme hide and seek player ... after being emboldened by Western support against the Soviets in Afghanistan he came to embody such a perfect foil for American psychologies of propriety that it's difficult not to feel elements of good riddance ... and this is before we even mention his most nefarious misdeeds ...

... enter the frontier sheriff on his sturdy steed, twirling ivory-handled Colts at the hip, down mainstreet Abbottabad ... Barack Obama, faced with mid-term poll recalibrations, second-term boo-birds, and long-term legacy considerations, pulls a six foot-five inch rabbit from his hat and trumps (literally - hah!) the relatively prosaic Saddam-in-a-hole routine of his predecessor ...

... the daring in this act of leadership is magnified by the timing ... fresh from being carded (which is effectively what happened when this President was compelled into taking special initiative to produce an obsolete form of bureaucratic paperwork testifying to his very legitimacy as citizen-of-the-land), Obama stewards a checkmate for the ages ... going from (not-quite) zero to sixty, in the political equivalent of a nanosecond ...

... the only foreshadowing precedent I can recall is the classic 1974 Mel Brooks spoof film "Blazing Saddles", and, based on the way things developed for the new-man-in-charge in that blueprint, I predict more quasi-comic moments and coolly managed scenarios, with only the occasional glitch, before this dude proudly hangs up his badge after about eight years leading the posse ... and rides off into the (Hawaiian?) sunset ...

... Barack dip dem in di healin' stream ...

hear parable people ... mi tun on TV dis mornin',

hol' a coffee an' a food and go fi sweep out di house ...

when mi look fi di broom me si seh a two broom in deh,

one new-bran' stiff broom, an' a old mash-down soft one ...

I tek up the two a dem an instantly memba wha' granny seh,

how "new broom sweep clean" an', "old broom know corner"...

same time, man an' man come pon TV a big-up Obama,

an' a labba-labba how Uncle Sam a gwaan,

when BADAM! ... it lick me ... clear as day ...

certain sittn suppose' to brush wit' new broom,

the odda res' have to caress with the sof' one ... den,

mi mind jump to Joshua, wid di famous Rod-of-Correction ... 

likkle mos' mi apoplexy to vision Prezi a brandish two broom,

mi seh! ... laugh an' kiki keep up inna livin' room a mornin' time!

"sweep dem Barack sweep dem, sweep dem in di healin' stream"

- JAMAICAN GLOSSARY -

"labba-labba"- chatter, "likkle most"- almost, nearly,

"kiki"- laughter, "lick"- hit,

"Dip Dem in di Healing Stream"- popular Jamaican Folk song

... flee from hate, mischief and jealousy...

... I had no intention of starting the year on a heavy note because the outlook for me depends on positive vibrations, but news of the shooting and loss of life in Arizona this weekend touched a long-exposed nerve ... in the U.S.A., a country with so much to offer the world, there are some baffling smoke signals ...

... "life is one big road with lots of signs" ... this 1979 Bob Marley lyric from the strident anthem "Wake Up And Live" goes on to advise ... "flee from hate, mischief and jealousy" ... Bob's focus was on metaphorical signs and scriptural prophecy rather than literal letraset and amateur calligraphy ...















... it's either naive or deliberately negligent to overlook the connection between the election of the first African American to the highest office in the land and the overt vitriol that comes to the fore when progressive energies meet conservative resistance in the current political tug-o-war game ...

... inflamed passion can manifest as insanity in ways stranger than fiction and it gets even more distressing when people (who should know better as citizens of the self-proclaimed leader of the free world) resort to calling for (or alluding to) gruesome deaths for holders of opposition viewpoints ...

















... democracy, as fair a blueprint for governance as humankind has yet devised, needs to see itself as just that, a man-made template that requires periodic updates in the manner of today's state-of-the-art electronics ... other countries have experimented, the time is past-due for U.S.A. Democracy 2.0 ...

... after centuries of not-entirely-proportionate division of assets, the U.S. is now left to deal with a quest for equilibrium ... while it's understood that there'll be disagreement along the way, surely there is nothing to be gained by obstinately defending a right to bear ever-more-destructive firearms instead of voting towards enlightened alternatives ... even compromise would be improvement, but no, we must adapt for hollow-points and Glock semis because founding fathers decreed it for a bygone age ... some floundering fathers continue to decree it, with defensive and offensive rationale, while the walking-dead in America and it's regional slipstream continue to live nine-millimeter lives ...
















... in this part of the world we are able to lean on the democratic cornerstone of Freedom Of Speech but do we really require an M-16 to defend that right in a mall parking-lot or at a tea-party? ...

... it doesn't take deep contemplation to imagine what some people feel at the sight of a confident Michelle Obama, speaking freely as FLOTUS, when simian references recall another lingering archaic notion intended to injure ... elsewhere there's the oblique approach, but the words you twist to make your own today may return to haunt your tomorrow ...
















... I saw a re-run of "Bowling For Columbine" last week ... the shock factor has diminished significantly since first release due to repeated cases of people "going postal" and the hawkish stances staked-out by the paradoxically called "right-wing"...

... Limbaugh disciples and ilk, with clear kneejerk reactions to a wave of first-time-evers in American politics, unquestionably kindle brush-fires that feed on the feeble minded and potentially trigger actions like the barbaric attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents ... tell it like it is ...





















... despite the proliferation of signage, or maybe because of it, the astounding reality of Palinite sophistry will not have the power to ultimately carry the day, I predict ... common sense tells me so (to reclaim a favoured phrase from the pipsqueek braintrust), but it is also possible that the sign-makers could worsen matters by learning to spell, correctly pronouncing "nuclear," "Iraq" and "Ahmadinejad," while re-loading a full ammo magazine into a semi-automatic weapon before getting shot or subdued ...

... an afterword-to-the-wise of A(mer)ri(ca)zona ... don't shoot that sheriff (Dupnik) ... check his post-event remarks, then resume the Bob lyric ... "riiise, from your sleepless slumber"...

... Battlescar Ontario ...

... sometimes in the combustive high drama of geo-political theatre you get a damp squib ... but this latest production of Summit G20 turned out to be a big deal ... a sort of coming out for Toronto, Ontario and Canada as a political stooge ... I mean ... stage ... a pretty ideal spot for a convention, eh, with its focal financial and shopping districts, two-line subway and that orderly, grid-like streetplan ...

... as we've seen, one of the problems in staging events with lofty agendas ... the South African World Cup, Vancouver's Olympics ... or a G20 summit ... is the actual cost and the not-always-obvious returns on the investment to the people who make up the local social infrastructure ... then there are those terms of fiscal inexactitude like ..."a billion dollars" ... that get tossed around as if rounding a figure to the nearest hundred-million is clarifying ... (can we get a G20 for two G8's and save ourselves 4G?) ...

... certainly one could see where the ... bulbous ... security budget from T-dot to Huntsville was deployed ... there were threats from all quarters ... real and perceived it matters not ... 'cos due dilligence is non-negotiable when anyone throws a party for such a high-profile gathering of guests ...

... the security forces seem to have worked close to the blueprint in tackling these threats ... but this remains troubling justification for the disproportionate hyper-expenditure it took to do so ...

... to those who watch these things, it has become de rigeur for summits of this kind to draw attention from public watchdogs, legitimately-motivated torch or cross-bearers and antagonistic contrarians ... it is within that latter group that you'll find the instigators and perpetrators of wanton destruction ... who by their actions seek to leave their mark in anti-social ways often to their own detriment and no-one's net gain ... like this angst-ridden saboteur who might have done better to stay away entirely ...













... inside the convention centre some global bargaining took place between football matches ... round-table, bi-lateral, in-camera, al fresco talks were held ... hands was shook (where's the fist-bump gone?) ... with the World Press Corps there to disseminate it all ...

... outside, shock-and-awe was droppin' on some anarchist ass and throngs got to hang close enough to say they were there when the rubber bullets flew ... I had just left town when the flex went down but they hit my Starbucks on Queen Street at John ... true to form the broken window instantly became art ...















.. if this all sounds cynical you shoulda heard me when I mentally flipped the script back to football and subbed Obama for Palin during the summary presidential Q&A ... every question was a potential Deep Water Horizon and had a trickier follow-up ... in other words ... Palin kryptonite ...

... nuff said ... when I stopped cringing I flushed that thought down the commode and moved on to contemplate the sheer enormity of the job the POTUS has on his hands ... engaged hotspots are ever-active and the U.S. is literally bleeding oil at the mouth of the Mississipi ... personally I'm thinkin' Barack should regulate that money-smile ... he's clearly familiar with the nuanced Jamaican phrase ... 'kin teet' ... (interptation; "skin teeth" - to smile, perhaps even obsequiously or disingenuously) ... it's handy in such crowds ...

... aaand when the smoke clears there are documents glittering in smiling promise but clouded by clause and condition ... agreements in principle at best ... leaving me to wonder if world leaders were to deal with the serious stuff in less distractingly overt fora ... develop a collaborative, Skype-type, HD cyber-summit to take care of the show-biz angle ... could they re-allocate funds for future gigs? ... I'm jus' sayin' ...

... in the run-up to the World Cup there were premonitions of crime and social unrest ... or hooliganism (which has not materialised despite an officiating faux pas or two) ... that this Ontario summit should be the scene of such babylonian behaviour while South Africa has held together is an irony which will please Pretoria but may mortify the Maple Leaf ...

... letter to The President ...

...
..... whaa'pn Barack ...

.... no doubt there's always an overflowing inbox when you return from those Hawaiian holidays the unreasonable would deny you ... so I'll spare you the heavy stuff to start off this new decade ... I know you must've enjoyed the sun, sea, sand and "sno-bamas" ... a respite from suits and ties and Salahis ... not to mention the gargantuan tasks-of-management you find yourself engaged by ... still, you must travel with your work as it's part of your job description ... I appreciate you doing that even though I do not reside in the U.S. of A. ....

... the wide world is a smaller, more complex place these days ... and as the song says, "... it's hard to get by just upon a smile ," ... yours is a particularly radiant smile, it betrays a disarming honesty which comes across as approachability ... it can be described as "down-to-earth" (as good a place as any I suppose) ... many of us watching as you navigate uncharted routes onward take that smile at face value, even though we have all seen leaders-of-men practiced in the art of deception ... they too often come with winning smiles ...

... as a man who knows the joys of a well struck ball I hope you lined a few sweet fairway shots when you hit the links and didn't have to diplomat your way through too much Tiger Woods susu-susu in between holes (no joke intended) ... unless of course that's what you wanted ... seems Tiger is fair game, grist for the mill at the moment ... if you did the vacation up right there would've been a little workout and some kicking back with a cold one to wind down the day, a romp with Sasha and Malia, and a how-was-your-day wrap up debriefing with Michelle (joke intended ... your smile tells me you're cool with that too) ...

... I'm writing this from several time zones away but we've both inhaled a lot of invigorating sea breeze ... yours Pacific, mine Caribbean, and for the first time in my life I find myself marginally older than a POTUS ... it's from this perspective that I feel safely justified in my observations of you ... though it's early days yet I'd say you're doing fine career-wise ... a B+ is a win in my book and your mother would be proud ... persona-wise I'd award a higher mark based on your ability to connect with a broader variety of global aspirations than your predecessors ...

... well before the Nobel honour it was not overstatement to posit your life-story as allegory ... not only in a political sense, but in a poetic-justice sense ... a politician glibly making much of babies on the way to election is almost a joke ... definitely a cliche ... but you have already been elected ... and, I have it on good authority there was nothing glib or cliche when you held my new niece on New Years Eve ... my birthday ... the photo instantly flew around the world to me as a gift ... you're in the family now brotherman, stay strong and true ... 'til Shiloh ...

... Jah guide ...

... brown babies and beasts of burden ...

... whenever I'm flipping through channels and I happen upon the face of Wanda Sykes I'm compelled to stop ... to watch and listen ... such is the effect of her elfin visage on me ... it's the same sort of compulsion when I see the goofy mischief in Tracy Morgan's face ... I expect the laughter to come instinctively and I'd put money on it being slightly uncomfortable at times too ...















... I happened upon Wanda's stand-up this week, her topical material these days is heavy on Obama ... understandably ... and still includes the shtick she used at the White House Correspondents dinner event she was invited to regale ... clearly, like many, she's proud of America for electing a black Prez ... adding, "that's unless he fucks up, then it's like, who voted for the half-white guy? .... who voted for the mulatto?" ...

... hold up ... reeeewind .... mulatto?! ...

... now, as we all know ... context is everything in controversial matters, especially in comedy, and despite my knee-jerk cringe I don't have a problemo with the use of a word in service of an act of contemporary performance ... for me this includes the notorious "n" word ... "nigger/nigga"... after all, they are just words ... words which can be rendered odious by rank overuse, ignorant abuse or malicious intent ... no ... the spark that has set off my powderkeg is to be found in the aftermath ... the whole idea of mixed-race sub-labelling ...

... even taking into consideration cultural variances ... I'm told the antecedents of the term carry no negative holdover in Spanish and Portuguese speaking cultures and mulatto/mulatta is seen as an affirmation of aesthetic positives ... well, just how do you separate a cafe-au-lait range of skintones and ringlets from the commercial trading of Africans? ... and what were the purposes for the arithmetic of African-ness on a scale of mulatto(half-African) to hexadecaroon(one-sixteenth African)? ... to quote Wikipedia ... "Defining an individual mathematically is inherently reductive, and these terms derived from the slave trade which treated these people as chattel." ... yet still, some people refer to themselves as mulatto ... I've heard defense of the fifteenth-century coinage with simple justification ...

..."it's in the dictionary"...

... it's safe to say Wiki is the new Webster's ... I hope to trigger a spike in hits on the definition of mulatto ... there you find a wider treatment than a dictionary would offer ... you're given enough insight to decide whether the term is a descriptive or a loaded label ... meanwhile children are born, and those who would comment can scamper to clarify the appropriateness of their terminology ... if I'm a mulatto for instance, are my children also? ... there are undoubtably even narrower slots into which Wanda's own recently arrived twins could be put ...

... interestingly, as I write this there's a case in Louisiana, U.S.A. of a marriage license being denied to an interracial couple ... the backlash of outrage, though quick, loud and widespread only goes so far to counter the intuition that such attitudes are symptomatic of deeply ingrained social biases based on historically engineered hierarchies ...

... confronting these aspects of our multi-cultural realities can feel Quixotic at times and most would rather not bother or have to in these modern times ... me included ... but alas ... a luta continua ...

... my approach has settled into a mature place ... just the facts ma'am ... the term mulatto derives from the Spanish/Portuguese word for mule ... we know that a mule is only produced from a horse and a donkey ... so ... as cute as these noble-yet-lowly beasts-of-burden can be when they are babies, they are a result of inter-species mating and are therefore generally sterile ... I don't know about you but none of the mulattoes I know fit this description ...

... the man for the job ...

... we won't fully understand the impact of the life of the forty-fourth President of the United States until there is some context and hindsight around his time ... but for certain it will all have been observed comprehensively and ... chronicled ...












... the emergence of Barack Obama on the big stage continues to generate big ink ... this is a reflection of how universally significant are American fairytales, the twists-in-the-tale enshrined in its constitutional contradictions and its historical realities ... the circumstances of the United States of America's birth and growth are established and well studied around the world ... even more far-reaching is the glossy appeal of American marketing and culture ... it's true, Americanism is an amalgam of cultural influences and can claim to be a prototype and leader ...

... speaking of leaders ... since the earliest days of the nation until now, the head hombre (yes, it's always been a hombre but that's another discourse) has been an older (than me anyway) white bredda .... today as we all know by now, there's a younger (ditto) black bredda ... a first among firsts ....

... the popular new guy is going through his baptism rites/hazing rituals during these initial months of tenure, some of which can be said to come with the territory ... the biggest politico-post in the world ... still, one of the many noticeable consequences has been the racialized spike in polarity of the political polemic and its subtler cousin, the trading of tonal tenor-isms ...

... nazi-fied, Hitlerian and witch-doctored images ... even if extreme ... find exposure in places where enlightenment hasn't penetrated and arenas purporting to be eruptions of a "grass-roots movement" (an easily mis-appropriated descriptor) ... fueling opposition passions ... but far more frequently I've seen thoughtful iconographical representations of Barack Obama ... including several which are positive in connotation or cast our main man in the role of hero ...















... now, before you start buggin' out don't think for a second Barack and his team are claiming to be faster than a speeding bullet ... though I'm praying he is ... like the old American hero Superman (birthers where are you? ... he was born on another planet) ... but it doesn't hurt to align with a spit-curly, square-jawed, supernatural figure with a big reputation and a large constituency ... the guy would clean up in the UFC or a national party convention, 'cos kryptonite doesn't actually exist ... even though we're led to believe Saddam had a vial under his pillow and Ahmadinejad is in advanced stages of development ...

... the outlook of this U.S. administration appears to go beyond the left and right coasts ... Obama himself is a bit of a pan-cultural polymorph, so it's unsurprising to me that comparisons have extended to the closest thing we have to Superman on earth at the moment ... one lanky Lightning Bolt phenom ... regardless of the fact that he isn't American ...





















... this POTUS will know, instinctively, there's a wider world within which American magnificence must exist ... and dare to lead ... the world recognizes him in return and the opportunity is there for further iconic integration with the pantheon of global giants ... humans who have been right for their times, become emblematic of a purpose and have left legacies that outlive them ...

... there ought not to be any "grass-roots" movements to deify Barack because such regard is bestowed not engineered ... nor is there any payoff in politicising the figureheads who've achieved immortality via their own personal connection to God ... I've seen juxtapositions of Obama with Bob Marley, MLK, Marcus Garvey, Mandela ... even H.I.M. Haile Selassie ... counteracting those images previously referred to but deliberately omitted from this space ...

... in Bob's case there is scholarship on the comparisons between the Marley story and the unfolding Obama trajectory ... I recommend trying to track down UWI lecturer Dr. Matthew Smith's cover-story reasonings in The Beat magazine Vol 28 #1(2009) for cogency ... though a quick internet search will tell you this is not an isolated notion ...

... there will be those who see this as a trivialisation of the presidency and others who will seek to keep politricks away from the sanctity of the latter day prophet but there's a compelling synchronicity in the details despite the obvious differences ... the satirists, photographers and photoshoppers don't have to stretch to fit these two leaders-of-men into one sentence or a single frame.