Myths and The Missus

My interest in the conventions is less than compelling. I heard someone on TV say that America loves to waste hundreds of millions of dollars on meaningless spectacles, "it is part of who we are." Bread and circuses, indeed.

Anyway, I had been reading a lot about Barack Obama, already being groomed, I suspect, to contest the nomination in 2012 with John Edwards. He gave the keynote speech tonight and I was interested enough to watch. It was a good speech, a very good speech, actually, and the Democrats ate it up.

I hate to quibble on the boy's big night, but I was disappoined that, on occasion, he simply peddled trash. I had hoped that, with his multicultural background, he might be able to speak broader truths. Instead, his speech fed into many of those myths that Americans like to believe about themselves, but which are simply false and which are, frankly, insulting to the rest of the world. In particular, after detailing his parents' stories in Kenya and Hawaii, and tracing his own educational and political story, he claimed that:

"I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible." [emphasis added]

Utter bullshit!

I'm sure I could seek out a bunch of stories from a bunch of countries to contradict that "only in America" myth. But I don't have to go that far. Here in British Columbia, we had a poor boy from India, an immigrant to Canada, become our Premier (similar to but far more powerful than a State Governor). Ujjal Dosanj left provincial politics and is now a senior Cabinet Minister in the Canadian Federal government. According to Mr. Obama, this can't possibly happen because this isn't America. Odd that, eh?

I was also disappointed that, for political effect, he contradicted himself. While building the American myth, he proclaimed proudly that in America

"you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential."

And yet, just a few sentences later, while making a political point against Bush, he told the story of a young woman from East St. Louis who

"has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn't have the money to go to college."

Which is it, my man?

But he looked good and sounded good, and he can only get better with experience. If he wins his senatorial contest in Illinois, I'm sure he'll be a real player. He is also, through his father, a genuine African-American.

Even more so is Theresa Heinz Kerry who was actually born in Africa, in Mozambique; her first political experience being with the anti-apartheid movement in southern Africa.

As these things go, I liked her speech. It seemed untutored somehow, with a basically flat delivery and the occasional slip of the tongue. But she spoke very well of herself, of "outspokenness" as a gender issue, and about her husband.

She'll be an interesting First Lady, I'm sure.