::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Writing the Wrong

800 Words on
November 4th

Sharbari Ahmed

I am including the title in the word count by the way and I want to add one of my disclaimers; Palin, the GOP comparing Obama to a terrorist, there are no words. The danger of what could happen, the implications of Palin as President and if her running mate's botox facial nodule keeps growing all bets are off on that score the implications defy category. A leader possibly more Manchurian than the incumbent sharpening his pencils in the oval office (well once he learns how to use the electric sharpener), could beckon in the fall of the Empire well ahead of schedule.

Pray please.

I have been avoiding writing about the election that is four days away, because it is too scary, too depressing, and too surreal. I also watched only two debates, and I believe Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live was a participant in at least one. This is what happened to me: I stopped believing the moment Sarah Palin was chosen as a Veep candidate and I saw a national poll conducted by National Public Radio on her approval rating. More people disapproved but by only one percent! Do you understand what this means? It means that the American people have finally lost their minds. All that brainwashing over the past eight years has finally robbed the American animal of all ability to think rationally.

A few columns back I predicted that the GOP would pull something the moment they saw Obama pulling ahead. The likening of Barack to a terrorist, please, that is kindergarten stuff. Goddamit! We need to bomb somethin' (I believe all Americans will start talking like Palin. It will be a cultural fad, kind of like the way the Spaniards took on the lisp of its king. This was before Penelope Cruz made it amazingly sexy) and so they have, killing eight Syrians, including children. Also, it seems that McCain has gotten the most ringing endorsement of all Al Qaeda! Is it just me, or has the world gone completely off its gourd?

I do understand Al Qaeda's reasoning. They need a raison d'etre to push impressionable young thugs into blowing something or someone up. A conciliatory, open American leader whose middle name is Hussain is going to be hard to sell as a villain.

Would be terrorist: “But, sir, he seems, I don't know, nice.”

Terrorist tutor: “Dammit son! He's the enemy. There is no nice in terrorism.”

McCain on the other hand will be easy to fashion into something that should be burned in effigy on a regular basis on the streets of Kabul.

Since I started writing this article The FBI has thwarted a skin head plot to kill Barack Obama. Two schmendricks decided to raid a gun shop, kill them some black folks and then drive up to where Obama was speaking and take care of business. (I must keep in mind that God loves white supremacists too.) And, this is in the end, the crux of the matter. Why I am doing what I never vowed to do in life: steeling myself for the worst and actually expecting it because in the end, Americans are racist.

I can see it now, November 4th, a blustery fall day, the excitement is palpable, and Joe (not plumber) tax paying, law abiding, “I have black friends” Joe, who has been telling everyone who cares to listen how he will vote for Barack Obama, gets in the booth, pulls the curtain and stares at the names on the console. He bites his lower lip and sighs. He fingers the lever (this is an old school machine but one the GOP can mess with) next to the word Obama and then it happens: 38 plus years of inculcation, of resenting the fact that P-Diddy, an uneducated hoodlum in his eyes, will inevitably always have more bling than he, a hard working stiff whose kid has ADD and needs special meds. He will suddenly remember being taunted in college by a gang (actually two guys) of black boys at a pick up basketball game and something deep within him, something ancient, passed down like the colour of his eyes will rise up and worry him. The idea that a man of colour simply should not be the leader of the “free” world (another myth by the way). He will, without thinking, pull the lever next to the words McCain/ Palin. And this is my fear, that enough Joes and Janes do this and we have ourselves an old man and his half- wit, creationist VP in the White House.

The campaign run by the McCain-Palin side has been one that relentlessly highlights race, and keeps pulling the more rational inclinations of the average voter into a vortex of fear, hate mongering, and ignobility, where it dissipates easily. And don't forget there are still enough days for the GOP to pull yet another “international incident” out of their grab bag of tricks to throw into mean relief Obama's so called inexperience as a crisis manager. Oops! I am over the word count. One last thing folks because as I have stated before, this affects you as much as anyone here in this country: pray. Please.

Photos: AFP