Presidential Idols a.k.a Addicted to America

This US primary soap-opera has just been Ridiculous .... both in the good way ridiculous (is that ridonculous? christ i'm old) and in the bad way .... I find myself checking the Huffington Post (thanks Peter for the introduction) at least six times a day .... endlessly reading bloggers on the minutiae of every turn, gesture and intonation .... researching details of each of the candidates lives, previous votes etc .... scouring every outlet from the New Yorker (typically great piece by Herdrick Hertzberg today) to the Colbert Report and Jon Stewart's Daily Show (who frankly I declare my undying love for and would throw my knickers at in an instant)

And of course its not just me ... every party I go to in London its the first topic of conversation .... friends in Delhi, Cape Town, Lagos etc are all addicted, all galvanised by the idea that Barack could get elected .... and in truth that seems to be the crux of it for all of us internationally .... I don't think the rest of the world would be nearly so engaged if it was just Hillary against some other white man .... but the thought of America choosing a black president is just electrifying ....

I asked a New Yorker mate of mine who does fancy himself as a bit of a politico if he thought Americans realised what monumental interest had been generated internationally for these elections and what it would say about America to all of us if Obama was elected to office as essentially what is the President of the World .... rather depressingly - he replied that the issue was not whether they knew - but the fact that even Americans did know - they wouldn't care .... that put me and the rest of the world in our place then.

And then I realised that despite the news-whore I am (and my smug euro-superiority over "ignorant" yanks) .... I didn't even know my own Foreign minister's name ....

And yes - for those of you who know me .... I am deeply troubled by this sudden love for things American too .... I find myself now back in London actively seeking out yanks and trying to accrue a collection for myself to hang out with (perhaps foreign yanks are a different breed to those who stay at home?) .... i get all sentimental and yearning whenever I hear the accent .... and I even find myself defending them against (other) smug superior euros ..... perhaps its like a mild version of Stockholm syndrome (as in the James Bond movie - the World is Not Enough) .... where you develop some deep love for your ex-torturer .... now if only we could get the Iraqis to catch the same disease ....