Philadelphia X

Even in the right wing press, many American commentators are going easy on Obama for the moment. No one wants to be seen as bitter, racist or anti-democratic by denouncing him just yet. Articles have titles like "Can we agree?" - looking for areas of common ground between Obama's coalition and the National Review's readership.

With one exception - our own dear Melanie Phillips. I can't quite bring myself to go through this whole article and tell you all the reasons why she is wrong and offensive. But for starters:

- she compares Obama's election to Blair's in 1997 which is, I think, to totally underestimate the strength of Obama's grassroots campaign, and the interest and enthusiasm he has generated among people who have never had any interest in politics before

- she claims Obama's election is, in effect, the signing of a national suicide note, since he is part of the progressive conspiracy that wants to destroy everything that is great about America (and in the same breath manages to call Blair a Marxist)

- she doesn't even pay lip service to the achievement of Obama, and America, in electing a black president after such a history of the discrimination against and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Instead, she condemns the "victim culture" which - shock horror - tries to redress historical injustices by promoting the rights of minority groups.

This woman has been top of my list of people I feel the need to shout at when they come on the radio for a long time. It is made even worse, somehow, by the fact that she went to school with my mum, and then to St Anne's. But I do think it's interesting that, while an American magazine is prepared to publish this article, its American writers do not yet seem as ready or prepared to write Obama off so definitively.

UPDATE: lovely Oliver Burkeman spotted she wrote something similarly innane in the Spectator (can you get any more grumpy than this?!):

"A historic moment indeed. The hyperbole for once is not exaggerated: this is a watershed election which changes the fate of the world. The fear however is that the world now becomes very much less safe for all of us as a result."

"Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery -- can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today"

And finally, as Burkeman points out, she thinks 52% of the popular vote is a "minority power-grab".

Gah! Words finally fail me.