Obamelot, Slumdog Millionaire, and Hip Hip Harry

Obamelot...or "Politics as Team Sport"

Despite the portent of economic gloom and little but the scattered shards of the national piggy bank with which to fight it, the beatific glow left by Barack Obama's decisive, historic and world-changing Presidential victory had not yet left Washington when I returned four days afterward. One of my IABC friends said on her facebook page "Obama is bigger than Kennedy." I replied "Obama is bigger than the Kennedy family."

For one who enjoys gratuitous hyperbole as much as I do, the events of election week still leave me flabbergasted. In sports terms, this election was the combination of The World Cup, a heavyweight championship and a Civil War rolled into a single encounter.

It is impossible to overestimate the bigness of this election. In one swell foop, America not only elected its first Black president, it also decided to rejoin the human race. It validated the newfound political enthusiasm of today's youth, and sounded the political arrival of today's middle age. It signalled the political color change of three states of the Old Confederacy, and gave my home state of Illinois a second president to call her own--yet neither Lincoln nor Obama were native sons.

What makes this election massive, as I learned quickly, was the sense of shared ownership of this victory. Obama didn't win this election. "We" won this election. The sweeping electoral college margin belied a narrow popular vote victory and razor-thin wins in a good number of key states, eked out through tremendous campaign discipline and the steadfastness of the millions of supporters who streamed to the polls and--all too often--queued in seemingly endless lines.

It is perhaps this sense of the broad partnership Barack Obama has forged with us supporters that the percentage of Americans who think Obama's presidency will be a success was 62% in a recent poll, well exceeding his margin of victory and even belying the massive economic mess he has inherited. Politics in America is once again a team sport--and perhaps so to is governing. For me, that's Change I can Believe In.

Slumdog Millionaire

It has been a while since I last went to the cinema, but one film that has left quite an impression is Slumdog Millionaire--a film about the unlikely victory of a humble "chaiwalla" (tea-boy) on India's version of So You Want To Be A Millionaire (or whatever it's callled).

What struck me about the film were a number of things--breathtaking cinematography of the best and ugliest scenes India has to offer, an innovative use of flashback until the final climactic scene, and the outstanding acting of the child actors who featured prominently in the flashback scenes. I will leave the details to the viewing--but I recommend this film very highly.

Hip Hip Harry!

One of the low points of 2008 was the collapse in the form of my beloved Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, which failed to win a single match until the much-needed ouster of enigmatic and taciturn Spanish coach Juande Ramos. His replacement, the far more expressive, transparent and English Harry Redknapp, has turned the Yid Army's fortunes around, with Tottenham yielding one loss in our last six matches and moving from bottom position to a more promising if not comfortable fifteenth position out of 20.

While it is unlikely Tottenham will be able to continue at this pace, most observers think Redknapp and Tottenham will now be able to avoid the bottom three league places that form the trap door of "relegation", soccer's quaint tradition of ejecting poor performers from a higher league and replacing them with top performers from a lower league.

Indeed, two big wins over Liverpool, a gen-u-wine top flight contender, has some of us Yids thinking bigger, and Tottenham has indeed qualified for the League Cup quarterfinals and could end up repeating as League Cup winners. Still though, simply having a manager who transparently knows what he is doing is reassuring. YID ARMY!!!