Sunday 2 November 2008

Countdown to Obamageddon: are these last days the Last Days?

It’s the question that’s been on the tip of the brain of every serious political commentator for decades. It’s about time one of us came out and said it. As usual that someone will have to be me.

Is Barack Obama too skinny to lead the free world?

The free world is increasingly a fat world. An elitist beanpole risks alienating the fatheads of wobbly-middle America. He may be the thinnest, but he wouldn’t be the first.

The phenomenon of ‘Too Thin to Win’ was first noted by the celebrated political historian and social critic Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. in the 1884 election of Grover Cleveland over James ‘Slim’ Blaine. Amid speculation of venality and anti-Catholic prejudice within the Grand Old Party, Schlesinger was the first to realise that weight may have been the decisive factor in his renowned Washington Post article, ‘Grover Cleveland ate all the American apple pies’.

When the beef asked Schlesinger he summed it up for us: “Masked as cookery advice and homemade pie recipes, a number of articles in the immediate run-up to that election carried the implication that ‘Willowy’ Blaine (as he was known) was a skinny white-bread meat-and-two-veg man whose delicate constitution could scarcely handle a slice of hot American pie. It’s no exaggeration to say that this cost him the White House”.

Much is often made of the fact that in US presidential politics the tallest man wins. Less well known and probably equally true is that the fat man always wins, serves two terms, and makes the word a better place. On top of that, Obama is youthfully skinny, schoolboy skinny.
It's getting late in the day to prove your worth, but for America's sack we need a November surprise: we need someone to pig out and put on the weight of the highest office.
Our last best hope may be found on our Last Frontier.

2 comments:

Mephitis said...

I like! :D

Anonymous said...

This was one funny post. I hope the world sees us leaning towards thinnism - we've had too many years of the fat-heads in power...