American Election results

Dear Americans,

Thank you for not fucking up this election, and electing another Republican. We have yet to see if Obama can make up for Bush as far as we are concerned, but our hopes are pretty high at this point.

Sincerely, The Rest of The World.

I almost wish that Election Night in America had been a little closer, just so that we could all have enjoyed some seat-of-our pants type excitement. But of course, Obama winning by a large margin (even if he only had 52% of the popular vote) is infinitely preferable to McCain winning. After all, the only good McCain is a French fry! (Shut up, that is probably the last time I’ll get to say that.) When they called Virginia for Obama, and Will pointed out that one of the first states to succeed from the Union had just elected a black man for president, I realized that I was watching history in the making. Will.i.am appearing as a holographic guest on CNN just cemented that fact.

Canadians, if you guys are anything like me, you may be feeling mild chagrin mixed in with your relief. The vast majority of Canadian PMs have been (often old) white men. In Canada, if race is a factor in an election, it means that it is the late nineteenth century and an old white anglophone man is running against an old white francophone man. Okay, okay, it is true that Canada’s head of state is a black woman, and she succeeded an Asian woman. But there is a difference between being appointed and being elected (and the GG’s power is more or less entirely symbolic). How do we, Canada, known for being crazy left-wing socialists compared to most of the world, get away with electing old white guys all the time? England, India, even Pakistan is outstripping us! Even France has Ségolène Royal. The closest we have is E-May, and she barely even made it into the leaders’ debate. Even Ruby Dhalla doing a practice run in the Liberal leadership race would be a step forward. Are we racist?

The one thing that kept me on my high left-wing horse this election actually made me feel just a little worse about humanity. Half the voters in California voted in favour of Proposition 8, which, in a nutshell, flips the bird at gay marriage. You just know that Dan Savage is devoting an angry, sarcastic column to this. Socially liberal Canadians, please join me in symbolically facing south-west (or south), and chanting, “Shaaaaaame.”

Even if the overall results of this election were awesome, there are a few drawbacks we have to consider. One, Hustler’s Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? just won’t be the same (even if I’ve seen the non-sex YouTube spots, I feel like I have to see the whole thing, even if I fast-forward through the usual formulaic sex scenes). I am not sure whether copies of this film will appreciate in value, or whether they’ll be in the porn shop bargain bin come January. Two, now we all have to junk our clever I Hate Bush merchandise. That stuff won’t be cool again for another twenty-five years, at which point it will be appropriated by hipsters trying to look cool and ironic by making references to events that occurred before they were born. History repeats itself.