¡Viva Presidente Hussein!

Today I'm off to a big inaugeration party at one of Madrid's posh hotels. I'm very happy that Julián will grow up thinking there's nothing strange about a black man being president of the most powerful country in the world. Barack Hussein Obama will be the first president he remembers. I'm glad he's too young to remember Bush!

To celebrate the occasion, I've created a new Facebook group called "President Hussein" and other Cool Names. This is a semi-serious group advocating tolerance of unusual names. Feel free to join. The description is below.

"When people hear the name 'Hussein' they tend to think of a pot-bellied Middle Eastern dictator. Well, there are millions of people named Hussein and most of them are pretty cool. One just became president of the United States, despite being hounded by certain media outlets about his middle name.
"This is a group to get rid of the stigma of foreign-sounding names. You don't have to be a Democrat to join (I'm not), you just have to be able to hear a foreign-sounding name and realize it doesn't sound foreign somewhere else in the world.
"By the way, my middle name is Geldard. Bet you haven't heard that one before!"

Stupidity and Hope on YouTube

I'm finishing up the text for my book Guerrilla Tactics of the American Civil War and while eating lunch today I decided to rewatch the chapter on Nathan Bedford Forrest in the excellent series The Civil War by Ken Burns. Forrest was the best Confederate cavalry raider of that war and Shelby Foote, a historian interviewed in the series, has some interesting stuff to say about him.

After watching the segment on YouTube, I saw a link to another video about General Forrest so I clicked on it. It turned out to be a recruiting video for the Ku Klux Klan! Forrest was elected its first Grand Wizard shortly after the war but eventually distanced himself from the organization, saying it had become too lawless. That's putting it mildly.

I was really depressed to see this crap had gotten 185,000 views, so to scrub the filth from my eyes I watched will.i.am's hokey but heartfelt video "Yes We Can" about Obama. You know how many views that's gotten?

Fourteen million.

I felt better after that.

Travel Advice About Madrid

Hello everyone. Sorry for not posting last week, but Almudena was away and so I was doing the single dad thing, plus I got slammed with work. Something had to give, and it was my blogging. I promise to be better this week.

One reason I was so silent is I've taken a paid blogging position with the travel blog PlanetEye. You can see my first week of posts here. They include a review of an excellent art exhibit, info on four Jazz festivals this month, an article on the Obama election party, and some more about little old me.

Obama's Nomination: A New America? Maybe, Maybe Not

Well, history has been made. A U.S. political party has finally nominated an African-American as its candidate for president.

While I'm very happy and this is an amazing moment, we do need to put this in perspective. The Civil War ended 143 years ago, so this was a long time coming. Also, racism is still rife in U.S., witness the huge round of applause Rep. Geoff Davis (KY-R) when he referred to Obama as a "boy" at a Republican event. Speaking of the Civil War, did anyone else catch the irony of this guy's name?

Last month here in Madrid I met an African socialist who said Obama was "white power with a black face." That's a bit cynical, but if I was an African socialist I'd be cynical too. He does have a point, though. Just how much can Obama really change the power structure in the U.S.? Or change its deep-rooted racism? We've heard these promises before, by other candidates who were probably well intentioned too, and little has changed.

I'm also worried that he will become the ultimate in tokenism. People will think, "How can we be a racist country if we have a black candidate?" Quite easily, as a matter of fact. Whites might consider him "one of the good ones" and continue thinking as they've always thought.

On the other hand, maybe this is the start of something new. I teach university students, and one thing I've noticed is that there a lot more interracial couples than there were when I was in college almost twenty years ago. That's a good sign. Plus people are beginning to recognize the lasting legacy of slavery. Which brings me to:

I apologize for slavery. I'm Canadian, and Canadians like to be smug about the fact that slavery was always illegal in our country, but we were part of the British Empire. My family was middle class, and all white middle class people in the Empire benefited directly or indirectly from the slave trade. So I'm sorry I got an unfair advantage and you got burdened with all this crap. Yeah, this doesn't change anything, but it had to be said.

And yes, I am embarrassed the state of Virginia beat me to it.

Oh, and sorry to the Native Americans for the genocide. Interesting how that still gets ignored.