Celebrating Good Times

There are very few days of the year/decade when I say "Damn, I wish I was American." Yesterday was one of them. Barack Obama is a good man, and will be a great President - measured, diplomatic, intellectual, warm, a constitutional lawyer with a terrific international background and a whip-smart wife. What a sea change.

The only positive thing I can say about the other ticket is that I'm jealous of Sarah Palin's hair and her post-five-children body.

We celebrated last night by heading to my girlfriend's place, eating pizza, playing Wii, and hanging with her kids. We watched the early returns, for as long as it took to feel comfortable that there wouldn't be any Republican shenanigans or bounce-backs, before heading home to catch McCain's concession speech.

I don't think Americans could understand how this could be exciting for a white lady from Canada, but I am beside myself. I feel like the world just let out a collective sigh of relief. I can stop scratching my head, as I've been doing for the past 8 years, trying to figure out how a quite friendly and reasonable-looking group of people could have made such a collossal mistake. I am hoping that the world's political climate will be changed, that America can heal itself, and go back to being the friendly giant to our south. I hope too that the buzz of inspiration felt by our neighbors will spill over the border and light a fire beneath the arses of some of our stale leaders or leaders-in-waiting; it's telling that we had the worst-ever turnout in our election a couple of weeks back, in the shadows of the phenomenon down south. Our own less-than-uninspiring leader was elected by just over 22% of registered voters (about 15% of the overall population if that matters) in a system that has revealed itself to be quite flawed. We do a lot of things right here in Canada, but apparently elections aren't one of them.

So there's my political statement for this blog. I don't feel comfortable 'going there' usually but I feel like celebrating.

I look forward to seeing what SNL does in the next few months as well, as they're now going to have to up the ante in terms of African-American cast members.