Monday 22 June 2009
I love The Onion. Not only does it usually make me laugh out loud each week it's also an essential weapon in defending America against two common complaints from my fellow countrymen a) Americans are stupid; b) Americans "don't do irony".
Of late though I have been disappointed that The Onion seem unable to really satirise Barack Obama. Whereas George Bush and his neon-con cronies were a humorist's dream all The Onion seem willing to mock the new President for is being a nerd. For example:
- Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale
- Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24
I thought about this as I finished reading Sarah Vowell's book The Partly Cloudy Patriot at the weekend. In her essay The Nerd Voice she says, "What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name nickname Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes." The book came out in 2002 and that sentence now reads like a prophecy.
At the heart of the essay is Vowell's regret that Al Gore denied "his innate nerdiness" because the press favoured Dubya's jock image to Gore's smarty-pants geek. What America needed, Vowell correctly asserts, is a leader who knows a lot of stuff in great details and not a failed oilman whose favourite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
At the end of the essay Vowell writes that
I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the start; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism of 17th-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover*; build a shortwave radio out of coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's Two Sleepy People, Johnny Cash's Five Feet High and Rising, and You Got the Silver by the Rolling Stones...
I have tracked Obama's geek appeal for some time and read his two books. From this brief survey I have no doubt that the president can complete 90% of those tasks; his upbringing in Hawaii certainly gives him an advantage when it comes to coconuts. I guess time will tell if an in-depth knowledge of Spider-Man comics is an advantage in dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the worst economy in living memory.
