In the Hue of History

In a little more than 13 hours, U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama will stand in the golden hue of Victoria, at the foot of Prussian greatness, walking in the footsteps of American greats before him.

Germans know their history well. To this day, over 50 years after WWII, and almost 20 years since the Wall gave way to German unity, they are still struggling with their past. To this day, you will still find Germans in their forties being asked, if they ever met Hitler when they were in the Hitlerjugend. And to this day, you will still find young Europeans carrying within them the resentment passed down through generations, from when they were occupied by the Nazi regime.

No page in history is the mere sum of its words. It holds the lives and fates of the thousands before it, who paved the way. It holds the hearts and souls of those who changed it. And it owes its life to those, whose story it did not tell.

In a New Yorker Minute

They did it. With the stroke of a pen, The New Yorker did what the Republicans have been trying to do ever since Obama proved a force to be reckoned with in the 2008 election: they created the perfect GOP Smear Campaign poster.

On its July 21, 2008, cover, The New Yorker is portraying Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office as fist-bumping, ‘fro donning (Michelle), US flag burning, bin-Laden-outfit wearing (Obama) and bin-Laden praising (crowning the mantlepiece) connivers.

The Obama Campaign is incensed, and HuffPost is not about to quench the fire. But let’s be honest: this cartoon barely has enough spark to ignite the bomb in the Prophet Muhammad’s turban (if you still don’t know how it got there, ask Jyllands-Posten), let alone a firecracker. To be sure, I’m not even certain if this qualifies as a stroke for freedom of speech.