As an Australian, I always find the sheer amount of coverage Australia dedicates to the United States Presidential Elections every four years, especially when it is compared to the coverage it gives to Australia’s own Prime Ministerial Election to be quite bizarre. On each Election Day, Australia dedicated about two hours if that to tabulating the election results, though it was only shown on three of the forty or so channels Australia possesses. When it was Obama/McCain, the Big three channels (7, 9 and 10) in Australia dedicated an entire days worth of broadcast to covering the election, though it made absolutely no sense to me, too bad they didn’t dedicate time to actually explaining what was going on instead of just streaming the feeds from the US News services. I find it quite bizarre that when the Australian Election was happening, the American masses, where completely unaware that it was even happening, or that the Government had changed hands.
Today marks the day where Barrack Obama becomes the 44th United States President, and it is marked by another point where Australian network (not Cable) television decides to dedicate another day to show an event that would have happened in the middle of the night. I don’t really understand the overt interest in the broadcast, as I was pretty sure that when Bush was inaugurated, the Network Channels didn’t dedicate their broadcast day to showing it.
While it seems to be that a lot of people are happy about the fact that Barack Obama is the first African American President, as the Darksides Social Commentator, Terence would say, just because his skin colour is different, does not make it an historic event.
While Terence and I have known each other for a decade, and our opinions have rubbed off on each other, and are quite similar despite coming from completely different mindsets, my own take of this event has actually made sense to a lot of Americans.
While it is impressive that America has decided to elect their first non Caucasian President, but that does not mean that he will be bringing anything new to the table. He is still more or less being advised on what to do by a cabinet comprised almost exclusively of Caucasian Men, some of whom where around during the last government held by his party,
It’s not that I am insensitive about the struggles of civil libertarians, if people want to do something to benefit their nation, then I always support it, however if you just want to take advantage of Government assistance but do nothing to contribute, then that’s a different story.
I just don’t see the hype around this, Barack Obama is a man plan and simple, just because his skin colour is different doesn’t make him different. I would probably pay more attention if a woman was being sworn in, as it would be more about making history… but what can I say, America came this far by doing what they did, and that’s impressive on its own.
Obamanation? We’re too busy stuck in the Dudd Government
Posted by Doc Winters on January 21, 2009
As an Australian, I always find the sheer amount of coverage Australia dedicates to the United States Presidential Elections every four years, especially when it is compared to the coverage it gives to Australia’s own Prime Ministerial Election to be quite bizarre. On each Election Day, Australia dedicated about two hours if that to tabulating the election results, though it was only shown on three of the forty or so channels Australia possesses. When it was Obama/McCain, the Big three channels (7, 9 and 10) in Australia dedicated an entire days worth of broadcast to covering the election, though it made absolutely no sense to me, too bad they didn’t dedicate time to actually explaining what was going on instead of just streaming the feeds from the US News services. I find it quite bizarre that when the Australian Election was happening, the American masses, where completely unaware that it was even happening, or that the Government had changed hands.
Today marks the day where Barrack Obama becomes the 44th United States President, and it is marked by another point where Australian network (not Cable) television decides to dedicate another day to show an event that would have happened in the middle of the night. I don’t really understand the overt interest in the broadcast, as I was pretty sure that when Bush was inaugurated, the Network Channels didn’t dedicate their broadcast day to showing it.
While it seems to be that a lot of people are happy about the fact that Barack Obama is the first African American President, as the Darksides Social Commentator, Terence would say, just because his skin colour is different, does not make it an historic event.
While Terence and I have known each other for a decade, and our opinions have rubbed off on each other, and are quite similar despite coming from completely different mindsets, my own take of this event has actually made sense to a lot of Americans.
While it is impressive that America has decided to elect their first non Caucasian President, but that does not mean that he will be bringing anything new to the table. He is still more or less being advised on what to do by a cabinet comprised almost exclusively of Caucasian Men, some of whom where around during the last government held by his party,
It’s not that I am insensitive about the struggles of civil libertarians, if people want to do something to benefit their nation, then I always support it, however if you just want to take advantage of Government assistance but do nothing to contribute, then that’s a different story.
I just don’t see the hype around this, Barack Obama is a man plan and simple, just because his skin colour is different doesn’t make him different. I would probably pay more attention if a woman was being sworn in, as it would be more about making history… but what can I say, America came this far by doing what they did, and that’s impressive on its own.
This entry was posted on January 21, 2009 at 12:18 am and is filed under Commentary, General Ramblings, Rants. Tagged: Barack Obama, Inauguration, Presidential Eleciton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.