One word means both 'hip' and 'hot' in French. It's 'Obama'

[skooooo]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/54350.html

PARIS — His visage appears between the svelte curves of fashion models on Europe's most prestigious runways. His speeches are remixed into thumping music tracks in underground dance clubs. His campaign slogans are the foundation for modern art hanging on trendy Parisian gallery walls.

In Europe, Barack Obama is much more than the Democratic presidential nominee. He's the hip new thing.

<snip>

Nowhere is that sense of transformation more palpable than in Paris, which has been jarred by two rounds of rioting in the last three years that forced the country to confront its inability to integrate growing numbers of disenfranchised immigrants, including large numbers of Muslims from France's former North African colonies.

More than 6,000 supporters have joined an Obama political support group. DJs have mixed his best-known speeches into house music tunes. Parisian women tote designer purses with his face on them.

Earlier this month at the Paris Fashion Week, at least four top European designers unveiled dresses, skirts and tops featuring images honoring Obama.

One Parisian art gallery recently tore up its schedule and asked dozens of artists to produce pieces for a special "Obama in Paris" exhibition that's already become one of its most popular shows.

[Curtland1015]

1. Another thing to enrage the right wingnuts!

The French love him!

We should start calling French Toast "Obama Toast"...

[skooooo]

3. lol...It's all over, though, not just France.

Here's one about Kenya...

-----------
Obama fever grips Kenya
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/54422.html

NAIROBI, Kenya — When Michelle Nzaumi's communications professor at the University of Nairobi asked students recently to bring to class a favorite speech by a world leader, their choices were remarkably predictable.

"Out of 50 students, half of us came with Obama speeches," said Nzaumi, a 20-year-old studying actuarial sciences. "He's that great to us."

Nzaumi, who said she watched all three presidential debates between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain live, at 4 a.m. Kenyan time, admits to a serious case of Obama fever — and in Kenya, the East African nation where Obama's father was born, she's far from alone.

With Obama leading in the polls in the closing days of the U.S. presidential race, his name is featured daily on talk shows and in newspaper columns in Kenya. In Kisumu, the lakeside town in western Kenya which his father's family hails, seemingly every resident brags of being an Obama cousin.

Even Senator beer, a local brew, has been popularly renamed "Obama."

[skooooo]

6. Obama-mania in Kenya (YouTube video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmMExi4VqXk

The United-States is getting ready for the final homestretch before the elections on November 4th. In Kenya, the country of Barack Obama's late father, the Democratic presidential candidate has reached idol status.

[roguevalley]

13. remember these days. they won't happen again in your lifetime.

[Window]

2. Oui.

:kick:

[FrenchieCat]

4. The French see him as the great mix between MLK and JFK,

the two most admired modern history great Americans in France. They believe Obama to have the eloquence of MLK with the style and grace of JFK.

That is why France loves Obama so much.....the 60s were a time that Europe was having a love affair with all things American. They long for those days once again.

[ihavenobias]

5. K & R

[skooooo]

7. kicking for afternoon crowd

[political_Dem]

8. Double Kick. and Vive la France!

[Fleshdancer]

9. They treated Ben Franklin like a rock star too

I love reading about the global response to Obama! Thanks for posting. :hi:

[skooooo]

10. That's true! Hadn't thought of that...

[starroute]

11. America has a mythic status to Europeans

America has always been the New World for Europe, the hope of leaving the conflicts and inadequacies of the Old World behind and making a fresh beginning, and that has been true since at least the early 1600's.

The United States as a nation has had that dream of America projected onto it. We haven't always lived up to it -- in fact, we've sometimes resented that expectation as a burden. But it's there, and the Europeans leap at any hint that it might yet be fulfilled.

A vision of the mixed nature of America is also part of that myth -- and even the trendy word "multi-ethnic" is too weak to convey the full archetypal meaning of that vision. It's an image of all the peoples of the earth -- Europeans, First Americans, Africans, and Asians -- flowing together like the rivers of Paradise in a grand meeting of opposites. And Obama himself, even if he doesn't match it quite perfectly, comes as close as anyone might humanly be expected to do.

(Though, as another thread currently on the Greatest suggests, Obama has also made himself the champion of the tribes, thus adding the one element of the four he can't lay claim to natively.)

We Americans may not think about these things much. But Europeans do -- and for them Obama is far more than merely hip and hot. He's a living archetype.


On edit: For an example of the "four continents" archetype, see the Rubens painting from 1615 described and illustrated at http://www.khm.at/system2E.html?/staticE/page440.html -- there's a somewhat larger image at http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=815. There's also a well-known set of Meissen figures from the early 1800's.

[skooooo]

12. good post.

thanks!

[SlowDownFast]

14. Excellent post! n/t