kwame kwei-armah looks up to barack obama as the father-figure of 21st century civil-rights' activism and seems to have stereotyped barack obama as a modern-day william tell. well mr kwei-armah, i hope you trust your saviour's aim, son, because playwrights who go round with their eyes screwed tight shut are fuck all use to anyone.
our obama moment on comment is free, guardian.co.uk, 6th november 2008:
"Kwame Kwei-Armah
I make my living with words, which as you might expect gives me the greatest respect for their power, resilience, sheer and almost exclusive contribution and exploration to that which I believe most worthy – but it also allows me to understand and respect their limitations. And this, the election of Barack Obama to the office of the most powerful person in the world, is one such moment where my facility for words can never, should probably never, capture what it is that is going on in my heart.
I don't think I even know what is going on in my heart. But as I left the shores of the United States on Monday night – where everyone's nerves were on show – and although I have always maintained cautious optimism when it came to believing in Barack's success, I found myself having to rebuke those nerves and hold onto the mantra, the now iconic mantra, "Yes we can". And yes we did.
I ran about my house at 4am, as I screamed and woke my children to the chant, "We have a black president". We? Who is we? I honestly thought that I may have been going mad – for the tears and the screaming just would not stop. No matter how much I tried to calm myself it just would not stop and I thought I was going to go insane with joy and pride as I hugged my 12-year-old son and he said, "Dad, we have a black president"; and as my 16-year-old son asked if I believed that would happen in my lifetime and I replied, "Yes, the moment I heard Obama's 2004 speech in Boston"; and as I listened to my daughter, full of sleep, say "I need to go to an Obama party".
I knew that deep in my heart, despite all my words, that maybe I didn't quite ever believe that I would see this day. But now I have – my only sadness is that his mother and father, and my mother, were not here to see this. What a day, what a sleepless day, but a magnificent day."
and so now the first black president has proved himself to be a dirty double-talking war-criminal, where's the criticism wanker?
