his special day

and as black people devoted themselves to the temporary television screens rigged up in work-places around britain, the white colleagues felt conspicuously left out of the ritual - unless they could shore up some sheer facade of hopeful racial-suffering. and in primary schools, children, black and white alike, flew dreams of the day they would ascend to the most powerful chiefdom on earth - until skilfully shut down by the exclusion of non-miscegenation, by the realization that mr obama was no model of them, nor for them, nor even correctly coloured-in. whilst the half-mast children just glimpsed the similarity, but not the significance of growing into the man they took for granted - and just didn't get the deal. and nor would they, for a few years - maybe never, if this slim symbol slew the monster of experience which "miss" classified without ever having had the opportunity to examine face-to-face. these special kids had never known a different president and didn't know the different times he'd had to pass. this was the one silly thing their parents could not hope to teach them - but their education would. unlike their friends, they had a big lesson ahead. only the chinese really got it.