Obama - Savior Superstar

Says France’s Le Monde,

The United States is a country that prides itself on its insistence on the merits of individualism. Nothing is more embarrassing to this country than these great moments of collective obsession (shared, of course, with Superbowl frenzy), where every critical faculty appears to have been abandoned in the service of a universal pursuit.

And the pursuit is a grand one indeed, even messianic. Apparently, the American nation has been hanging out for a reedeemer:

Barack Obama can bring together stadiums packed with 20,000-strong crowds. He fascinates. According to author Shelby Steele, Obama offers White masses the possibility of redemption. “With Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Whites felt white. Obama cures them of the anxiety of being white.”

Nevertheless, Obamania, it seems, is the name of a new religion in this great land… but not everyone has succumbed, and the piece from Le Monde offers a funny survey of those who haven’t (yet?!) converted.

And what does Le Monde think of it all? With feet firmly on the ground,

This is much too much. Barack Obama is but a human being, after all.

Read the article, translated from French, here on WATCHING AMERICA.com, which has ongoing foreign coverage of the U.S. elections.