Channel 4 News’ anchor, Jon Snow, has just been talking about how electing Barack Obama means “America has come of constitutional age”. Yes, really. Apparently none of those previous elections were legitimate. Now of course Snow’s program tilts even further to the left than the BBC so you might expect him to say something like this. But there will, alas, be much more of this sort of nonsense.
Now in one sense, it’s clear what Snow means: after all, there are many people who do not expect to agree with Obama politically who appreciate, nonetheless, that his victory is a splendid and significant moment in American history. But Snow’s smugness, indeed his condescension, is another matter altogether. It’s rather as though there exists the presumption that the millions of Americans voting for John McCain today can only be motivated by their fear – conscious or not – of a black man becoming President.
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