Americans fired up by a fascinating presentation of primary colours

I WAS lucky enough to find myself in a comedy cellar in Greenwich Village in New York last week, listening to five different comedians satirising modern American life, and in particular the current presidential election campaign.

The election has provided no shortage of material for comedians, though they were keener to satirise Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama.

One comedian compared her to a jilted lover who cannot accept her relationship with the presidential electorate is over (he will have to change his routine after Tuesday’s results in Ohio and Texas). In any case, he continued, she should be relieved that she will not have to work at the desk which propped up her husband while white trash women fulfilled his fantasises.

Another lampooned the millions of American middle-class white women who have been hypnotised into adoring Obama by Oprah Winfrey, not realising they will wake up in November horrified that they have elected a black man as president.

But the real target was Hillary — her arrogance, her appearance and her tactics. Another comedian decried the manner in which candidates always resort to fear when things are going badly and savaged Hillary for her use of a cold war era advertisement in which she doubts Obama’s ability to ensure the safety and security of American children sleeping soundly in bed when a national crisis rears its head.

These comic turns encapsulated many of the dominant themes of the last few weeks, and in particular the extent to which Clinton has been subjected to more scrutiny and hostility by the media.

Clinton’s frustration before the Ohio and Texas votes was aggravated by the idea that Obama has been getting away with sound bites and polished but slight rhetoric, a charge that is reasonable.

But there was plenty of evidence in New York that the rhetoric has been working. When I was chatting to the black doorman in a bar further down McDougal Street, he summed up Obama’s appeal succinctly and accurately: “Obama talks good shit”.

Indeed he does, and there is a large appetite for it. The next day, walking up West Eight Street a large sign dominated Gray’s Papaya diner: ‘YES, SENATOR OBAMA, WE ARE READY TO BELIEVE AGAIN.’

I’m not sure what exactly they are ready to believe in again. Maybe they don’t know themselves, but they do seem to believe that a chapter is closing and that it cannot come quickly enough. George Bush is so beyond ridicule at this stage that even the comedians don’t bother much with him for fear of being seen to shoot fish in a barrel. Anti-Bush merchandise is very prominent, including the Out of Office Countdown Calendar, which is unique in spanning two years, and labelled ‘2008 Through the Glorious End! (January 20, 2009)’.

Obama pops us regularly in the trashy magazines, answering inane questions about how messy he is around the house, what he eats for dessert, how bossy his wife is and whether he prefers briefs or boxer shorts (to which the response is, “I don’t answer those humiliating questions, let’s just say I look great in both!”).

Clinton’s personality, meanwhile, continues to be dissected, often with considerable venom, no matter what stance she takes — empathetic, authoritative, arrogant, stern or wistful — or maybe because she changes her stance so often.

It is also the case that what one cynic has labelled the MAMAH syndrome (Middle Aged Men Against Hillary) is very strong in America for the simple reason they do not want a female president. But amid all this negativity about Clinton, there were some indications last week that it would be foolish to write her off. The Clinton machine still has the ability to get the vote out and can rely on huge support from women and specific ethnic groups, including the Latinos, as evidenced by Tuesday’s results.

The question of whether or not Obama was getting too easy a ride from the media was also being debated last week. This worked to Clinton’s advantage, as did the Saturday Night Live programme the previous week which had satirised the media love-in for him, much to the delight of the Clinton camp.

The venomous attacks on Clinton continued, including those from Maureen Dowd, the Irish-American columnist with the New York Times whose rants about Clinton have bordered on the hysterical, but in the same newspaper last Saturday an article was devoted to what was referred to as the media question of the week — have journalists been going easier on Obama than Clinton?

Lee Cowan, the NBC reporter assigned to the campaign, was defensive in reply: “I don’t think that it’s kind treatment versus unkind treatment... Obama hasn’t been around as long, so there isn’t much to pick at. He plays everything very cool. He’s not as much of a lightning rod. His personality just doesn’t seem to draw that kind of coverage.”

Other journalists interviewed were equally dismissive of the notion that they were partly to blame for Clinton’s difficulties in February. Andrea Mitchell, the veteran NBC political correspondent insisted “part of it is her campaign’s fault. They started with this notion of inevitability. And they were very arrogant”. It is difficult to dispute that; the very fact that they did not have a Plan B to deal with a strong showing by Obama during last month’s Super Tuesday is testament to that arrogance.

Jonathan Alter, another long-time American journalist, was also sceptical of the accusation of bias, arguing that it was not the job of reporters to create an artificial evenness: “People got it into their heads that if you say something good about a candidate, you have to say something bad about him, and if you don’t, that’s not fair... what the Clinton partisans wanted was for us to create a phoney balance that was at odds with what our eyes were telling us. That’s not the job of a journalist.”

THAT is an important point. It’s not that journalists were colluding in some kind of fairytale, but that they were tracking what appeared to be an extraordinary momentum. Nor is it the case that Obama’s campaign is all about a pretty smile and polished words. Behind his smile and slogans is a huge amount of cash — a record-breaking month of fundraising in February brought in about $50 million for the Obama campaign — and fervently committed volunteers.

But there are signs that talking “good shit” might not be enough to get Obama over the line. It is likely that in the near future he will be asked more difficult questions and will face more challenging scrutiny. Other headlines in the US last week covered such topics as the declining housing market, the huge number of people defaulting on their mortgages, the fact that for the first time, more than one in 100 Americans are in prison, and continuing concern about healthcare and the Iraq war. The asking of difficult questions of Obama will now suit Clinton who can continue to stress experience over rhetoric.

But in the midst of all this, what was so striking about political discussion in New York last week was the extent to which it demonstrates an engagement with the political process and the future of America that is refreshing and absorbing.