I love the look on the kid’s face!
Not a word about the other guy.

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images) #

Update! A word on the other guy – but not by me. Judith Butler:

Uncritical Exuberance? Judith Butler’s take on Obama

(…) We cannot underestimate the force of dis-identification in this election, a sense of revulsion that George W. has “represented” the United States to the rest of the world, a sense of shame about our practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense of disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and propagated racist views of Islam, a sense of alarm and horror that the extremes of economic deregulation have led to a global economic crisis.  Is it despite his race, or because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred representative of the nation?  Fulfilling that representative-function, he is at once black and not-black (some say “not black enough” and others say “too black”), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one.  The public figure who allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence nevertheless appears as a figure of “unity”: this is surely an ideological function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason without their political force. (…)

If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority of voters to be “represented” by this man, then it follows that who “we” are is constituted anew.