A No-Holds Barred Weepathon

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The Times, London October 31, 2008

Review: A no-holds-barred WeepathonAt times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and

wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

America’s supplies of tissues must have been exhausted during Barack Obama’s 30-

minute election broadcast late on Wednesday night. It had been billed as a “closing

argument” by the Democrat’s seemingly unstoppable campaign. In reality, it was an

all-out, no-holds-barred weepathon with a feel-bad factor pitched somewhere

between the third act of Schindler’s List and the slaughter scenes in Watership

Down. I emerged from my TV room sodden-eyed and legs trembling, wishing that

Iran would just drop the bomb and get it all over with.

It began, as these things so often do, with a flugelhorn. Then pictures of wind-

rippled cornfields. Then footage of children and old people smiling — the tape

slowed down a little, to make their happiness appear somehow tragic.

When Obama, made his entrance he was wearing a sombre black suit (pictured

right) and standing in what appeared to be a log cabin. You could practically smell

the coffee roasting. This was Obamaland, where everything is safe and warm,

where Big Brobama loves you and keeps the evil profit-doers at bay. You, too, could

go to Obamaland, went the subtext, just so long as you voted for the man with the

“D” next to his name. But in case Americans didn’t realise what was at stake,

Obama set out to demonstrate what a God-forsaken, economically devastated shell



of a nation they now live in. So we cut to a harried mother named Rebecca, from

North Kansas City, Missouri, who complained that her husband Brian, who works at

a tyre plant, has to stand up all day, even though he has a dicky knee. We were

treated to a glimpse of Brian slumped on his sofa, looking fed up. He had planned to

have surgery in June, said Rebecca, but because of the rising cost of living he

couldn’t afford it. We then saw Rebecca rationing the food in her fridge, balancing

her cheque book, and driving her humungous SUV in the moonlight.

From this purgatory we emerged again into the comforting fuzzy goodness of

Obamaland. “We measure the strength of our country not by the number of

billionaires we have,” he boomed, “but by whether a waitress who lives on tips can

take the day off to look after a sick kid without being laid off.”

Then we were back in the wasteland of He Who Must Not Be Named — the dark

wizard Bush (whose dead half-brother, McCain, has been exhumed to carry on his

dastardly work). This time we were in Sardinia, Ohio, with an elderly African-

American woman named Juanita who needs 12 different medications each day for

rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband Larry lost his health insurance when he retired,

so he took out a loan to pay for the pills, and now, at the age of 72, he has been

forced to work as a salesman at Wal-Mart. We saw him putting on his name-pin

with an expression of sadness and contempt.

A No-Holds Barred Weepathon

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