The RuPaul Presidency?

Journalist, author, Broadway critic, and talking head Mark Steyn (recently acquitted of hate crime charges in Canada, and author of the brilliant best-selling book America Alone on the geopolitics of jihad) describes Barack Obama as America's first two-dimensional presidential candidate. The performance artist RuPaul, best known for his 1990's hit song "Supermodel (You Better Work)" has picked up on this theme, and shows that if it's a matter of appearances, Obama will be our first drag-queen president, if not our first black one. It looks like the next four years will be a golden age for comedy, if little else.

Here is an excerpt of Steyn's comments from the November 8th post to his blog, SteynOnline:

In Tokyo last week, over 1,000 people signed a new petition asking the Japanese government to permit marriages between human beings and cartoon characters. "I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world," explained Taichi Takashita. "Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?"

Get back to me on that Tuesday night. We'll know by then whether an entire constitutional republic has decided to contract marriage with a two-dimensional character and to attempt to take up residence in the two-dimensional world. For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers "hope, not fear." "Hope" of what? "Hope" of "change." OK, but "change" to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting all hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we've moved way beyond that. I don't know which cartoon character Taichi Takashita is eyeing as his betrothed, but up in the sky Obamaman is flying high, fighting for Hope, Change and a kind of Post-Modern American Way.

The two-dimensional idea of President Obama is seductive: To elect a young black man of Kenyan extraction and Indonesian upbringing offers redemption both for America's original sin (slavery) and for the more recent perceived sins of President Bush – his supposed enthusiasm for sticking it to foreigners generally, and the Muslim world in particular. And no, I'm not saying he's Muslim. It's worse than that: He's a pasty-faced European – at least in his view of state power, welfare and taxation.

Here is RuPaul's hit video from the 1990's.



And here is MadTV's musical parody from the 2008 Democratic campaign: