The Proof That Obama Isn’t an American

Fatwah / August 22, 2008

By Eileen Jones

Attempts to prove Barack Hussein Obama isn’t really an American citizen have gone about as well as the search for the footage featuring Michelle Obama excoriating “whitey.” Freethinking 100% Americanos like swift-boater Jerome R. Corsi and No Quarter’s Larry C. Johnson have no doubt been interviewing birth certificate-forgers and Muslim midwives and so on, looking for the ultimate proof of Obama’s un-Americanness. Silly of them, because we’ve had the proof staring at us from a million screens and glossy magazine covers for ages now. Here it is:

I mean, just look at this guy. Does he even remotely resemble an American you might see on the street in Toledo, Ohio or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or Walla Walla, Washington? No way. I’ve spent some time in Toledo and Baton Rouge and in those cases I can personally attest, NO WAY. (I haven’t been to Walla Walla, which I admit I only included as a tribute to the old Warner Brothers cartoons.)

Anyway, if you visit the American Heartland, or the Rust Belt, or the Bible Basement, here’s what you see:

Or maybe this:

Or occasionally this:

Not that the coastal cities get off lightly either:

And by the way, we’re not talking about skin color here. Plenty of black Americans we recognize instantly as black Americans:

Obama’s just not one of them.

So people are right when they keep talking about Obama as a foreigner. We hear it all the time, that he’s really a Muslim/African or Muslim/Indonesian or maybe even a closet European, but boiled down it comes to the same thing: he’s not one of us. Undecided Pennsylvania voters are still getting interviewed and voicing the same objections to Obama: “Who is this guy? Where’s he from?”

It’s such a persistent problem that columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, clearly an Obama fan, is trying to roil up similar doubts about John McCain. Today he’s running a column called “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” arguing that, though McCain is as old and ever-present as mold spores, we really don’t know who he is or what he stands for. It’s no use, though. We know John McCain like we know our own insane uncle. Again, all you have to do is look at him:

Is that an American or what? The family resemblance to a billion other annoying native sons is stunning. Nobody’s bothering to study this guy’s birth certificate or carp about it being signed in Panama.

But in Obama’s case, it doesn’t matter how often his campaign posts his birth certificate signed in Hawaii or does the rundown of his stats, who his parents and grandparents were, where he lived and when, what schools and churches he attended, his wife and kids, his house, his record of public service and politicking in Chicago, his Illinois and US Senate votes, all that. There may be a zillion copies of Obama’s autobiography packing the front windows of bookstores all over the country, but nobody’s buying it.

Well, everybody’s buying it—it’s a bestseller—but nobody’s, you know, BUYING it.

Obama isn’t an American because he doesn’t look like an American, that is, he doesn’t look bad. And by bad I mean any combination of the following things: mean, stupid, evil, venal, misshapen, grotesque, clownish, dressed like a moron. We know who we are; we recognize our own. And we’re One Ugly People Under God. (Who is Also Ugly. See Photo of American God, Below.)

Of course, you may argue I’m representing Americans unfairly. Plenty of splendid-looking Americans, you’ll say. Just look at Hollywood, the world capital of gorgeous young things. Here’s a sample:

I rest my case. The favorite combo here is “mean, stupid, venal, dressed like a moron.” How is it that we can cut ourselves up, order brand-new parts, do a complete aesthetic overhaul, and we still look like hell? Well, it’s obvious. Our essential Americanness leaks out through the cracks.

But how about our American presidents? Did they really get elected for their familiar Ugly Americanness? Let’s see:

W.’s got the look all right: “mean, stupid, evil” written all over him. This is the face a majority of Americans claimed they wanted to see over the rim of their beer cans in the great Beer Referendums of Elections ’00 and ’04. He’s a perfect American type: the rich, dumb, vicious frat boy.

Later on Bill Clinton got an elegant make-over that did a lot to eliminate his essential Americanness, but when first elected he was a excellent specimen of the “mean, clownish, dressed like a moron” type that America generates in huge numbers. Apparently a rural jackass, luring in unsuspecting city slickers with his bulbous beer-swiller’s nose, fatty-foods bloat, bulgy suits, and cornpone accent, Clinton was in reality smart as a snake. In other words, at least he wasn’t stupid, but he had to look like a complete goober in order to get elected.

After W., Poppy Bush now looks borderline un-American. Nothing too manifestly ugly about him. But he’s got that “dumb” face going, shrewdly selecting the one necessary trait of contemporary presidents: the blank eyes, the nothing-on-my-mind-but-my-hair expression that Americans find reassuring.

Ronald Reagan’s the king of the Dumb Face; he really set the standard for those who followed. Look how proudly open and empty it is, the ideal WW II and postwar eras American face as engineered by Hollywood. (Actual American presidents during these eras didn’t look dumb at all; Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, all appeared shrewd and capable. Kennedy looked intelligent—in fact, he looked so good that by contemporary standards he’s a traitor to his country. Nixon looked smart, though evil and malformed, the Richard III of American presidents.)

No, it was Reagan who was smart enough to resurrect that old Hollywood ideal of Dumbness and call it Morning in America and make that the mark for all future contenders to hit. If you aren’t born with it, you now have to apply it to your face like foundation—it comes in a variety of shades like Idiot Ivory, Boneheaded Beige, and Dusky Dope—then add a dab of evil here, a grotesque flourish there, till you can be recognized as “A Regular American.”

But, see, apparently Obama didn’t get the memo, another mark against his citizenship. So the question is, as that astute Pennsylvanian put it, “Who is this guy? Where’s he from?”

Well, I’ve hunted around, and unfortunately, there’s no real evidence nailing Obama as, say, Indonesian. A lot of people in those places look terrible too:

Though never as bad en masse as Americans. Call me chauvinistic, but I can’t help feeling our ugliness has a certain bold extravagance no other country can match.

Still, regarding Obama’s origins, I’m convinced that the truth is out there. It may be WAY out there. We shouldn’t rule out the possibility that Obama isn’t a human at all. Others have been speculating about this as well. Here’s one blogger’s interpretation of Obama as a member of the animal kingdom:

Here’s one of Obama as robot:

Here he is as pure spirit:

Personally I’ve always felt sure that he’s an alien representing a more evolved species, come to teach us something important which we will, of course, refuse to learn: