I will now jump on a soapbox

So, as was assumed would happen, Obama won. Good for him. Probably good for us. But I had an interesting experience watching his victory speech. A few days ago a friend told me she found Obama inspiring and I bawked at her. Watching the victory speach last night I began to feel it, just a twinkling, but then they cut to a picture of Oprah watching him with damp doe eyes, and I was jolted back to the reality of the situation. Obama is very very manufactured. I do not doubt his sincerity, but so much of his image, so much of his "movement" is not the result of the man but of his iconography within American mentality and politics and those strategists and high profile supporters who have swathed a path for him. He is groomed and manufactured in every detail. His words, while wondrous in form and in content, are not the result of a man locked in his room scrawling beautiful things, but of a man submitting good ideas to a room of writers and strategists.