Lent officially started last week although we all know we’ve actually been giving up stuff since September when the housing market plummeted and suddenly Pot-O-Noodles became al a carte rather than a 2am guilty pleasure.
Usually when someone asks you what you’re giving up for 40 days you can say cigarettes or chocolate. This year the only things you’ve got left are crackers and some canned goods from that hamper your (ex) boss gave you last Christmas. Give up apricots in brandy? Are you kidding? That’s lunch on Friday!
In today’s economic climate we’re not prepared to give up anything...unless we get paid for it!!
Still, tradition is tradition and last Tuesday saw as much beads and boobs action as most years. They shook it in Rio, gave it up in New Orleans and twitted it in DC.
Why Obama chose to give his first joint address to Congress on ‘Fat Tuesday’ in a year when thin isn’t just for the super waifs on the Paris catwalk but a way of life I have know idea. Everyone, meaning mostly the GOP and the media, have been accusing the hope-miester of negativity recently. By being honest and trying to bring home the genuine desperate situation years of financial abuse has brought us to, Obama suddenly doesn’t fit into the box we carved for him. Despite the fact that he seems to singlehandedly be attempting to drag the hulk of the American financial system out of the quick sand, unless he’s doing it all while reassuring the country that it has nothing to do with them and they don’t have to do a thing and everything’s rosy really and there’ll cupcakes and daisies for everyone and don’t worry about the two wars and that global warming thing either, we freak! ‘This isn’t why we voted for him! He’s the inspiration guy!!’
The fact that inspiration can be coupled with honesty is lost on us after 8 years of covering up, of false dreams of a healthy economy and safe, won wars. After 9/11 America was told to go out and shop. Now, at the edge of another precipice our leader is asking us to help him, to be leaders ourselves, to give up consumerism and our spare time in order to serve our community. In return Obama has pledged to bring the soldiers home, create a new green collar economy and cure cancer. Somehow I feel like we got the better deal.
It was nice to see him back on form though. Hope was back, rested and refreshed from its time at the luxury desert spa and he reinstated himself as the no.1 progression purveyor. The crowd loved it. Pelosi was jumping up and down like a preteen at a Jonas Brothers concert and once she was up the rest had to follow suit. I worried grandpa Joe Biden couldn’t take the pace! I w
as even more worried when he turned up with what looked like a nasty bruise on his forehead the next day. Thankfully it wasn’t sign of a brain aneurism caused by incessant standing ovation but proof he’s a good Catholic boy. Apparently, ‘real’ Catholics get ‘anointed’ with ‘actual’ ashes on Ash Wednesday. And you thought Mormons were weird! The other anointed one held the audience in the palm of his hand, each filled with rapture as he eulogised on the good America has been and, if they get their collective asses in gear and vote for everything he wants, can be again. He’s the man with the plan and since it’s the only one we’ve got maybe we should give it a chance. Unfortunately, some of the illustrious listeners were too busy being Republicans, the grumpy kids sitting at the back of the class, or ‘tweeting’. This actually doesn’t involve spying a black and white cat and then uttering a popular catchphrase in an annoying baby voice but is just as childish. If your senator can sum up their entire existence in 140 characters I’m seriously worried about the state of the union.
But the message they missed while furiously typing about how totally hot Hils looks in pink or how much of a bitch Mitch McConnell is wasn’t meant for them anyway. It was meant for the American people. Obama’s call to butts was not just to those in the chamber but those on the other side of the tube. He’s not expecting to do this alone. He means you, buddy boy! The years of government being separate from the people is at an end. The government IS the people and coming from a British girl, isn’t that what America is all about? Whatever you do for lent, don’t give up on that.
