Until the last week before the election, I didn’t wear any sort of Obama paraphernalia. I did collect it, though, in the form of posters and stickers and the wristbands that (nominally non-partisan) PIRG puts out each election year. These were made just for Ohio. I got a bunch of all that stuff. In the last week, I decided to start wearing a shirt I’d made that said ”Barack Obama” on it in Arabic. I wore this to each of my classes once.

Then, for Halloween, I made a t-shirt that said ”Ozymandias” and below “Ozymandias” was “Xerxes.” It was clear to all who saw the shirt that ”Xerxes” was “Ozymandias’” VP pick. Below that was a good old fashioned ‘08. That shirt was my whole costume. But that’s a whole other story altogether.

Anyway, when I went to the Obama rally in downtown Columbus on the Sunday before the election, I spent about 10 dollars on various Obama pins. It was a crazy splurge. In one of them, Obama looks like a stern, wise, alert, and vicious 20th century Arab dictator. It appropriates the ”National Treasure” movie logo and has pictures of Mount Rushmore, The White House, and that big arch deal out in St. Louis. It’s pretty intense.

I’ve been wearing also an understated Barack Obama pin which is just a black and white negative drawing of his smiling face. I managed to wear it to each of my classes this week, but I think I’ll leave it home for my biology lab tomorrow morning.

But why? When after the election does it become weird to wear your newly minted and invaluable artifacts from the first-black-president-elect’s campaign?

In some countries, pictures of presidents don’t come off the walls ever. Syria is a good example. There, it was unusual to see any home, business, blank wall, taxi-cab, or bus-stop without at least one picture of Bashir al-Assad, Syria’s president/king, or Bashir’s predecessor and dead father Hafiz, or his dead heir-apparent brother, Basil, or all of them. Such public displays of loyalty to Syria’s leader might not have been required in some circumstances, but they were always certainly highly recommended. Except for this one Internet cafe I went to all the time, they didn’t have a picture of Bashir, but its owners sure loved him and his strong government that makes Syria safe and so forth and so on.

So what’s the rule for displaying Obama’s visage now that the election’s over? For a while here in Ohio, at least, the place was already starting to look Damascus-esque in its adoration of the candidate. Of course, this was an extremely unusual campaign in that the President’s face was such a prominent part of his canvassing and stickering-everything strategy that carried the state.

There’s a rule, I’m sure it’s written down somewhere, that no American money can feature the face of any living political figure. This is not the case in other countries. England, for instance, stamps its pound notes with pictures of the Queen. They also have 10 pound Charles Darwin notes, too, which are pretty awesome. Rome, for example, did it all backwards. Coins were minted specifically with the Emperor’s profile, in order to assure their authenticity and advertize for Rome and Romans. It seemed to work.
No one would have thought to plaster the country with Clinton’s face for four or eight years. Today, though, so much detritus from this massive presidential campaign still remains that it’s hard to think Obama’s face won’t stick around for a good long while, on car bumpers, street signs, subway surfaces, whatever. But all that can’t last for more than a few months, can it? Maybe the bumper stickers will stay, as it’s hard to remove them, but what about everything else? Would it be appropriate for a business to have a picture of the President on their wall, like almost 100 percent of business have in Syria and other countries, many of them fucked up with war, dictatorship, poverty, etc.

Lebanon does it too, but there are different leader-faces for each town or city. Beirut’s down with the dead Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah’s towns have posters and pics everywhere of Nasrallah and a bunch of other mullahs. The former Phalangists love this bald guy whose name I forget. Druze kick it with some crazy multicolored star I’ve attached to this email.

So what is America becoming? A place where you can show your support for the president any time during his term(s)?

Honestly, I hope so. While I might not go out on the street with an Obama shirt or pin in six months, because I think it’s kind of creepy and unAmerican, I’m sure someone will. As for me, I don’t think I can shake my puritan breeding that stops me from indulging in icon worship or dancing well.

Come to think of it, maybe I’ll wear my sweet black and white Obama pin during the midterm elections in 2010, just to sort of show the colors on game day. Or maybe the day Congress starts debating universal health coverage. Or when the Iraq war ends. Or to graduation, whenever that is. Or to that first post-college job interview with a KBR recruiter.

I’ll have to think about it. You should too.

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