Obama and Thailand

Depending on your viewpoint, there could be many reasons to be thankful for President Obama. One that probably isn’t mentioned very often is the fact that now many more people in Thailand know that African Americans exist other than what they see portrayed in the media. One day our Thai teacher thinking we must be bored or something (!) brought us a 6 in 1 DVD to watch. (Six movies – one disc – do they have such a thing elsewhere or is it just in the pirated goods capital of the world? As you can tell from looking at the titles (White Chicks, Norbit, Big Mamma 1 and 2 etc.), if this is what Thai people think is representative of the US and especially the African American community, this is not a good thing. Sadly, we have heard that many Thai people do think of African Americans as either comedians, thugs or athletes – all construed from the media they see. So even if you are a die hard conservative, having President Obama is a very good thing in this regard. (Apologies that we can't get the photo's to flip the right way!)

On another Obama note, I think we mentioned before that we witnessed the election results and Obama's speech while at the Paris airport as we were on our way to South Africa in November. We flew back from South Africa to the US on Inauguration day in January and we were in Malaysia (a largely Muslim country) when Obama gave his much publicized speech to the Muslim world from Egypt. There's no significance really in any of this, but it's been interesting to observe the the election, the man, and the president from a variety of places and perspectives outside of the US. We didn't feel as much Obama rejoicing while in Thailand (although even up in small villages in and around Maehongson, people thought Obama was a better deal than Bush) but certainly as Americans traveling in Europe and South Africa we were greeted much more enthusiastically upon his election.



Duncan