Martin Gelin's America, part II

Though I have yet to continue reading Martin Gelin's odyssey through Barack Obama's America, I remember two quite different things from the first 60 pages of the book that I forgot to report yesterday.

The first encompasses Gelin's own feeling regarding the events of 9/11. The journalist was actually on his way to New York City mere hours after the attacks on the Twin Towers, but the plane he was on was forced to u-turn somewhere over Greenland. In that instant, Gelin immediately wanted to return back to Sweden to family and friends, but was also surprisingly overcome with the feeling that he wanted to fly to New York; "it was as if a friend had gone to the hospital after a terrible accident - I wanted to go there to make sure everything was alright". Just like more or less the whole world, the west at least, Sweden also felt compassion with America and expressed that "we are all Americans now". Gelin claims, rightly, that this sudden support for the US had nothing to do with politics or support for George W. Bush, but that Swede's shed tears for America because "the American people held a special place in our heart". In that I believe he is absolutely right. Many Swedes have, although distant, relative in the US due to the extensive Swedish immigration across the Atlantic, which have created special ties between the nations. Sweden has also accepted much of American popular culture, and many of us have grown up with American movies, TV-shows, and music, and, in Gelin's words, "fantasized about Hollywood, Harlem and Nashville". Although Gelin's very amiable knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 was not representative for the Swedish general public, the large majority of Swedes did show honest support and sympathy for the US in the immediate aftermath of the events (feelings got less friendly as the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq unraveled though).

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One a more funny note, a story about the first parody on Obama was news to me. It involves Sweden, although Obama's classmates behind the comedy has mistaken it for Norway (possibly the worst possible insult to a Swede). They made fun of his way to always talk about his complicated background: "I was born in Oslo, Norway. Son of a Volvo factory worker and ice-sea fisherman. My mom was a choir-singer for Abba. They were good people. When I moved to Chicago I realized for the first time that I was black and has remained so ever since". Despite their horrible error of mixing Sweden and Norway, it was a at least kind of funny attempt at mocking Barack Obama.