Election Day

This is the second American presidential election that I've spent in Russia, and this one was vastly better than the last one. The last one ended with tears and a desperate rush to McDonald's for milkshakes during which we got so much sympathy from our taxi driver that he actually gave us the ride for free. Celebrating was much more fun!

Although watching the results was great, even more entertaining has been the Russian TV coverage of the election. I'd estimate that out of a half-hour newscast, they've been giving at least 5 minutes of coverage to the election every night for the last few weeks, and given that the Russian government vastly favors Obama, the press, of course, does the same. The spin they've put on things has been somewhat more unexpected. So for your entertainment, I offer the following excerpts from the main Russian nightly newscast, Vesti.

1) Faceoff

Vesti has been pitching the election as a sort of championship boxing match. They show little 15-30 second pieces patched together of clips of Obama and McCain excoriating each other and looking very angry, often pointing fingers. The clips are placed side by side and running simultaneously. Kate says she saw one like this in which Vesti kindly provided taglines to point out the various oppositions between the candidates. Across pictures of the candidates flashed the following:

MCCAIN/OBAMA
Republican/Democrat
Evangelical/Protestant
Iraq/Yugoslavia

When "Iraq" and "Yugoslavia" came on the screen, pictures of exploding rockets flashed behind the candidates. What Obama, Yugoslavia, and war have to do with each other, and how that stands in opposition to McCain and Iraq, I'm not entirely sure. Not to mention this whole Evangelical/Protestant opposition.

2) Raceoff

My contribution to this lovely little bit revolves around the Russian media in general's extreme emphasis on Obama as "dark-skinned", "black-skinned", or more rarely, "African-American." Nearly every newscast about the elections starts with a sentence like, "the dark-skinned senator from Illinois strikes another blow against his opponent, John McCain." The newscast two nights ago featured the statement that

"Ninety percent of the dark-skinned population of the United States is read to support the African-American senator from Illinois. He dresses sharply [features a picture of Obama wearing a standard politician suit] and speaks well. It is no wonder that he attracts so much support in a society where image is everything."

I don't even know where to start with that one, so I'll just let you ponder.

3) Russophobia

The final nugget comes from the election-day coverage of McCain's defeat. Vesti featured biographies of both Obama and McCain. For the 45 seconds that they gave McCain's entire political career in Congress, the tag at the top of the screen read "McCain's Politics, or Russophobia."

Anyway, I guess the moral for the day is that it's good to be aware that we're often viewed differently in different parts of the world than we see ourselves. Sometimes, though, this has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with them.