Obama the European

Published in La Liberation
(France) on 29 May 2011
by Lorraine Millot (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Drue Fergison. Edited by Jenette Axelrod.
We already knew that he was Kenyan (through his father), Indonesian (through his mother, who took him there for several of his childhood years) and Muslim (thanks to Americans — nearly 20 percent of whom believe or claim that he is Muslim).

On the occasion of his week in Europe, Barack Obama has also become Irish, British and even Polish. In Ireland, O'Bama visited the village of his great-great-great-grandfather, recently discovered in his family tree. It was a subtle way of emphasizing to his domestic public that while he may be the "first black president," he is also a real American, since he also has Irish blood.

In Great Britain, the second leg of his tour, the same Obama transformed himself, most unexpectedly, into a subject of Her Majesty, by presenting himself as "the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British Army." In Poland, finally, as the Washington Post emphasized, he made himself Polish: “I am part of Poland because I come from Chicago,” he said. “And if you live in Chicago and you haven’t become a little bit Polish, then something’s wrong with you.”

All this is not going to be reassuring for Franco-American relations: France is the only stop on this European tour where the first globalized president of the United States did not report the least personal tie.


On le savait déjà kenyan (par son père), indonésien (par sa mère qui l’y a emmené passer quelques années de son enfance) ou musulman (par la grâce des Américains qui sont près de 20% à le croire, ou le prétendre musulman), Barack Obama est devenu aussi irlandais, britannique et même polonais, à l’occasion de sa semaine passée en Europe. En Irlande, O’Bama est allé visiter le village d’un arrière-arrière-arrière grand-père, récemment découvert dans son arbre généalogique : une façon subtile de souligner, à son public domestique, que tout « premier président noir » soit-il, il est aussi un vrai Américain… puisqu’il a aussi du sang irlandais. En Grande-Bretagne, la seconde étape de sa tournée, le même Obama s’est mué, de façon plus inattendue, en sujet de sa Majesté, en se présentant comme « petit-fils d’un Kenyan qui a servi comme cuisinier dans l’armée britannique ». En Pologne enfin, comme le souligne aussi le Washington Post, il s’est fait polonais : « Je fais partie de la Pologne parce que je viens de Chicago, a-t-il lancé. Et vivre à Chicago sans devenir un peu Polonais, cela voudrait dire que quelque chose ne va pas ».

Tout cela ne va pas rassurer sur l’état de la relation franco-américaine: la France est la seule étape de cette tournée européenne où le premier président mondialisé des Etats-Unis n'a pas fait état de la moindre attache personnelle.
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