Obama Talkin'

Mr. President why do you say you have a funny name?

“Well, they think so.”

How do you know?

“I mean the place where I was senator is called Illinois, so what do you expect?”

Then aren’t they the funny ones? Or shall we say 'ill' and 'annoy'ing?

“They are projecting.”

So, are you a Muslim?

“Moslem, Moslem, that’s how we say it here, with a zee sound and an ‘o’, like Mozambique.”

Were you born in Kenya?

“I would say that I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.”

It isn’t about your birth certificate but your roots.

“That would be Hawaii.”

Hawaii is a place, but your origin, your ancestry is more than that.

“Is it? I thought I talked about change. Change means getting out of the old.”

But you are still following Bush’s agenda. You are still in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Maybe it is the Muslim in you.

“Those are just rumours. I don’t believe that Pew Research Centre poll."

That 18 per cent Amercians think you are Muslim. What’s wrong with that?

“The facts are the facts. So, it’s not something that I can I think spend all my time worrying about. I don’t think the American people want me to spend all my time worrying about it.”

But you are tetchy about it.

“You know, there is a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly. We dealt with this when I was first running for the US senate. We dealt with it when we were first running for the Presidency.”

At that time you called yourself Barack Hussein Obama.

“I did?”

Yes. You even swot a fly in a TV studio.

“Yeah, that must have been a conspiracy. Like this survey.”

There will be several factors that surveys may throw up; that you like broccoli, you look good without your shirt on, you need to get out of Afghanistan. These are a part of your identity. So why does that 18 percent make you dodgy?

“If I spend all my time chasing after that then I wouldn’t get much done.”

All those drones to be managed. Swimming along the Gulf Coast. You are indeed a busy man.

“Yeah, it ain’t easy bicycling in Martha’s vineyard, too.”

I can imagine. Not when they think you know Martha.