Analyse af David Sedaris' essay 'Obama!!!'

In the essay “Obama!!!” from the essay collection “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” by David Sedaris, it doesn’t take you long to figure out what the American author and comedian wishes to discuss. With both sincerity and irony Davis Sedaris debates everything in between politics, cultural differences and racism. To him, it is a joke that it is more than okay to discuss the American election in Europe, but a total taboo when it comes to the countries own election campaigns. And although he is quite ironic in the way he discusses the subjects, it only makes his opinions even clearer. He is a gay American living in Europe, and he is more than just tired of everybody making decisions on his behalf. In Europe it is all “congratulations with your new black president!” but never a “what does he actually stand for?”, and that is really getting on Sedaris’ nerves.

Blacks, Caucasians, Asians, Europeans, the Nazis and even himself - yes, everybody is likely to be made fun of in this humorous yet hard-toned essay by David Sedaris. Sedaris seems to be annoyed by the fact that everybody talks but never really seem to actually address the problems. Even though he is an Obama-fan and it seems like he endorse many of the President’s ideas, he just can’t help but to discriminant him too. Or is it actually the American society that gets insulted? It is hard to tell exactly whose turn it is to get a slap in the face from Sedaris, because everybody seems to be standing in line. As he lives in Normandy, a northern part of France, it seems like he knows quite a lot about “the European way of thinking” and especially the way people perceive USA. He also seems to have quite the knowledge about his native countrymen and politics in America, even though he states that when it comes to politics, all he can offer is emotion (page 2, line 57). But that definitely doesn’t stop him from having conclusions about everyone and everything, which he is fully aware of as he describes himself as “mean-spirited” (page 4, line 259). And yes, he might seem quite “mean-spirited”, but in a world that tends to tiptoe around all serious subjects, isn’t it almost a breeze of fresh air? Lets take a closer look at some of the people and subjects he tackles and decide for ourselves.