Further on the European Fixation with Convenient Hatreds

German-African-American artist Marc Brandenburg employs the usual auto-promotional bombast when he calls himself a bastard, but reveals a sort of ahuman and depersonalized view of human nature when all he can say about Barack Obama is that “he's practically white.”

The subheading found in print was promptly rewritten, but what they replaced it with is early as feeble to say that “Hopefully Obama will Survive his Term of Office”:

He calls himself a "bastard", and Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton as well. Berlin artist Marc Brandenburg likes bold words. WORLD ONLINE has talked with him about him and with him about racism in the United States. He is sure: if Obama look like Eddy Murphy - he would not win the election.

As is the case whrn you're mincing concepts to keep the social leverage of long-dead racism alive for your own uses, except for the fact that Condaleeza Rice's complection wouldn't have altered her election prospects.

But never mind all that. The reality of those who actually live in the US, a place exceedingly less given to overnt and unstated racism that Germany is.

Brandenburg is a Berliner who hasn't actually lived in the US for any significant part of his life. Die Welt is asking him these questions in the most typically European way: not because of any actual life experience or generation knoledge of the 1960s, but because of the color of his skin and over some unspoken foolish notion that there is something in his genes that qualiies him to assume that Obama will be pander to his dramatic imaginings and be assasinated due to his skin color.

I can understand the motive. In a tacit manner it gives Brandenburg a way to imagine himbself a potential martyr and vessel for your attention and public expression of pity. I hope he makes at least one sale out of it.