One never knows where he’ll turn up. Last Sunday, yours truly made the mistake of browsing innocently through June 22nd’s World’s Greatest Newspaper’s Sunday Express’ “S” Magazine (no link available), which the in-laws had had perched upon the soon-to-be discarded pile (yes, some people do still buy papers) on their coffee table. It was then that I discovered how (even in it) there is, it seems, no escaping Senator Obama’s charms.

Inside, British readers were treated unexpectedly to a U.S. presidential voting endorsement emanating from actress Charlize Theron. Although, not at the very start of the article itself. Inexplicable that, given for instance Sen Obama’s second appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone — “…the tides of history are running, uh, strong and fast these days. Ride them or be crushed. Obama has history on his side, and that’s pretty irresistable…” — since just March.

Instead, we were forced to wait a bit. But thankfully not too long. After an opening and undoubtedly necessary discourse on Ms Theron’s love life — …She and Stuart exchanged promise rings last year, but Charlize quickly quashed rumours of imminent wedding bells… — the Sunday Express informed us as to how she is a new U.S. citizen and is delighted . . .

…because it means she can vote in the upcoming presidential elections. “In that way, it’s a great year to become an American citizen,” she explains. “I think everybody knows I’m backing Barack Obama. There’s certain things about him that I find truly inspiring. After his speech on race, I emailed a few people I knew who are probably going to vote Republican and suggested that they really listen to that speech.”…

The likes of the above are strikingly familiar. However “artful” they try to be, though, nonetheless it is not hard to perceive a general hollowness within the outer shell that constitutes the proferred reasonings used in support of the Senator’s candidacy. But maybe that’s unavoidable: perhaps because he simply doesn’t follow any one stream of thought for any period of time — …I could not disown Rev. Wright at first. But later I learned there were more votes in the reverse… — a constant recitation of his “inspirational” side, “tides of history,” and how he “will definitely change the course of humanity,” inevitably has to form the underpinning for his electoral appeal.

Ms Theron, whether in the U.S., or in South Africa, one of the inspired

That said, for the sake of our always trenchant discussion here, I should like to answer her above rhetorically voiced queries in order:

1) I will probably (vote for Sen McCain) and,

2) I will even though I have indeed really listened to Sen Obama’s “speech on race.” And, yes, despite my having even read it, too.

Huh, imagine that? Somehow doing both and yet still being “underwhelmed?” Similarly “underwhelmed,” back from his relocating to Italy hiatus, and laying out matters point by point, is (the British) Depleted Uranium:

…America properly accords special rights to its black citizens, because their ancestors were enslaved, resulting in cultural and genetic damage to their descendants.

But Obama’s father was a free Kenyan and his mother a white American, so he’s no more deserving of special treatment than any other American. America’s enemies will note this weak opportunism, and manipulate it.

So Obama will leave his nation poorer, less free, defeated, and without allies….

Obviously, some people just adamantly refuse to be “inspired.” Okay, maybe yours truly will eventually just board the “inspirational” train a bit late (it wouldn’t be the first time), but that all seems beside the point when what we have here is an intriguing case of Ms Theron as a (white) South African immigrant who has become a U.S. citizen and explains to Americans why they need to choose for president the son of a Kenyan (Muslim) African immigrant. Senator Obama has not unreasonably been referred to elsewhere as the post-post-9/11 candidate, yet do we also have an interesting narrow example here of Ms Theron’s own perhaps “post-post-apartheid” outlook playing itself out in a presidential election in a U.S. that itself has never had similar minority rule?

Essentially, that her being so supportive of Sen Obama might perhaps owe something to her own southern African upbringing, one which would have been a decidedly different experience than the upbringings experienced by most Americans, is unfortunately unaddressed. So we never do find out in the piece if in her now majority-governed homeland 32 year old Ms Theron had voted for the African National Congress — …a government minister since 1994 … supplied … the aptly pithy phrase: “Malema is a mindless fu*king idiot.”… — in, say, the elections there in 1999 and 2004 (when she would have been roughly 23 and 28 years old, respectively). Nor do we ever discover if currently she finds Cape Town mayor and opposition leader Helen Zille rather less than “inspiring.”

Then again, it is the Express magazine (Alan Titchmarsh’s “ultimate summer garden” piece followed in the “Lifestyle” section), so we shouldn’t get too intellectually carried away of course. However, perhaps most intriguing of all is less her own viewpoint than her having revealed this shocking fact: some people Ms Theron knows are actually willing to state in emails that they are planning to vote for the other senator?

[Gulp] I’ve just done it also, and even more publicly, and suddenly I can’t help but worry: is stating so, and/or planning to do so, really still legally allowed? For given that we must support Senator Obama or assuredly be “crushed” — at least that is what “the tides of history” are telling us — why is Sen McCain actually still going to be on the ballot in November? After all, think of all the trouble the country will face if he accidentally wins?