Barack Obama became a drag queen yesterday in a new effort to secure the 2014 WorldVision title.
The United States president appeared as ‘Michelle’ in a heart-felt performance of #Bring Back Our Girls prompted by the abduction of more than 200 female students from a boarding school in north-east Nigeria.
Produced by
the White House (rumours that Apple Inc is poised to take over
the visionary production company, are completely unfounded),
the ‘first lady’ sampled Malala,
the award winning women’s education campaigner who first came to public attention when she was shot in
the head by
the Taliban – and survived.
Michelle/Obama also re-worked some
of the best known themes in American culture, e.g. realising your full potential in
the land
of equal opportunities, giving these a new twist – pro-women’s education, anti-terrorism – in response to
the kidnappings and bombings carried out by militant Islamist band, Boko Haram (rough translation: ‘Western education is forbidden’).
White House Productions are thought to have launched Michelle as Barack Obama’s alter ego, in order to re-assert themselves at
the top
of the WorldVision rankings after their Ukrainian foreign policy number failed to chart successfully.
There have been complaints that
the Whites imposed their traditional House style on a supposedly new performer (
the word ‘unconscionable’ jarred with
the otherwise conversational tone
of Michelle’s lyrics); nonetheless
the Washington version
of #Bring Back Our Girls has met with widespread approval.
Wearing a powder blue top and sitting atop an antique chair with
the Stars and Stripes in
the background, Michelle put in a deliberately understated performance – in contrast to
the Shirley Bassey-style torch song which last night won
the Eurovision Song Contest for Austria’s ‘bearded lady’ Conchita Wurst (real name Tom Neuwirth).
Michelle’s #Bring Back Our Girls was restrained even by her own standards: she previously gave an energetic performance
of Let’s Move, an anti-obesity campaign which served as her White House white label in advance
of yesterday’s official WorldVision release.
In Africa earlier this week, from far up country where Nigeria’s oil wealth does not run to (northern Nigeria is now poorer than it was 50 years ago),
the leader
of Boko Haram (or perhaps a stand-in) released an hour long video
of riffs and raps about selling
thekidnapped girls into slavery. (
The heirs
of Ronald Reagan would no doubt disown his take on
the vintage 1980s chorus, let
the market decide.)
As a band, Boko Haram is so far removed from
the international performance circuit it will do anything to gain precious nanoseconds in
the global attention economy. Instead
of the pantomime leer
of ‘a brown eyed handsome man’ singing ‘Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl’, or
the mythical depiction
of the Rape
of the Sabine Women, this group is actually acting out everyone’s worst nightmares. Not only piling on
the hyperbole but also doing rhetoric for real. (Imagine Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and
The Dead Kennedys all rolled into one).
Members
of Boko Haram such as
the gangly youth photographed in custody wearing an Arsenal football top, are acting out
of desperation. As if their lives depended on it; not least because
the West has created a media-centric way
of life which does indeed depend on being uploaded, becoming part
of the performance circuit, not being left to rot in
the dark, dank dungeon
of the invisible,
the unheard
of,
the non-existent.
Being in
the medium by any means necessary – that is
the message
of the current Western WorldVision as rendered by everyone who is anyone, from Lady Gaga to Michelle/Obama and even Conchita Wurst (Tom Neurwith currently enjoying his best 15 minutes).
The appalling irony is that heartless Boko Haram has already taken this message to heart.