So, this blogger that I've never read before makes some interesting points with regard to the Great Democratic Hope. And seeing as how I like all this blogger's points, I'm just going to paste 'em all.

A reader writes to wonder why Americans are so excited over the exotic half-Kenyan, half-white Barack Obama. Certainly there are numerous, say, South Asians of identical skin tone who were also on the Harvard Law Review, but nobody in America cares about them.

The basic fact behind this is that white Americans (and for that matter, black Americans) really aren't interested in any races other than whites and African-Americans. For example, the funny thing about Obama is that Americans are not at all interested in the truly interesting things about him. For example, he was raised largely in Indonesia by his Indonesian stepfather and white mother. That's certainly ... different. Does that give him any insights into, say, Southeast Asia or the Muslim (or Hindu?) world that might be useful in the U.S. Senate?

But, nah, nobody in America cares about weird foreign stuff like that. What everybody is fascinated by is the brute fact that he's (half) black. They hope that makes him an expert on -- and spokesman for, or spokesman to -- the 'hood (which is the one place he didn't grow up), which, love it or hate it, is infinitely more interesting to Americans than the rest of the world and all its people.

Good stuff.