Roastin' toastin'

You've got to hand it to President Obama - the man knows how to make a point. With his approval rating shrinking faster than Jennifer Hudson, he needed to pull something out of the bag to reignite the enthusiasm of his base. In the space of one long weekend, he vanquished two formidable foes without breaking a sweat. And he did it with impeccable timing.

On the eighth anniversary of Bush's premature propagandist 'Mission Accomplished' speech, Obama revealed that the world's most wanted man had been terminated by a crack team operating under the Commander-in-Chief's direct orders. If this was the movies, rather than real life, Obama would probably have ended up on the Pakistan borders due to some technical malfunction aboard Air Force One. With a hunting knife clenched between his teeth, he could have taken out Osama himself, slitting his throat and whispering one last bon mot, as he dispatched the terrorist mastermind to the great hereafter.

Instead, he was stuck in Washington D.C, at the White House Correspondents' dinner, where he delivered his own killshot by way of a twenty-minute monologue. For a man often criticised for over-reliance on autocue, Obama came across as a Comedy Store natural - all that was missing was the brick wall backdrop. His target was Donald Trump, who's been using America's hunger for ignorance and misinformation to promote his own electoral agenda.

He'd seized on a ridiculous conspiracy theory around Obama's citizenship, and spread it as thinly as his own Shredded Wheat barnet. When Obama finally relented and made his Hawaii-issued birth certificate public, Trump managed to turn it into a self-congratulatory acknowledgment of his own awesomeness. So it was great to see Obama take of the gloves and give him the verbal bitch-slap he so richly deserved.

Of course, Obama's Rodney Dangerfield schtick was really just the warm-up. Today we got the headline act, as it was announced that the world's second most wanted man (after Tom Hardy) had been taken out. As the public danced in the street yelling "USA, USA", Fox News kept accidentally writing 'Obama Bin Laden is dead'. This may have raised the eyebrows of a few conspiracy theorists, but it's worth noting that the BBC also made the same mistake.

I guess, when the pressure's on, typos and other simple errors can occur. After all, today can reasonably be considered a 'big news' day. Which is probably why even the celebrity tattle websites tried to get in on the act, by reporting the reactions of our favourite tweeters to the fast-breaking story. Who cares about Rupert Murdoch's spin on Bin Laden's death when you can read Khloe Kardashian's thoughts on the matter: "Wow!!! "@CNN: Congressional and administration officials tell CNN Osama bin Laden is dead. He was reportedly killed in Afghanistan."

Also weighing in on the big news were Phillip Schofield, Rebecca Black, Katy Perry and Nancy Sinatra. It's like I'm A Celebrity... taking over Question Time. There are two schools of thought here - either this weakens journalism by giving airtime to uninformed celebrity opinion, or it encourages people who only ever read People and E! to take an interest in current affairs. Either way, I think we can all be thankful for Rochelle from The Saturdays' insight into international diplomacy: "This Bank Holiday weekend has been a very historic one to say the least... It's like a Disney film...The Prince marries the Princess and the villain dies #justice". Amen to that Rochelle.

There's no 'me' in mea culpa

So, that's the midterms out of the way then. Not so good for the Democratic party, but then again, midterms are never easy. And at least the tea-partiers didn't notch up too many seats. 

Nonetheless, Obama will be drowning his sorrows today, and perhaps even wondering how his predecessors dealt with the disappointment. But it's important that he not lose too much of that hope that he talked up on his route to the White House. Because as underwhelming as his first couple of years have been, he's still not quite the flaming-schoolbus-full-of-screaming-orphans level of disaster that George W Bush was. 

Although, it's funny - the rest of the world might remember Dubya as the worst president the world has ever known, but his own reflections on his time in Washington are decidedly more favourable. 

This week W was interviewed by Matt Lauer in order to plug his forthcoming book 'Decision Points', and he finally admitted the lowest point of his eight years in office. Despite having 96 months of gaffes, cock-ups and blunders to choose from, Bush cited Kanye West's post-Katrina attack on him as the nadir of his presidency. 

So not the illegal war on Iraq. Or the deception around the weapons of mass destruction. Or giving his tacit approval to torture as an interrogation technique. Or declaring 'Mission: Accomplished' about seven years too early. Or promising to leave 'No Child Behind', then doing precisely that for an entire generation. Or turning his back on the Kyoto Protocol. Or choosing not to get his hands dirty in New Orleans. Or blocking stem cell research. Or approving wiretapping tactics. Or giving all those lucrative reconstruction contracts to his friends at Halliburton. 

When it comes to reflecting on his presidency, George Bush's darkest memory is of the moment that he felt like Taylor Swift, standing in the spotlight as Kanye West shot his mouth off.  

Cast your mind back to the moment when Mike Myers rocked uncomfortably on his heels during the 2005 Concert for Hurricane Relief, as Kanye declared that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

1,836 people may have lost their lives in the hurricane and the floods which followed, and $81 billion of damage was caused. But it's George who's still bearing the scars: “Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust... the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low.”

Doesn't your heart just bleed? 

It gets better

There's a growing controversy in the States this week, as it emerged that retail giant Walmart is stocking a book by Mormon author Janice Barrett, called 'Chased By An Elephant'. Although it sounds like a book celebrating the illegal ivory trade, it's actually designed to make gay kids hate themselves a little bit more, as if they needed the help.

Subtitled 'The Gospel Truth About Today’s Stampeding Sexuality' (hence the somewhat tenuous elephant reference), the book aims to keep kids on the straight and narrow. With the emphasis on the 'straight'.

According to the foreword, "The number of our young people involved in sexual sins has greatly increased in recent years. Some of the most stalwart-seeming youth find themselves involved in pornography, fornication, promiscuity, homosexuality, and the like... This harmful exposure is evident in the lives of many young people through a variety of psychological problems including anxiety, depression, gender confusion, addictions, and even suicidality." 

Graham apparently knows what she's talking about, since she even roped her own son Graham in to write an introduction to Mommie Dearest's book. Tearing himself away from alternating bouts of furious masturbation and violent sobbing, the 'cured' homosexual claims that his faith enabled him to turn away from the “deceitful and predatory nature of the ‘gay’ lifestyle.” Which is silly, because everyone knows that you should never turn your back on a 'predatory homosexual' - that exactly what they want you to do. 

Although he may be trapped in a false existence that denies his very nature, but at least his mother's vehement abhorrence of the 'gay lifestyle' hasn't yet tipped him over the edge into what she (and the FDA) have termed 'suicidality'. 

Sadly, countless other young men and women aren't quite so lucky. The last few months have seen a disturbing wave of teenage suicides, brought about by an epidemic of homophobic bullying. Tyler Clementi, Zach Harrington, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas and Cody J. Barker have all made the news in the States recently, by taking their own lives - leaving their despairing families wondering what they could have done to improve matters before it was too late. 

Dan Savage, the sharp-tongued but warm-hearted columnist, decided enough was enough and launched a YouTube campaign called 'It Gets Better'. Although it's only been running for a month, countless celebrities, gay and straight, have added their voices to the project - imploring kids to think twice before doing anything rash. Particularly powerful are the videos uploaded by successful gays and lesbian public figures, who are living proof that acceptance, tolerance and happiness are just around the corner. 

This week, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama added their voices to the mix, in eloquent, thoughtful and sensitively handled pieces. However, given the US government's reticence to act on Don't Ask, Don't Tell and marriage equality, campaigners are concerned that these two prominent politicians are sending out mixed messages - 'It might get better, but don't expect any help from us'.

The real issue is the fact that these videos focus on how to overcome bullying, rather than addressing the source of the bullying. As long as religious bodies continue to fight equality, and argue that homophobia and hate-speech are their God-given rights, then kids will continue to take their own lives.

When Obama tells young people that there are "people out there who care about you and love you just the way you are" he forgets that, in many cases, the parents he has in mind are the worst bullies of all. Parents like Janice Barrett. And sure, kids could go to their teachers if they're being bullied, as long as they don't expect the teacher to be able to show any kind of familiarity or empathy with the situation. After all, Seth Stambaugh in Oregon was fired for explaining to a student that he was gay and therefore unable to marry.

Savage's campaign is a fantastic initiative, and has dovetailed nicely with similar campaigns such as the Trevor Project and GLAAD's Spirit Day on 20th October. Gay kids need to know that it really does get better. But in order for them to believe it, the rest of society has to do its bit in order to keep that promise.

An overcoat sensation

In our modern media-saturated world, the concept of celebrity has expanded to the point where the word itself is no longer specific enough to describe the subject in question. For instance, Lauren Bacall and Kate Lawler are both celebrities, but there's a spectacular gulf between the two of them.

There's an urban legend that eskimos have countless words for snow. It's all bullshit of course, but the principle behind the metaphor is sound. As a culture obsessed with celebrity, we need an extended vocabulary to encapsulate the sliding scale of status - something more relevant and specific that the A, B and C-list. Especially since some of the celebrities clogging up our list are so far off the regular latin-based alphabet that technically we need to start introducing special characters into the mix.

Case in point - here's Wang Zifei, the unfortunately named but strikingly attractive 'ampersand-lister' who has shot to international fame thanks to her talent for disrobing behind world-leaders. Some people have to sing for their supper, others spend ten weeks in a Carphone Warehouse sponsored-asylum in order to secure their fame. However, this violin-playing, TV-hosting actress 'unwittingly' transformed herself into Little Red Riding Hot, by slowly taking off her eye-catching crimson coat right behind Barack Obama as he spoke about internet rights in China.

Reminding people of the little girl in Schindler's List, or the spooky ghost child in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Wang's bright red overcoat overshadowed everything else in the room, like Liz Hurley at someone else's wedding. As a consequence, she's now become an overnight sensation, with China Daily reporting that a Google search for 'Obama girl in red coat' turns up nearly seven million results.

The unwitting internet star has taken to her her blog to defend her actions, and downplay suggestions that she was attention seeking. Addressing accusations of self-promotion, the pretty student argues that anyone looking for fame would want greater longevity than the momentary notoriety that comes from wearing a loud jacket.

Ultimately, the idea of someone becoming a globally recognised face for little more than her choice in outerwear is preposterous. But it's still refreshing to know that, in a world where Jodie Marsh is a household name, some women can command the world's attention without needing to show their landing strip.