In case you're keeping track of these things, cultural and political references in Obama's jokes included torture, swine flu, "mother fucker", gay marriage, the death of the Republican party, "negritude", racism, mysogyny and César Chávez ---a lot of them by omission.

Obama's speech is really is an amazing piece of pop politics and culture. If Jon Favreau is the only guy writing these for him, then he has a future as a comedy writer.

Transcript after the jump.
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[... O]nly the second first lady to do so (Hillary Clinton was the first, in December 1998).

Work it, grrrl!

There's a discussion over at Over at Jack and Jill Politics about a 1996 interview the French newspaper Le Monde published just yesterday. It's was meant to be for a book called "American Couples" but it never saw the light of day. Until Saturday. That's 12 years later. And, by the way, it seems Le Monde published the story but didn't alert neither the new President nor US media.

The story was noticed in Le Monde by Tom McCarthy at the ABC News desk and translated from the French by Maeva Bambuck and Jean Fievet in ABC News' London bureau. (When assessing the precise accuracy of the quotes below, keep in mind they have now been translated from English to French to English.)

It's seems they were interview separately, so the answers to the questions sound much more candid and yet, themes that they've discussed today about privacy, about their different ethnic and class backgrounds, about their complimentary sense of humor are all there 12 years ago.

It's amazing to me to find people this in-tune and in love as the Obamas are. They almost make you hate them for being so happy and so utterly in love with each other.

I have to say, am just amazed and impressed. My marriage was never like that but as a helplessly romantic soul, I hope to find my soul mate and the love of my life the way these two have.

It really is inspiring.

And with that, here's my favorite moments of the interview :
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There are several photographs there where you can see Obama has been or is on the verge of crying. These are an absolutely amazing look into the our new President.

[UPDATE @ 3:38PM]
I can't believe that after I spent the whole day re-creating the damn Flickr slideshow the thing is now working. AUGH!

Anyhow, you can also see my curated slideshow of these photographs at my NING multimedia site : Barack Obama's Election Night.

HOT!

She's not going to wait for the vultures to do the talking about her. Michelle Obama gets her own war room along with a new chief of staff:

Later today, the campaign is set to announce the hiring of Stephanie Cutter, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked as Senator John Kerry’s communications director in 2004, as chief of staff to Mrs. Obama. Ms. Cutter is scheduled to begin soon, with the first task of re-crafting the image of Mrs. Obama, who has come under intense criticism by Republicans and even some Democratic rivals. She also will lead a war room to fight attacks against Mrs. Obama.

At first I found it odd that, given Kerry's slow response to the Swift Boat attacks, his former communications director is working for Ms. Obama. Maybe it makes sense because she's already "been there, done that" and won't let that happen ever again.

Hopefully that's the reason why they hired a former John Kerry staffer. Because she's indeed lived through all the republican's filth and knows now how to handle it.

Think about it, though. Michelle Obama has a war room. She's gonna get her shero on.

How HAWT is that!

Fox News had Michelle Malkin on yesterday discussing some thing or another having to do with the dark-skinned Filipina's attacks and demonization of presumptive First Lady Michelle Obama. So what does the Fox News editorial team do during the conservative racist baiter's time on TV? They put a banner right under the news bit that read : "Outraged Liberals : Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama".

As Oliver Willis says quite correctly, why not call her a N***r and get it over and done with it? Why not just turn Fox News into what it really is, a race-baiter's dream machine?

Kevin Hayden says' the channel should be fined by the FCC a minimum of $325,000 for publishing hate speech. Even though I agree with Stefania this proves the extreme right is scared shitless at the prospect of seeing the Obamas in the White House, it's still utterly wrong and those bastards should pay every time they pull this shit.

Yet what's most important about all this mess is the other Michelle. La Malkin. Why do you think Fox News has on their payroll a dark-skinned Filipina who is not only their quite giddy and willing cover for the racist rants you pass as news, but also something of a news maker herself?
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