Obama for change?

Given the fact that Obama just made history I thought it might be appropriate to talk about him in context of the readings we had for class last week.  

The readings last week were about black homophobia and what is meant about black popular culture.  Obama fits into both of these categories in one way or another.  Stuart Hall says that "cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination; it is never a zero-sum cultural game; it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture".  How much more true could this get?  Obama just shifted the balance of power in favor of democrats, in favor perhaps of all minorities, in favor of being "the other".  While it is still true that he is not "the blackness (that) is most black" that Isaac Julien wrote of the congregation answering with, he is black in at least some meaning of the word.

Obama has now shifted the balance of power and he is the destined to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world (you can feel free to disagree).  My question is what this means in terms of cultural hegemony.  Does Obama now have a hegemonic rule over this country?  He clearly has a group of dedicated supporters but has he really changed anything yet?  My answer is that yes it's easy to say that he has changed some hearts and some minds.  However, I qualify my answer by saying that because it has been such a long road to get to that shift, he is going to have to be nearly perfect.  He not only has to do better than Bush (such a difficult task right?) but he is setting a precedent whether he likes it or not. 

The other article we read about black homophobia that related to the movie by the same man is an interesting idea when thought about in terms of Obama.  We now have a cultural minority leading this country but he has taken virtually no notice of the gay community, much less the black gay community.  And why not?  Seeing as how he is the most "liberal" man in the entire senate I am going to dare to say he is probably not a gay basher, that his personal beliefs are probably pretty close to where gay people would like them to be.  The problem is what Julien writes of on pg. 257, that the family and church are two major institutions in African-American communities.  This is not just true of African-American communities, however, this is true of a large part of America and it's the ticket that Obama really ran on.  He was a family man, a church going man, someone that did these things that the rest of America is doing.  Though I'm not by any means a political genius, I think it would be incredibly difficult for Obama to have won had he come out and been a vocal gay supporter.  He never made any negative comments but instead chose to simply ignore the subject, part of the true problem with homophobia.  

I guess that sums up my comparison to Obama and the two articles from last week.  I hope everyone is getting ready for change because in just a few months we are going to see some great things happening.  SWEET!