The Sponge: 2012

I'm getting far too nervous about this election tonight, so I feel like I have to put my thoughts down on how important it is for me that Obama wins reelection. I know it's most likely too late to change even one person's mind- originally I had had a grand plan to write such an inspiring post that thousands of people would forward it to their friends and many would change from Romney to Obama because of it. But that's not going to happen, and probably never would have. But I need to put down my thoughts just so I at least have a last record of the last moments of this campaign, and how I'm feeling. At a decisive moment tonight, either all the nerves that have built up in me over the past 5 months will disappear, or I will be utterly depressed and lose faith in America. Either way, I'm going to be significantly in a different mind set.

President Obama is my idol. He's the only one I have left, as of this past month- he used to share that title with Brandon Flowers, but the latter has really disappointed me and I've given up faith in him, honestly. But that has never happened for me with Obama. He has literally never let me down. And that is quite extraordinary, because I hold my idols to very high standards. The difference between me and many of the young now 'disillusioned' '08 Obama fanatics is that I was never insanely obsessed with him. I am in love with him, dn't get me wrong, but I never saw him as a God or profit or messiah as so many others did. I knew that he was a human being, and in fact that's what I loved about him so much. He was honest, and had real feelings, and I got the undeniable sense that he meant what he said and wanted to change the world for the better.

And I still feel that about him. He hasn't changed in that sense- sure, he has become more realistic and is now aware that he can't exactly shake hands with Republicans because they will constantly try to stab him in the process. But he's still a great guy, and he still means what he says. How many politicians can you say that about? VERY few. And this is the President of the US we're talking about! It's a rarity, and we have to hold on to such a gem.

Now lets just go down the line of what he has in fact accomplished and changed in America, because so many naysayers think he's done little. And I'm not going to mention Osama Bin Laden or saving the auto industry or all that, because that's been gone over a million times already. I'm going to talk about what people like to gloss over and ignore-

-American's reputation around the world has been flowering the moment Obama was elected. We were in the dumps literally a minute before he won. Doesn't anybody remember this? Americans wore Canadian flag patches on their bags when they traveled for god's sake! Bush ruined our reputation, and the rest of the world hates us. Now they love us. You know who one of our biggest fans are, based on a recent poll posted on Reddit? FRANCE. That's literally insane. Do you remember freedom fries? France were our enemies, and now they are huge fans. Obama did that single-handedly by getting elected, and don't let anyone deny that. And people think that the rest of the world doesn;t matter, but actually it does. The world is made up of a lot more than just Americans, and it's high time we acknowledge that.

-He is just fun to listen to, his family is fun to admire, it's fun to think that he is my President. Politicians are usually so stale, I never imagined I would have someone I so admired as my President. I am so, so proud to call him my president. And 4 years of him are still not enough to make up for the 8 years of shame and frustration we had with Bush. We need for more years of Obama to fully make up for that, it's the least this country owes us right now. The wounds are healing, but they're not done. Electing ROmney now will just break so many of us into pieces. It wouldn;t be fair.

-The economy. Yes, Obama is the strongest to handle this economy. News flash indeed. People think Romney is the best for the economy? Are you kidding me, it's the exact opposite! Romney is one of the businessmen that STARTED this mess. YEs the economy is growing slowly, but that's the way it SHOULD be. It needs to fix itself. It was utterly broken and corrupt before, nd that's how so many were crazy, unrealistically successful- because their money was literally invisible. Now it taken painful years to fix the economy and make it strong again, and there's no short cutting around it the way ROmney promises to unless we want another bust and recession in 5 years. We need to invent the new car or computer to build the economy again. It's up to us, not the president, so give him a break for once and look inside at what YOU could do, as a CITIZEN, as Obama so memorably said in the convention. We're all in this together. We need to make America's economy successful again by working together and brainstorming how to compete with the rest of the world fair and square through innovation. Short cuts will get us NOWHERE.
-Obamacare, financial aid for school- did I mention what a great guy Obama is?
-He is the first black president America has ever had. He deserves four more years to prove what he is really capable of. It's not joke that he inherited just about the worst situation possibly imaginable in 2008- now things have finally settled down, and he has SO much more to prove. He deserves a fair shot. The future history books already say so in my mind, as a history major. He will forever be one of the most if not the most beloved presidents in US history, mark my words. Let's give those history books more to work with in his future representations. Also, the Republicans in Congress are going to look racist as hell in future history books for trying to block everything Obama tried to accomplish from the moment he took office. They said their top priority was to not get him reelected. What happened to a top priortiyy being fixing the economy, or caring about America's future? Why be especially hard on the first black president? Do you KNOW how blacks used to be treated in America until 150 years ago? Do you know how all these factors together look in history books in the future? yeah, that's right, Republicans dug themselves in a hole once again, and they're again on the polar wrong side of history. Don't even get me started on the nonesense that comes out of their mouths about gay marriage and abortion. These are quotes that get crystallized in history. It's going to look like quotes about segregation and slavery.

-Don't be on the wrong side of history. Vote for Obama and be on the right side of history. Don't think about the moment, think about the big picture. This is fucking important. Liberals, stop harping about Guantanamo bay and think about what's at stake here. You look like babies. Obama is still president of the US, he can't paint everything sparkly peace and love. This is the real world. Appreciate that beautiful miracle you have here and stop complaining. Start voting. Give Barack Obama 4 more years. Romney is a shadow of a person- he doesn't even know what he stands for. He grew up privileged as hell and never took the time to learn about how the rest of the world lives. He doesn't understand us, he's a decent guy, but he just doesn't understand. he looks at America economy like balancing a check, not dealing gently with millions of conflicting factors that come out of this beautiful, diverse, historical, miracle that is America. let's do this right. Let's reelect Obama and get 4 more glorious years of beautiful history.

This final part of my Behind-the-scenes London FW photo trilogy includes photos I took after the Topshop fashion show, right outside the old warehouse building. Lots of fashionable people were walking about and it was really fun to photograph them. I also took lots of pictures of the Sartorialist and Facehunter taking photos of two girls. Sartorialist took so many photos of his girl for so long. That was interesting because there were so many different people there- I was impressed that he just dove in on one that caught his eye and spent all of the time on taking the perfect shot of her, with many different backgrounds. I always assumed he took sort of spur-of-the-moment photos, but if this was any indication he sepnds a lot of time on them and directs his subjects into all kinds of different poses and places. So when they look like they just happen to be walking about or gazing in some direction, don't be fooled too much because Sartorialist put them in that position. Still, it shows what an art it is for him and explains why all of his photos are so beautiful and interesting.