2015-01-10, 2:46 PM Mutt, Monster or Melting-Pot? Mixed-Race Metaphor and Obama's Ambivalent Hybridity | Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology Page 1 of 21 http://adanewmedia.org/2015/01/issue6-rambukkana/ ‘ObamaNation raped & killed 1,000 Christians’ Kenyan citizen Hussein Obama spent $1-million in US campaign funds to massacre 1,000 Christians in British Kenya, after his Communist cousin lost the presidential election. 800 Christian churches were arsoned [sic], with dozens of people cooked alive. Men and women were raped by Obama supporters. To stop the violence, the Kenyan government was extorted by Obama to make his cousin ‘prime minister’, a job that did not exist. ~ Anonymous, piratenews.org, October 25, 2008 ‘Obama’s Brother in China’ If elected, Obama would be the first genuinely 21st-century leader. The China-In- donesia-Kenya-Britain-Hawaii web mirrors a world in flux. In Kenya, his uncle Sayid, a Muslim, told me: ‘My Islam is a hybrid, a mix of elements, including my Christian schooling and even some African ways. Many values have dissolved in me.’ Obama’s bridge-building instincts come from somewhere. They are rooted and proven. For an expectant and often alienated world, they are of central significance. ~ Roger Cohen, New York Times, March 17, 2008 The above two textual excerpts from the period between February 10, 2007 when Obama announced he was running for the Democratic nomination, and November 4, 2008 when he was elected president, are metonymic of the polar opposite ways Barack Obama’s particular hybrid identity is framed and reflected on in the digital public sphere. While the sources are divergent in terms of scope and reach—a main- stream newspaper site and an underground website—the black and white binary of [1] [1] ISSUE NO. 6 Mutt, Monster or Melting-Pot? Mixed-Race Metaphor and Obama’s Ambivalent Hybridity Nathan Rambukkana