"Who needs John McCain when you have John McClane?"

While I’m sure I have not gotten as much of the election frenzy as in the U.S., a lot has trickled down in one way or another since I‘ve been here. The following are a few of my favorite election anecdotes that I’ve heard either here or in Turkey over the past few weeks. When we had elections at school for Headboy and Chairs of the sports and academic clubs, the students would come around and campaign in each class and put posters up in the hallway. My favorite said “Vote Obama” and the Obama was crossed out and replaced by Saud Al-Qasimi. The highlight from TV was from Dubai One. It started by showing several clips of John McCain speaking followed by several Fox News pundits responding to his campaign. Then the ad begins, “Who needs John McCain when we have John McClane?” The McCain political clips are quickly replaced by clips of Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies. As John McClane kills a couple villains, the ad continues, “He knows how to negotiate with terrorists.” The ad finishes asking again “Who needs John McCain when we have John McClane? Watch the Die Hard movies, every night this week.” The last occurrence took place at a small pide restaurant in Eyup in Istanbul where the owners spoke no English (and we spoke no Turkish). Afterwards, when we were walking away and thanking them for a delicious lunch , one of them said, “I am Barack Obama.” So that’s what the election season has been looking like so far. The international news has covered the campaigns extensively, including re-broadcasting the debates. Anyways, I’ll hopefully be blogging about this topic right after the election itself.