[Deckard]

Haha!

What will be interesting is seeing what the cartoonists and satirists eventually pick as the defining feature of Obama which then takes on a life of its own. As he inevitably become less revered, as he becomes more tainted through events (specifically, his responses/non-responses to those events), we would normally expect his physical features to start to be used to accentuate that transformation. Think of Rumsfeld who became the decaying corpse, Bush as the pea-brained, big-fingered chimpanzee sheriff riding backwards on his horse (ie. facing its arse!) And for us Brits, Blair's smile becoming a sort of demonic clown-like grin, splattered with the blood of all those who perished in Iraq, and Brown as a great bloated useless lump, an expressionless rock.

At the moment, the caricatures are obviously centered around the Messiah he-who-can-do-no-wrong thing - and physically they're still mostly holding back. Will his skinnyness be used against him in some way I wonder? If he's perceived as weak and wimpish, he will be the skinny boy at school. If he turns out to be a warmonger, then I can easily imagine Bell's colleague Martin Rowson turning him into a skeleton - morally dead, another corpse (though Rowson tends to turn everyone into corpses these days).

His stylish clothes and slickness might be aped as well - the man who's all style and spin, but no substance.

Now where have we heard that before?