Boggy Peak in Antigua the new Mount Trudeau?

Thursday, January 22, 2009


An article on the Huffington Post today has the following about the popularity of Barack Obama just after the inauguration:

The day after Obama's inauguration was no different. Three newborns in Kenya have already been named after the president and first lady....meanwhile, Antigua is renaming its highest mountain--Boggie Peak--after the new president.
Oh really? That reminds me of something. Canadians, remember this?
It was announced today that Canada's highest peak Mt.Logan was re-named Mount Trudeau. Now why it had to be Canada's Highest Mt. instead of an obscure mountain i don't understand.
That was right after Pierre Trudeau's death in 2000. Of course, after a bit of sober thought people decided that there was really no reason to rename the mountain. That's why it's no surprise that the Wikipedia page on Boggy Peak has the following:
Mount Obama

On November 5, 2008 Prime Minister W. Baldwin Spencer announced that Boggy Peak will be renamed after U.S. President Barack Obama.

While many persons thought the move by the prime minister was a good one most felt that it was a populist attempt to ride on the emotion of the Obama campaign in Antigua and were against the name change.

I don't know anything about Baldwin Spencer, but it's no surprise that a number of politicians are attempting to capitalize on Obama's popularity. Sometimes that's not a bad thing if it encourages a candidate to pay more attention to grassroots politics and avoiding drama, but not so good when it's image alone (website design, blatant imitation without any substance to back it up).

Moral: Beware false Obamas!

Here's a picture of Boggy Peak / Mount Obama from Flickr.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like your last sentence Dave ("blatant imitation without any substance to back it up").
It makes me think at Ségolène Royal in France, but she says that's Obama who imitated her own campaign! (I hope for the US that Obama did not imitate the lack of substance...)

Olivier

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