Barack Obama: A Sinister Candidate for President

This year, the Democratic Party has selected a truly sinister candidate, Barack Obama, a sinister and outright gauche candidate. This judgment has nothing to do with his stand on offshore drilling, global warming, the mortgage crisis, the war in Iraq, or national health care. It should be noted that he follows such sinister presidents (from both parties) as Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (the First), and Bill Clinton... and to go back a little further, Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, and James Garfield.

These gentlemen are truly sinister because Presidents Garfield, Hoover, Truman, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, as well as candidate Barack Obama, are left handed (source), and the Latin for left is sinister (French, gauche). By the way, the Latin word for right is dexter, as in dexterity. Perhaps it is an especially bitter irony that the word for being able to use either hand interchangeably is ambidextrous, which means being dextrous (yep, using the right hand) on either (ambi-) side.

The English phrase to have "two left feet" means to be bad at dancing. In the film Best in Show, by the way, Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy) literally has two left feet. That sad singer of things lost, Dory Previn, in her song "Left Hand Lost" (lyrics here, song here) recounts legends and fantasies about lefties (the nuns at her school rescued her).

There is a terrible British term for left-handed, cack-handed, which apparently derives from cack (excrement), which hearkens back to traditions of using the left hand for matters of personal hygiene, while reserving the right hand for eating (source).

When you consider that "7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed" (source), there must be something going on that lefties have been so disproportionately represented in the White House. In Brains That Work a Little Bit Differently, Allen D. Bradgon and David Gamon report on research that suggests that left-handed people actually think differently from righties.

So, as I process this information in my uptight, right-handed way, I predict without reservation that the next president of the United States will be left-handed. You see, John McCain, no matter how right wing he may be, is also left-handed (source).

You can find an index to my articles on other topics relating to the English language here.