THE CULTURE in Canada and Europe is very book and author-oriented: not so in the US. In Europe and in Canada, writers are expected to speak out politically - to be active in interviews, and everywhere in the media - in talking about more than their novels. It's just the opposite here: writers are discouraged from expressing their opinions about politics or the society. We're expected to talk about our books, a little, and then shut up about everything else. Why? Don't creative minds have creative ideas?

Look at this woeful election process we have been undergoing. There's been more interesting and truthful stuff about the election on The Daily Show and on Saturday Night Live than what we've seen on the so-called news shows. We have become so politically correct we must present a counter-argument to every opinion expressed in the news. Why? Do we not trust people to have minds of their own? Does every issue have an equal counter-argument? (Of course not.) What does it say about us as a culture that a couple of comedy shows on TV are smarter and more incisive, politically, than the back-and-forth meandering that passes for "in-depth coverage" on CNN or MSNBC?

The bestseller list in the US doesn't only reflect what we read. That list is a reflection of how backward we are as a culture. We are anti-intellectual, we don't value the arts, and we don't sufficiently support education. President Bush has made sounding stupid actually comforting to many Americans.

Look at the rush of instant identification many Americans felt for Governor Palin; she was mean, she was poorly informed, she spoke badly. I said to my wife, after watching Palin's debate with Senator Biden, that I could only think of one question that woman might not duck - one she actually might answer, even with enthusiasm. Here's the question. I have never field-dressed (gutted) a moose, but - in my deer-hunting days - I have field-dressed deer, and I would have liked to ask the perky Alaskan if the process is more or less the same (only a lot bigger). I could easily imagine Governor Palin's eyes brightening; an onslaught of pre-orgasmic winking might have ensued.

"Ya know," she might have begun, "ya just gotta make a big slit from the critter's brisket to its crotch, and ya gotta reach way the heck up and grab hold of the rectum. Ya can't let the faeces fall out and get all over the meat, ya know. But there's really nothin' to it. It's just a moose - it's not a Russian, or somethin'!"

I think that pretty much covers what the governor might say in answer to that question, except she probably wouldn't use the faeces word - if ya know what I mean.

In short, there's more that's wrong with this country than that we don't read.

The Obama victory gives this country something to be proud of; it's been too long since we've done something we can be truly proud of. There was a swing against Democrats, against liberals, after Carter - when Reagan was so popular, and put into place so many of the failed conservative ideals that have misled us.

Obama is not John F Kennedy; he is not Martin Luther King Jr. Obama is his own man, but - like JFK, like King - I believe he is a necessary hero at a necessary time. We really need him; the world needs him, too. I think he will do much to restore the world's faith in our potential as a country that does good, or can do good, around the world. That's been missing for too long. I believe Obama has a genuine spirit of negotiation. I just hope some racist fanatic in the US doesn't shoot him. There is always that fear.

McCain's speech in defeat was gracious and healing, but one could hear the boos in the crowd, and many of the McCain TV advertisements in the closing days of the campaign stirred up both racial bigotry and right-wing hatred (hatred of liberals, labelled "socialists" - a bad word here). There is a lot of healing yet to be done in this country, which is deeply divided. McCain could never have brought us together; he would have worsened the divisiveness, the liberal-conservative animosities.

The world - or who the rest of the world wanted to be the next US president - has been absent from US news for weeks during this election. Now Obama has been elected, all the news is about what the world thinks, how the world has reacted - with relief and hopeful expectation - to Obama. But where was the world's opinion in the election process? Totally absent in American news, and in both candidates' speeches. We need the world, and the world needs us; the world needs a diplomatic and negotiating US president, not an arrogant, go-it-alone Texas cowboy. We're not all arrogant, go-it-alone cowboys in the US, but we've been represented by one, and his party, for too long.

When Obama won, I cried. I would still be crying if he had lost.