Paper Monitor
10:02 UK time, Tuesday, 4 November 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
"AMERICA DECIDES," booms the Times. Yes, after a long and hard-fought campaign, today is the day.
By the time Paper Monitor is mulling over whether to have honey or cinnamon on its morning porridge tomorrow, votes across The Pond will have been tallied (barring, of course, a prolonged hanging chad denounement) and we will all know whether the United States has opted for honey or cinnamon itself. So to speak.
The Independent, for one, hedges its bets with cut-out-and-keep Obama and McCain flags so its readers can nail their colours to the mast (remember folks, it's blue for the left and red for the right in this particular race).
Given the paper's straitened circumstances - the Daily Mail is reportedly sniffing around, ready to shell out the paper's cover price, Β£1, for the entire Indy lock, stock and barrel - perhaps it could have saved on the paper and ink for the McCain flag. After all, how many Indy readers are going to opt for "Come on McCain"? Unless, of course, they like cinnamon best.
Metro mixes things up a bit with an arresting front page picture of the two contenders colour-swapped. Barack Obama is white, with David Cameron's hairdo, and John McCain is an elderly black man. The aim of the images, devised in the US, is to urge voters to forget race and focus on policies. Whether or not it works... what IS Obama doing with a side-parting?
While the Times, for one, has declared itself as backing Barack, not all have come out quite so strongly. But with polls showing the majority of Britons hope for change in the shape of a young, charismatic Democrat in the White House - and with this nation's fondness for the underdog - even papers well to the right of Obama's position anoint him the leader-in-waiting. "The family 24 hours away from changing the world," says the Mail.
And the Daily Express? Bless. "Secret of Prince Charles's Other Mistress." Well they would, wouldn't they?
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