Oh, how far from the rapturous days of yore, when the Lightbringer was omnipotent, beloved, and worshipped, especially by the British.
Much as the ponderous Pelley's pompous preenings preceded being sent packing, the luster can, if not carefully safeguarded, wear off the finest crown.
This seems to have happened to the sheen of ethereal, misty white that once surrounded Barack Obama, almost like an impenetrable, godlike aura.
When the once drooling and obsequious Guardian is crackin' on you and your Olympian pretensions...OOF.
They’re cooking him in the Guardian now. Obama is done. pic.twitter.com/FThPmHOAKU
— 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐨𝐬 (Golden Age Arc) (@myth_pilot) June 2, 2026
The author does try to soften the blow that's about to come in the body of the piece. Check out the absolute groaner buried in one of the opening paragraphs, talking about Obama.
Swallow that sip of coffee first - you'll thank me afterward.
...He might have seemed humble in office...
Yeah. The most HUMBLE of presidents - the king of the snide aside and smug smirk whose idea of a gift is a collection of his speeches.
OKAY.
You can find that little gem of stinky poo buried right there in the middle of a sentence describing precisely who Barack Obama has always been - a pretentious, expensive, 'towering totem' morbidly impressed with his own importance and intellect.
...Lacking a royal family or a state religion, the US presidency has swelled to fill the void, transforming over the decades into a national personality cult, complete with its own secular temples to these powerful men. The latest pharaonic edifice is about to open on Chicago’s south side, where it looms on the skyline as a towering totem to the 44th president, Barack Obama. He might have seemed humble in office, but in his post-presidential, Netflix-producing afterlife, Obama has erected the largest, costliest and most audacious complex of them all. Behold the $850m Obamalisk – or, as it sometimes feels morbidly like, the Obamausoleum.
You know - how lucky we were to have him.
Hope and change emerging from the ground as a stark, gray, prison-like structure is not what normally evokes those sentiments, and for all that Obama talked about them, in real life, nothing more than his election was 'change' that had any hope attached to it.
And 'achievements' is doing a lot of lifting here.
...So, how to symbolise hope, justice, equality and all the other bygone values that Obama championed in his meteoric ascent to the White House? How to commemorate the first Black president in history, in whom so much transformational faith was vested, at a time when so many of his achievements are being relentlessly rolled back?
“We had the idea of a beacon,” says architect Billie Tsien, whose practice, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, won the design competition for the Obama Presidential Center in 2016, on the eve of the first Trump presidency. “We thought of four hands coming together,” she adds, holding her cupped hands up against a colleague’s, as if protecting a flame from the wind.
OKAY
Insert obligatory 'protecting the world from Trump' line.
And the article makes very, very clear that this design isn't the fault of the guys with the blueprints,
Oh, no.
They had to hold back The Man Who Knows Everything Better Than Anyone, but it's done subtly.
...“The president was very, very hands on with the design,” says Tsien, with a rueful air. “He talked a lot about his love of Brâncuși.” That’s the Romanian sculptor who was known for his carved, abstract forms. “And he wanted to make things more angular and cut. To make a form, and then try to work out what goes inside it, is really the opposite of how we’ve worked before. It was a very foreign exercise.”
Believe me, lots about Obama was foreign to Americans, too.
The icon wanted something iconic to celebrate his iconic status.
...Obama has spoken of wanting to be an architect, before he chose law, and he clearly relished the chance to wield his conceptual chisel. “When you have a client who says that, you get kind of uncomfortable,” admits Tsien. “It usually means they’ve got big opinions, and he definitely had big opinions. But he was a very good critic.” She says the Obama Foundation, which runs the centre, “wanted something ‘iconic’ which isn’t how we’ve worked before. I don’t think you can design something to be iconic.” Her face falls when we encounter 3D-printed plastic models of the building for sale in the gift shop, priced at $40. Still, the client got what it wanted: this memorable menhir won’t be mistaken for anything else on your mantelpiece.
The Obama Foundation, which runs the Obama Center (which is NOT a presidential library), belongs to the Obamas, unlike other presidential libraries, which are administered by the National Archives. This has led to some concern about 'objectivity as far as the contents go.
Seriously?
When the subject and its foundation want an iconic building to celebrate the icon within, there's going to be a question of 'objectivity'?
Oh, go on.
CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
...The physical records might not be on site, but the professed aim to transform the presidential library from a scholarly research centre to a bustling hub of community activity is an admirable ambition. “We didn’t build [the centre] to celebrate my ability to bring about change,” Obama declares in a promotional video. “We did it to unlock yours.” It is not just a library, but a “campus dedicated to supporting future change makers”.
Complete with a completely objective, fawning, immersive, and pay-per-view-only Obamarama, an 'action-packed romp through the couple's life story.'
Seriously! That's what it says!
...The transformational change, he hopes, will happen inside the enigmatic tower where, for $30 a ticket, visitors are transported through four floors of an immersive, interactive Obama experience – a vertical Obamarama. Designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, it is an action-packed romp through the couple’s life story, beginning with the civil rights movements that inspired them, their political campaigns, achievements in office, life in the White House, and how you too can “bring change home” (a motto printed on the gift shop bag).
The hulking prison on the lakefront has a gift shop where you can buy a miniature of it for $40.
The new Barack Obama Presidential Library is nearing completion
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) November 3, 2025
After roughly $850 million dollars spent, this is what the finally project looks like and is expected to open in just a few months pic.twitter.com/zncM1b39Qx
I've always thought it looks like a Jawa sandcrawler...
Jawa Sandcrawler transition moment. https://t.co/yyuC8Spng5 pic.twitter.com/t4tQd9344E
— Mobfighter63 #TheLucasSaga (@mobfighter63) December 7, 2025
...with that Borg cube of his speech set on top.
Has anyone actually read the ‘uplifting message’ on the Obama Presidential library?
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) May 22, 2026
The first few lines are ‘you are America unconstrained…’ - carved into a building that looks like a giant prison. pic.twitter.com/jNNrrLvekI
YMMV
I'm a hopeful optimist that way.
But no worries. An icon's work is never done, and President I Coulda Been an Architect Instead isn't done gussying the place up yet.
Softening the rough Klingon Prison edges.
No, sir.
Now he's Frederick Law Olmsted mixed with Frank Lloyd Wright, only black.
Just when you thought Obama’s library couldn’t get any more fugly, he adds this abstract, asymmetrical arch. Ugh. pic.twitter.com/yFPN3qGOYM
— Kendall Neely (@KendallNeely63) June 3, 2026
Yeah.
Man.
That makes it so much better.
Maybe enough to woo The Guardian back.
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