The United States of America constitute very much a growing country, in the sense that, seen from European eyes, it is a mere child, sometimes irritating, sometimes wayward, sometimes wilful, sometimes lovable.

You get the feeling, on this side of the pond, that you have to deal with the Yanks in the same way you do with a younger teenager - you never know when they're going to take you literally or when they're going to demonstrate a sense of maturity beyond their years. Like most teenagers, they're pretty large and if they lose their rag they can be pretty dangerous, maybe because they don't know their own strength.

OK, just in case someone is taking this particularly seriously, I do know that I'm simplifying to the point of grotesqueness and that there's way more to this than a few lines to introduce a column.

That's not to say that many denizens of Uncle Sam's backyard, oft times recent immigrants who think they've gone up in the world to the extent that they can lecture the rest of us, don't act like silly kids a lot of the time (check out some of the comments under this column or my blog, generally signed Catania, for examples) but I'm exaggerating for comedic effect.

Last Tuesday's election, however, saw the US take a major stride into adulthood. It's not really the fact that Barack Obama is black that makes his election historic, it is the fact that the electorate has ignored this. The Americans have made their thoughts and wishes amply clear to the racist thugs who infest their country in the same way they infest ours and all others.

I'm not going to pretend to a naivety that I don't feel, Mr Obama's race does make his victory special in the circumstances, but there's way more to it than that.

Being black, in a civilised country, is irrelevant and - in a sense - lauding the fact that a black man has been elected to a relatively important office (yes, my tongue is in my cheek, please get the idea that this is a light-hearted column - I've been at for 14 years-odd) would be almost racist in itself. It would be a bit like being astounded at the fact that a dog can walk on its hind legs.

Happily, this was not the case in the US.

From where I'm sitting, what went down on Tuesday was evidence that the great unwashed in America has made a quantum leap upwards. I say this without trying to be even mildly insulting, for all that it's really good fun to tease the Americans. The political landscape is no longer one dominated by shallowness and knee-jerk reactions.

Reassuring, also, is the way that woman was told where she gets off. Sarah Palin, who believes that the human race sprang from the loins of Mr and Mrs Adam Eve, at about the same time as dinosaurs roamed the earth, and who knows, just knows, that she is one of the chosen few who will go to Heaven come the Rapture, seems to have scared enough right-thinking Americans with the prospect that she could, actuarially speaking, have had a pretty good chance of becoming President, into voting for her opponent.

John McCain himself wasn't such a bad prospect, as his graciousness in defeat demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the mere idea of having that God-botherer within a cardiac arrest of the Oval Office was scary in the extreme. Quite apart from the awful smugness of her religious beliefs, to which she is perfectly entitled provided they don't interfere with world security, the woman is a sandwich or six short of a picnic, and no mistake.

If you don't believe me, check out the spoof phone call where a Canadian DJ radio show host called her up and made her think he was actually telling her all about his wife, Mme Sarkozy's, attributes in the boudoir. I mean, how dumb can you get?

But this is all beyond the point now: Mr Obama was voted in by an electorate that showed the Republicans that it was capable of seeing beyond a cute mom and a gentleman contender. From now on, we can't think in absolutes when it comes to assessing the way things will be done in the US. Not that we ever could, but you know what I mean.

Just for the record, I wrote this on Wednesday evening, having checked out Daphne Caruana Galizia's blog, where the point that Mr Obama's election was yet another nail in the coffin of the racists' politics was made. I have no idea what she wrote in her Thursday column in the competition, so if I'm repeating her, it's merely a case of great fools never differing or whatever the old chestnut is.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs