"A More Perfect Unity"
wow, I am utterly blown away by this Obama speech.
This is one of the finest speeches I've seen. Its scope is much farther reaching than any of the campaigning this year has ever been and is so much more in tune with what an "American Identity" actually is. Its import is greater than any of the sound bites and the regular campaign tactics that these runs are usually fraught with. In that way it also appeals to the greatest of what the American public actually is. It isn't Mike Huckabee jamming on a bass or Hilary Clinton doing a spot on SNL as if the political run was a parade of showiness and being "down to earth" like "regular folks." It's a reflective and thoughtful speech both stirring and challenging and asks us to do more than play the games that the politics and the media are throwing at the public.
And just like they always do the media is framing it in a pretty appalling way. As much as this speech is a meditation on race in America it is more about moving beyond race and moving towards something more important, more communal, and more collective. Yet some major media outlets are framing the speech as a political tactic to simply shed the drama with Reverend Wright, or focusing on the racial elements rather than on the call for unity and the sharing of a common identity. Some are asking questions like, "Will it be enough of a boost to win the candidacy?"
These short-sighted analyses detract from the importance of what the speech is asking. It's a self-contained piece in and of itself that points to greater issues than the pettiness that so much of the primaries have been mired in and that the media plays to.
Someone earlier noted that CNN first posted the headline as,
"Obama: Constitution stained by "sin of slavery"
and changed it later to,
"Obama: We can move beyond some of our racial wounds."
What tactless opportunism.
One of the youtube comments says something along the lines of, "Obama is the first 21st century politician."
I couldn't agree more. I don't think I have ever felt as challenged or appealed to as an actual American person as I did hearing this speech. In fact the notion of having an American identity never really occurred to me in such a rich and meaningful way as this. Just last week I told someone that I was American and their response was, "and what do you think of that." It seems vogue these days to treat that moniker as an offhanded burden, and I can't blame anyone since the popular notion of what is "American" has been perverted by the neocons into some image of a mythical benevolent cowboy ready to strong-arm "freedom" and "liberty" to the rest of the world.
If Obama is elected who knows if his actions will reflect what I may think this country really needs, but in this moment I feel the need to be an American person.
Here is one of the key moments for me:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”
Click to viewThis is one of the finest speeches I've seen. Its scope is much farther reaching than any of the campaigning this year has ever been and is so much more in tune with what an "American Identity" actually is. Its import is greater than any of the sound bites and the regular campaign tactics that these runs are usually fraught with. In that way it also appeals to the greatest of what the American public actually is. It isn't Mike Huckabee jamming on a bass or Hilary Clinton doing a spot on SNL as if the political run was a parade of showiness and being "down to earth" like "regular folks." It's a reflective and thoughtful speech both stirring and challenging and asks us to do more than play the games that the politics and the media are throwing at the public.
And just like they always do the media is framing it in a pretty appalling way. As much as this speech is a meditation on race in America it is more about moving beyond race and moving towards something more important, more communal, and more collective. Yet some major media outlets are framing the speech as a political tactic to simply shed the drama with Reverend Wright, or focusing on the racial elements rather than on the call for unity and the sharing of a common identity. Some are asking questions like, "Will it be enough of a boost to win the candidacy?"
These short-sighted analyses detract from the importance of what the speech is asking. It's a self-contained piece in and of itself that points to greater issues than the pettiness that so much of the primaries have been mired in and that the media plays to.
Someone earlier noted that CNN first posted the headline as,
"Obama: Constitution stained by "sin of slavery"
and changed it later to,
"Obama: We can move beyond some of our racial wounds."
What tactless opportunism.
One of the youtube comments says something along the lines of, "Obama is the first 21st century politician."
I couldn't agree more. I don't think I have ever felt as challenged or appealed to as an actual American person as I did hearing this speech. In fact the notion of having an American identity never really occurred to me in such a rich and meaningful way as this. Just last week I told someone that I was American and their response was, "and what do you think of that." It seems vogue these days to treat that moniker as an offhanded burden, and I can't blame anyone since the popular notion of what is "American" has been perverted by the neocons into some image of a mythical benevolent cowboy ready to strong-arm "freedom" and "liberty" to the rest of the world.
If Obama is elected who knows if his actions will reflect what I may think this country really needs, but in this moment I feel the need to be an American person.
Here is one of the key moments for me:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”