hi. sometimes I talk about politics?
Apologies for the long absence (and also the lack of responses to my last post-- I promise, I really am working on your prompts!), but that demon Real Life reared its foul head, and thus I was carried away for a while. In the meantime, I would like to offer the following observations:
1. Tornadoes suck.
2. Throwing one's back out for a week when one is twenty-four uber-sucks.
3. Barack Obama, however, does not suck.
Here's what I would like to point out about that speech: not the rhetoric or the sincerity or the measured and (oh my fucking god) nuanced understanding of race and racial relationships in America-- but that, for the first fifteen minutes of the speech, the audience was completely silent.
There were no orchestrated pauses that called for cheers, no sound-bite quips to rally the troops. There was only what Obama was saying, and blessed silence. And while that can often mean a politician is dead in the water (although that would have been entirely unlikely in this situation, given that it was a pro-Obama crowd), in this particular case it meant the opposite: the audience was clearly engaged. They were simply doing something that we don't do in this country any more-- they were listening. Closely. Listening for content. For detail. For nuance. They sat there for fifteen minutes-- which, let us acknowledge, is an eternity for a nation that cuts its teeth on Sesame Street segments and thirty-second commercials-- and let Obama build a complex argument about how race and our resentment of each other has forced this nation into stagnation. About how a person can disagree strongly with what another man says and does and even believes, and still be able to call that man family. And when the applause finally started to bubble out between the pauses in Obama's speech, they were often in odd places-- not at the emotional apex of the speech, but in whatever small crevices of silence were available. Because the audience had been listening, and evaluating, and thinking, and their response took time.
This was not the dance that we're used to in American politics; usually it's something like, talking point, dead grandma, applause; talking point, wounded veteran, applause. What Obama was giving us wasn't a waltz by Strauss-- it was something far more difficult to count, swirling off into five-eight time like Ravel's La Valse. (There's a link to a piano arrangement of it at the bottom of the page, if you'd like to know what I mean.) This was a speech that demanded that its audience pay attention to the damn beat for once. This was a speech that assumed that the American public is capable of facing a complex issue head on, and patient enough to listen to an argument that doesn't devolve into talking heads screaming at each other on nightly talk-show programs. This was a speech that respected the intelligence of its audience, and that-- that is something worth considering.
This is all really just a convoluted way of saying that this was a speech that engaged me. I watched it in its entirety, and I paid attention. I was, frankly, amazed at some of the risks Obama took; I have no idea how they'll help or hurt him politically. I do know that if I were his adviser, I would have been completely terrified at the idea of him giving this speech, because it goes against everything I know about how you win in American politics and how we talk about race in this nation. I do know that I am glad, glad, glad that he went ahead and gave it. And I also know that-- Democratic nominee or not, President or not-- this is a speech that our kids will read in high school, and we'll be able to say, "I heard that. I was there." And that's hardly a small thing.
1. Tornadoes suck.
2. Throwing one's back out for a week when one is twenty-four uber-sucks.
3. Barack Obama, however, does not suck.
Here's what I would like to point out about that speech: not the rhetoric or the sincerity or the measured and (oh my fucking god) nuanced understanding of race and racial relationships in America-- but that, for the first fifteen minutes of the speech, the audience was completely silent.
There were no orchestrated pauses that called for cheers, no sound-bite quips to rally the troops. There was only what Obama was saying, and blessed silence. And while that can often mean a politician is dead in the water (although that would have been entirely unlikely in this situation, given that it was a pro-Obama crowd), in this particular case it meant the opposite: the audience was clearly engaged. They were simply doing something that we don't do in this country any more-- they were listening. Closely. Listening for content. For detail. For nuance. They sat there for fifteen minutes-- which, let us acknowledge, is an eternity for a nation that cuts its teeth on Sesame Street segments and thirty-second commercials-- and let Obama build a complex argument about how race and our resentment of each other has forced this nation into stagnation. About how a person can disagree strongly with what another man says and does and even believes, and still be able to call that man family. And when the applause finally started to bubble out between the pauses in Obama's speech, they were often in odd places-- not at the emotional apex of the speech, but in whatever small crevices of silence were available. Because the audience had been listening, and evaluating, and thinking, and their response took time.
This was not the dance that we're used to in American politics; usually it's something like, talking point, dead grandma, applause; talking point, wounded veteran, applause. What Obama was giving us wasn't a waltz by Strauss-- it was something far more difficult to count, swirling off into five-eight time like Ravel's La Valse. (There's a link to a piano arrangement of it at the bottom of the page, if you'd like to know what I mean.) This was a speech that demanded that its audience pay attention to the damn beat for once. This was a speech that assumed that the American public is capable of facing a complex issue head on, and patient enough to listen to an argument that doesn't devolve into talking heads screaming at each other on nightly talk-show programs. This was a speech that respected the intelligence of its audience, and that-- that is something worth considering.
This is all really just a convoluted way of saying that this was a speech that engaged me. I watched it in its entirety, and I paid attention. I was, frankly, amazed at some of the risks Obama took; I have no idea how they'll help or hurt him politically. I do know that if I were his adviser, I would have been completely terrified at the idea of him giving this speech, because it goes against everything I know about how you win in American politics and how we talk about race in this nation. I do know that I am glad, glad, glad that he went ahead and gave it. And I also know that-- Democratic nominee or not, President or not-- this is a speech that our kids will read in high school, and we'll be able to say, "I heard that. I was there." And that's hardly a small thing.