Obama's sermon in Atlanta 1/20/08

That's a great story.

 

He also posed for a picture with my daughter and was quite gracious when I explained to him how I'd sent him a Christmas card every year since he went to the Four Corners in the 1977 championship game.

 

"Dean be better next time "

 

OK, now THAT was funny.

 

I disagree with both assertions. Stating that there is a disparity is merely stating fact. Saying that it is a societal problem is also a fact. As a society we should be emphasizing education, challenge, and reading. Instead we are promoting White Castle (“Yeah. He’s one of ours.”), video games and text books that hate evolution. If you want to break down the disparity, you need to promote a means for the lower end to advance to the higher end.

I wouldn’t call that communism. I would call that capitalizing on a system that should promote the most educated.

 

Pastor, I guess we'll just have to disagree. Those may be statements of fact, but their presence in this particular speech smacks of class warfare. The phrasing he used is prototypical class warfare rhetoric, and I still maintain it has no place in a speech about national unity. He'll not have any credibility as a bridge builder unless he tones that down.

 

Where's the beef?

 

Foots?

[Yeah, yeah. I took a day off. So sue me.]

I'm now analyzing why Huckabee's sermons are less palatable to me than Obama's. That statement about amending the Constitution may have something to do with it.

 

Too bad about your rep here . . . . . because I think there is wisdom in these particular words that I quoted.

People want that inspiring politician, usually young, who makes speeches that sound like sugar for the ears. Clinton was well-coached by his Hollywood friends and pulled off this image. Hell, I own a videotape of JFK's great speeches, and I was more than a decade from beuing born when he was assassinated.

The point in the NY Times article about Obama's speechwriters taking inspiration from JFK, RFK and MLK s not a surprising one. But at this point, how much of the extreme love for Obama is based on wonderful speeches (and they are excellent, absolutely) and cult of personality, with the edges filled in by his hopeful supporters?

To be fair, this happens all the time in politics. It's like being a political fanboy. People see things, see positives, that might not be there because they want so much for the person they support to be able to fulfill their wildest dreams and fantasies of how a politician shoul be. In 2004, some put Kerry on a pedestal because they wanted so badly to tell themselves they were voting for quality, not just "The guy not named Bush."

Obama is a guy who has spent much of his life in political office . . . campaigning for the next-highest office. And he is indisputably one hell of a campaigner and speaker. But he also has an unjaded quality, an "optimistic idealism" at best, almost a "naivete" at worst, that I know a lot of people like. And as a journalist, I will be very interested to see if, when that inevitable tipping point happens, how well he will react when idealism is no longer enough.

 

What's so bad about class warfare?

 

Nothing, if you're a communist

 

I took that as a reference to the shrinking middle class in this country, not an attack on rich people.