Obama's Speech On Wright and Race
We were in Amsterdam when he gave it, and I only got to see a clip from it on the BBC. Just saw the whole thing on YouTube.
Wow.
Seriously: wow.
I already have a very high opinion of Obama, but that speech was just damn good. There were actual ideas there. It was honest and sensible and insightful...and rather moving. I mean, it wasn't the Gettysburg address or anything, but it was head and shoulders above the kind of crap we normally get in American politics. In fact, it may have been the best speech I've ever heard a (live) president or presidential candidate give. (Probably the best was Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech, actually...but it's hard to say for sure.)
Anyway, I've got nothing intelligent to say about it now. I'm just expressing my amazement at how dang good it was.
[Almost forgot another great speech: Gore's concession speech in December of 2000. A truly great speech. During the campaign, my support for Gore had been tepid, and, in fact, I worked for Gore only because I was inclined to believe that Bush wasn't qualified to be president (turns out I was right...). But during that speech I finally saw something in Gore that genuinely inspired me. Alas, it didn't show up until it was too late. But there it was.]
We were in Amsterdam when he gave it, and I only got to see a clip from it on the BBC. Just saw the whole thing on YouTube.
Wow.
Seriously: wow.
I already have a very high opinion of Obama, but that speech was just damn good. There were actual ideas there. It was honest and sensible and insightful...and rather moving. I mean, it wasn't the Gettysburg address or anything, but it was head and shoulders above the kind of crap we normally get in American politics. In fact, it may have been the best speech I've ever heard a (live) president or presidential candidate give. (Probably the best was Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech, actually...but it's hard to say for sure.)
Anyway, I've got nothing intelligent to say about it now. I'm just expressing my amazement at how dang good it was.
[Almost forgot another great speech: Gore's concession speech in December of 2000. A truly great speech. During the campaign, my support for Gore had been tepid, and, in fact, I worked for Gore only because I was inclined to believe that Bush wasn't qualified to be president (turns out I was right...). But during that speech I finally saw something in Gore that genuinely inspired me. Alas, it didn't show up until it was too late. But there it was.]
posted by Winston Smith at
9:09 PM
23 Comments:
Ain't it the truth! It's a mark of how debased our national conversation is that the speech, which treated us undeservedly as rational adults, hasn't received universally high marks.
I've been unable to leave it alone here, here, and here.
Wish I'd been in Amsterdam instead!
Yeah, it's rather a fun place...
Actually I was thinking something more like: "jeez, it's a good speech, but it's kinda sad that all it takes to be the best speech of my lifetime is to be reasonably intelligent, honest, and reasonable."
Will check out your posts.
Oh, the high marks from the chattering class have been fairly universal, even from such unexpected quarters as Abigail Thernstrom.
However, the polls have not been as happy. Perhaps there are some underlying facts after all that one can't talk his way out of.
Why the sudden interest in facts, Tom? It's not like you...
And I see that you've picked up the meme what says that Obama can only talk. Nice! There should be a name for that fallacy. Someone comes along with a skill, S, and their opponents try to turn virtue into vice by claiming that somehow it's all the person has going for them.
So very, very lame...
And also:
Funny how this never bothered you Reaganites before. Now there's a guy who really DID have nothing going for him but his tongue. Obama, however, is also quite smart. Smarter than you or me, apparently, for whatever that's worth.
"talk his way out of"...! PHTTHPT! Hilarious! You should take your act on the road.
Reagan? I thought tu quoque was a no-no. Your rules, not mine.
As for 2008, many people picked out the part where Sen. Obama made an equivalency between the woman who raised him, his grandmother, and the angry and deluded Rev. Wright.
[Fact.]
Not only pure nonsense, but cheesy as well.
As for my act on the road, this is it, WS, right here. I don't get a lot out of spending all my time with people who agree with me.
As for Obama's speech, he talked the talk, and well.
But there are substantive problems with his 20-year association with Rev. Wright, and giving tens of thousands of dollars to him to spread a message that is very divisive and hurtful to this country. The walk the walk part.
Nope. The analogy to his grandmother was perfect. The point, as is plain to anyone trying at all to see it, is this: there are people who we love who do and say things we hate and disagree with. But that doesn't mean we give up on them completely.
Feeling that way about a preacher...well, it's not in my world. But I know people who are that way.
It's a simple point, really, and the one that first struck me about the speech. There's no doubt that Obama was right: the expedient thing would have been for him to cut Wright loose. I was pretty sad when he didn't do so, but I've got even more respect for the guy now.
Another thing that's making me more pro-Obama: the slightly spooky nature of the anti-Obama hysteria, and the attendant bad anti-Obama arguments...
No. There's not a difference only in degree, but in kind, between Obama's grandmother and Rev. Wright's harmful delusions.
And we don't choose our relatives. Sen. Obama was financing Rev. Wright as late as last year. If this were a right-wing Christian as loopy as Wright, you'd be off the hook about now.
And it was cheesy to drag the woman who raised him in any context but a positive one. My opinion of course, but I believe it'll be shared by a significant number of swing voters i.e, not you.
Well, this, as usual, fails to respond to my point, but who cares?
I'm actually undecided on the Wright business, but what you say here is no help.
Though I should bow out, as your anti-Obama mantras just make me, irrationally, more sympathetic to the guy.
Oh, also, you change the subject again, FYI. Originally you claimed that there was no good analogy b/w Wright and O's grandma. I pointed out that there was--both held views they shouldn't hold, but O embraces them both. Then you change the point to discuss the content of their messages.
Also: we don't choose our relatives, but that's irrelevant. One can disown or abandon a relative just like one can a friend or other acquaintance.
All you're doing here Tom is relentlessly pushing a position that you already have, which is unresponsive to facts or reasoning. Again, one must wonder, why?
Oh, the high marks from the chattering class have been fairly universal
An empirical claim, subject to falsification...
Charles Krauthammer (of course) of the Washington Post
Victor Davis Hanson on NRO
Jonah Goldberg (of course) in the LA Times
Kathryn Jean Lopez on NRO
Ed Koch on Yahoo
Gregory Rodriguez in the LA Times
Carol Platt Liebau on Townhall
Not an exhaustive search, but I'd say it falsifies TVD's claim above. What do you say, Tom - willing to admit error on this?
Well, I used the weasel word "fairly," in anticipation of some nitpicking like this.
Every louse brings nitpicking.
So, for you, 'fairly universal' means what, exactly?
Good of you, however, to admit the use of a word in a weaselly fashion.
Astonishing you would spend that much time rounding up and typing out links to try to prove me wrong on a throwaway point, LL. It's impossible for me to waste anyone's time as much as they waste their own.
And then you insult me with the "louse" thing. Unclever, and crude. You got issues, man, and they have nothing to do with me.
WS, you bought Obama's comparison of his grandmother and Rev. Wright. I find it completely absurd. But that's my opinion.
My greater point was about the swing voter, and how this will affect the election. So far, apparently a lot of people weren't buying.
http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=17217
Was it a good speech? Sure, as long as we ignore its political objective, to put out the Rev. Wright fire.
Issues? Me? Sure, a constitutional aversion to bullshit, your stock in trade.
It's telling that you won't even admit this error, that instead you'll deprecate your "throwaway point" without acknowledging it to be false. Of course, they all appear to me to be throwaway points. And in time, when needed, you'll abandon any of them.
Of course, the utter, undeniable fact is that what is now your throwaway point was a direct contradiction of the basis of my statement, a bridge to your polls. You knew that when you wrote it, but now that knowledge is inconvenient, so you deny it. This is known as bullshitting.
Sorry, I should tell you to please my word stop spouting such whoopsy-daisies piffle-filled sophistry. But no.
Personally, I think you should dispose of your output in a compost pile, rather than the way you currently do. If you turn those often enough, they don't stink.
Go ahead, take offense again at my horribly crude language, which must appall you so much that you can't finish your needlepoint for all the shaking.
Oh, it's the crudeness of thought, not language, that offends me.
Oh, sure, silly man. Forget all your past statements. Again. You're the black comedy remake of "50 First Dates".
But if you ever get up the stones to take your act on the road, let me know.
Oh, it's the crudeness of thought, not language, that offends me.
One of these things is not like the others
one of these things doesn't belong..............
The subject is Obama, not TVD. What's wrong with you guys?
We're just adducing contradictions, and that makes it seem to be about you, TVD.
Oh, and then there's the rhetoric that you bring on yourself. That, of course, is about you, just as your offenses are against one or more of the rest of us.
And what mistake are you making, LL and DA?
Not making our gibes funny and entertaining enough? Humor is hard work - like guverminting or doing the soft shoe at the White House.
Faux Marlowesque posturing (in the Phillip sense) along with a tendency to clutch at the pearls rather than address a response isn't an effective approach?
(Sorry, that's not my mistake)
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