Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Reaction to Obama Speech

After watching Barack Obama’s speech from March 18 in Philadelphia, I will say outright that I continue to be impressed with his ability to dance around every issue with such rhetorical elegance that even I start to fall into the passion that fuels the movement of Obama ’08. The man is a political animal; he continues to brilliantly portray himself as a political outsider and not the calculating, maneuvering politician that I believe him to be.

Before entering into the substance of his speech, one must take a step back and look at what led to the need for this speech and the parameters around which it was delivered. First, there is the underlying reason as to why Obama joined this church. This church is the epicenter of Chicago society – religiously, politically, and socially – everybody who is anybody attends this church (Oprah, Common, etc.) and Obama realized that he had to become a figure there if he wanted to advance in Chicago politics.

Second, one must not overlook the time at which he gave his speech, 11 am. Most people don’t think much of this but I started thinking as to why he would not give the speech prime time so that everyone could see what his position truly was – the basis for which the speech was supposed to be held. And then I realized the motive behind this – he did not want everybody to see this address first hand…BRILLIANT. This was an absolutely brilliant political move. By giving his speech at 11 am, the only large group of people who were available to view the speech was the media. The majority of Americans were either at work or at school, not available to view the speech first hand. Their only exposure to it was that evening, and the days that followed, when the media – which is in Obama’s back pocket – were sitting there signing its praises to everyone. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews went so far as to say it was the “first honest” speech he had heard about race in his lifetime. Sally Quinn hailed the speech as one of the greatest in all human history. Andrew Sullivan expressed similar enthusiasm, and delivered the verdict that “this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for a generation.” To allow the media to carry this story – the only perception of it that the public got was that it was “the greatest in all human history.” This was a brilliant political move on behalf of Obama and his campaign.

In regards to his speech, everything that was said about America and its history in its approach to racial issues was true. As I was watching the speech, I felt very much that I could be watching the next President of the United States, delivering his inaugural address in a desire to bring this nation into the future, a future that represents a post-racial society that has slowly been developing over the past 25 years.

Then I saw a caption at the bottom of the screen that read “Obama Speech Confronts Racial Division,” a thought that I have seen replayed by editorial columnists and media pundits throughout the past two days and reinforced as though he had just found the cure for cancer.

As I saw this, I started to think about what created the need for this speech in the first place. His need was not to outline the state of race relations in America but to address, and preferably denounce himself and his campaign from the hateful, anti-American rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright. In that regard, I feel he failed through his direct refusal to completely disconnect himself with Wright.

And then came the end of his speech, in which he talked about his white grandma and how he could not disconnect himself from her, despite her racist remarks that made him cringe, because of all the love and care she gave him. He reduced his grandmother to a rhetorical tool, invoking her love for him to manipulate our emotions and present it as a defense for his reluctance to denounce Wright. In essence he says, “I love Wright, who is black. I love my grandma, who is white. Would you have me damn my grandma by damning Wright, as he damned America?" It hurt me to watch it, and I sure hope it hurt him to say it.

Now, do I or any other American with half a brain believe that Obama agrees with such utter nonsense as was mentioned? Of course not! As Obama has said many times, he loves this country; as his story is one that is only written in the United States of America. The real issue that was not addressed was that Senator Obama sat for twenty years – nearly all of his adult life – and undoubtedly listened to such angry hate speech (that would certainly make his white, loving grandma cringe) and said, or more notably did, nothing about it. He did not leave the church, he did not protest the statements at the time they were made, he continued to be very close to a man that has a lot of favor with the community he needed to launch him into office. What troubles me, however, is that after twenty years of hearing these statements that he “disagrees with,” he brought this person into his family on some of the most intimate levels – Wright married the Obama and his wife and baptized both his daughters – and exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of "anti-white vitriol. "

Who you surround yourself with says a lot about who you are. Though Obama may disagree with Wright’s statements, the fact that he was willing to associate himself with Wright for so long either showed either a severe lack of judgment or a willingness to look the other way for political gain, either way an explicit contradiction of his self-proclaimed need to run for President.

But we also must remember that Obama joined Wright’s church for a reason, just as he maintained a close relationship with political fixer Tony Rezko for a reason. Obama is a smart man, he understands how things happen and what the process is to get them done. So on Tuesday, he did was he always does. He treaded lightly, tiptoeing around the Wright issue and shifting the debate to what has been propelling his ascendancy to the Presidency - Race, American hopes, and good old America guilt.

1 comment:

Doug said...

Response to GAMER881’s Obama Speech Reaction
I have questioned whether or not I should respond to this reaction of the Obama speech. I must say it angered me to read some of the comments and ideas in this reaction, and quite honestly I felt if I had responded to this quickly I would simply be jumping head first into a written war of words. My goal here is not to simply say things for the sake of saying them. Nor is it my goal to in a sense retaliate to an attack. You see, unlike like some people in the political arena, I don’t find it necessary to use scare tactics to get my audience to listen. No, instead, I am responding simply because you have given me no other choice. I will not be the appeaser of inadequate accusations. I will not simply stand by and let another person push the great lie. The Nazi’s believed that if you told a lie long enough people will start to believe it or at the very least comply with you. The Bush administration uses this tool constantly. From weapons of mass destruction to the fact that we must give up our freedom (Patriot Act) if we want to be free. It was wrong when the Nazi’s did it, it was wrong when the Bush administration did it, and it’s still wrong when you try to use it “harmlessly” in a class reaction. Now don’t get me wrong, it is not my intention to put you in the same company as Hitler or Bush, far from it. What I am saying, however, is do not let your emotions get the better of you. When you allow this, things start to suffer, such as your arguments and credibility.
Take your statement about Obama having the media in his back pocket. Are you actually trying to say that Obama, a young senator from Illinois, has more backing in the media than the Clintons and the Republican Party combined? It can’t be money or power that put Obama in this position because the Clintons alone have got him beat there. This is the same media that played the Rev. Wright tirades on a continuous loop for weeks, now which by your own accord put Obama in this position to deliver his speech on race.
Next you said the Senator loves Wright who is black and his Grandmother who is white and to denounce him would be like denouncing his grandmother for racial slurs she has said around him. First off, paraphrasing is not your strong suite my friend. I mean, really, “in essence”? I think if you looked at the speech again or read the transcript you might not feel the same way.
You then went on to say you actually cringed when you heard this. That he did not separate himself enough from Rev. Wright, which you believe, was the goal of the speech, a goal in which he failed to reach. Well once again this is simply not the case. It was not the intentions of the Senator to distance himself from Wright, but to show that he is not Wright. He did not make these claims, his Reverend did. Must we all be held accountable for the words of our religious advisors? Isn’t there a separation between church and state for a reason?
It’s funny how where you see something cringe worthy, I see something praise worthy. I think it says something about a man’s character when he doesn’t simply take the easy political way out and deny his involvement with a man who has shown his family compassion over the years. I don’t agree with many positions of my friends but this doesn’t mean I would ever deny my friendship just because of something my friend said. The words Wright said may not resonate well with most of the American public, but at the same time we must think about why a person would raise such radical claims. Why is there this frustration and hatred for the American government and ideology?
You say Obama tiptoed around the Wright issue, but in fact he delved deeper into the issue than one might notice at first glance. You see, in talking about what caused these outbursts of racial intolerance was deep seeded ideologies on the problems of a culture. Obama made it a speech about race because it was already an issue of race. Black peoples’ struggles, white people’ struggles, and every color and hue in between‘s struggles. It’s not black people who cause white problems or vice versa. We all struggle with different issues, but in the end we all struggle, and the only way to move forward as a nation is to come together as one. This is the message Obama was trying to convey, and he did so with eloquence and poise. I have waited to give this response because I know how much it stings when one’s political views are attacked. We do not always think with clear heads in times of anger. This is how wars are started, freedoms are lost, and lines of communication are severed. We must learn to use central processing as apposed to peripheral. We must take time and think before we act. "He only will succeed in attaining the eminence at which we aim . . . who shall learn to speak correctly before he learns to speak rapidly."
- Quintillian, Institutes of Oratory, Book 2, Ch.4