Barack Obama’s Speech

Obama just made a speech. In Pennsylvania, where they haven’t voted for anyone yet. CRAZY, right? That people are still voting in the freaking primary. I digress, as usual but come on! I want a nominee! Obama made a speech, and I didn’t get to watch it, but I read it. You should read it.

This man right here knows how to use his words- remember in day care whenever you hit someone they put you time out and said “Use your words?” Well that never really happened to me but my little brother was a violent kind of kid and he still needs to learn his words. But Barack Obama learned his word lesson, maybe at Harvard University OR MAYBE AT A MUSLIM SCHOOL INTENDED TO TEACH MUSLIMS TO INFILTRATE THE PRESIDENCY.

Obama brought it all together- embedding the issue of racism, the race, and his controversial Pastor. In what could have denigrated into a grovel, a “rejection and denouncement” which everyone called for, he didn’t exactly defend himself but he did not cave in. His speech is great. I know he probably had a speech writer or something, but this speech is great. Here is a passage that is paticularly personal and sensitive:

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. “

This stuff makes me think “oh god I am boring” but I think it also illicits an openness of mind- Obama is frank, realistic and honest. These are admirable qualities. The rest of his speech does not shirk from the difficulties he, and the country, face. I’m not sure what people expected from this speech, I pretty much found it was happening three minutes before it did. The tone of his speech was kind of sad. He addressed race in stark terms. He mentioned slavery. He said the word inequality. And he alluded to The Constitution, which backs him the fuck up. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he pwned the speech, he emerged as an open-minded, determined black man. He said this:

“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.”

Fucking right. The presidential election is NOT the OJ Trial. And seriously, I wish people who not use any adjectives before/after/qualifying the names HILLARY CLINTON and BARACK OBAMA until one of them is elected president. Oh right, there’s a republican nom, I forgot. Wow. I’ll be posting another blog sometime soon based on the fact that John McCain calls his supporters “aces”.

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