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EX_TURPI
I enjoyed reading the article; though pro-Obama it was not insulting and gave her perspective as only someone of her caliber can.Peggy Noonan is actually presenting a better picture, and analysis, on the state of race in America today. She is, however, wishfully-thinking what Obama was saying, and gives her own interpretations, especially in this passage:
Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.
This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period.
Spot on about the immgrant expereince, as my family and I happen to fall into that category.
Obama however was not frank - his speech writer was. And what it was again was just lovely rhetoric which offered no passionate feel, or promise of union. Remember that in that same speech he distanced himself from his own grandmother. In an era of a campaign where wants to cater to Reagan Democrats it does not surprise me that Reagan's ex-speech writer would praise him so. If he wants to cater to the middle class - that middle class that his supporters turn their noses up at- he needs to leave the mellifluous wording at home and communicate with a vernacular that everyone will understand. He needs to speak from the heart, and sadly he doesn't. To speak form the heart, you need to be at peace with yourself first, and Obama - black one day, mixed the next, Christian at Christmas, Muslin on Ramadan, needs to assert himself first and foremost.
I especially appreciate her analysis of the Obamas' perception of the state of America today:
Here's what didn't work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn't summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak?
This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches.
But most people didn't experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn't that way. Do the Obamas know it?
This is a lot of baggage to bring into the Executive Mansion.
posted by
NewYorker_in_Sicily
on March 22, 2008 at 12:13 PM
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OOPS!
My Bad - wrong article. I'm reading the peggy Noonan one onw.
posted by
NewYorker_in_Sicily
on March 22, 2008 at 11:07 AM
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Ex_Turpi
I heard about Kerry's "motivated" endorsement of Obama yesterday. John Kerry is a slimy piece of sh*t, ignorant, arrogant, absolutely sickening and makes me glad that he never won the 2004 election. Seriously, Obama should put dignity before ambition and denounce his endorsement as much as he should Farrakhan's. I never liked John Kerry, and I'm thankful he never endorsed Hillary Clinton.
posted by
NewYorker_in_Sicily
on March 22, 2008 at 11:04 AM
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May I direct you to page W16 of today's Wall Street Journal. Please read Peggy Noonan's Declarations. As far as I recall, Peggy was a speechwriter for President Reagan. Enough said.
posted by
EX_TURPI
on March 22, 2008 at 10:35 AM
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Excellent work...so well-stated!
posted by
teddypoet_TheGoodByeFade
on March 22, 2008 at 8:07 AM
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His revved up Rev. spouts off and he makes everybody else feel guilty
Classic bait and switch. The magician employs a little sleight of hand and manages to seamlessly redirect your attention from where he doesn't want it and over to the mystifying smoke and mirrors of flowery words.
Excellent writing here, NewYorker. Barak might have pulled this off if he'd had you writing for him. Oh, if you didn't insist that pesky little nuisance called truth.
posted by
CunningLinguist
on March 20, 2008 at 8:42 AM
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I'm curious.........
If Obama gets the nomination what will you do regarding the general election?
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on March 19, 2008 at 7:24 AM
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Those who are gullible will accept Obama’s brilliant rhetoric as the compass to his thinking. They can try to convince themselves that a man who continues to belong to a church that describes itself on its Web site as “unashamedly black” will unify the country.......but your post is to the vast majority that now are beginning to see the man for what he is.....
posted by
Corbin_Dallas
on March 19, 2008 at 7:22 AM
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A Very Well Thought Out Post
You won't make many friends among his supporters with it though. It seems that Truth has become the first casualty of the political process regardless of party. What do you think would happen if a Truly Honest man/woman were to stand up and seek election?
posted by
white-cossack
on March 19, 2008 at 2:11 AM
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New Yorker in Sicily
Well my goodness darlin' you sure shook an old man up tonight, you are a marvelous writer and you sure made me think.
I operate more on emotions than common sense and plead guilty to having lived a life that way. I was taken in by Obama's speech today and even came away thinking of him as a venerable 'Statesman' in the making and his speech soul stirring.
Mother would have told me I'm fickle because after reading this well written post of yours, it did make me wonder why he had stayed so long in a church preaching that hate abot America.
Thanks for making me think luv, and I really appreciate you. I
posted by
WileyJohn
on March 18, 2008 at 9:46 PM
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