Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia yesterday was beautiful, brave and seminal. The tv pundits weighing in last night were mostly laudatory. Even Bay Buchanan was positive. I give David Gergen the highest marks for being a white man who totally got the gravity and import of Obama's remarks. The comments I've read on the NY Times blog are scarily all over the place.
I actually feel sorry for the cynics and blow-hards who cannot seem to accept the possibility that what they heard from Obama was an honest and nuanced exploration of the racial tensions that have divided this country for more than 2 centuries. Are Americans so damaged from being lied to, spoken to like babies, and "spun" that we cannot even recognize a true, from-the-gut statement of belief anymore? I am told that Obama wrote the speech himself. Wonderful.
I personally believe this was the most important speech by an African American on race and reconciliation since Dr. Martin Luther King's 1961 I Have a Dream speech. I was 11 years old the summer of the March on Washington. Safely tucked away at my leftie liberal summer camp in the Hudson Valley, the directors of Camp Trywoodie actually stopped the day's activities and turned on a black and white tv in the camp dining hall so we could watch Dr. King. The very next summer, campers in the oldest group, including yours truly, premiered an original cantata on the March on Washington written by Earl Robinson, the McCarthy-era blacklisted composer of Ballad for Americans. I can still sing it from memory.
And so it is that speeches have power to melt cynicism, move hearts, minds and mountains. I have a dream that a thoughtful, articulate man named Barack Obama, whose story could only be possible in the United States of America, could be our next president.
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