Obama, echoing Martin Luther King, invokes Jericho - the walls came tumbling down when the people heard the prophetic horn and shouted with one voice. To the many ways in which we are atomized (race, class, gender, political party, geography, religion) add the market mentality: producer in her cubicle, a manager construing a spreadsheet, a consumer wandering the mall, rating agencies with their metrics guiding consumer choice, a stock market with numbers going up and down. Leadership speaks to us in another voice and creates from many what no one can buy or sell. That we do not know this about ourselves, that power is collectively ours to take, simply by raising our voices, shows how well the forces of atomization have done their jobs in the last 40 years.
Post a comment
Your Information
(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)
He sounds like a true leader. I hope he gets the chance to prove it one way or the other.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 10:41 AM
Hmmm.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 11:09 AM
Now this
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 11:21 AM
If Obama was a movie script, what would the one-line "pitch" be?
Hillary's?
Bill's?
Others?
In Hollywood jargon, a "log line" is a one-sentence summary of the pitch for a proposed movie or television series. Such a sales pitch is often used by a screenwriter to secure development support from a studio executive, such as a producer. [snip] ...[It] often provid[es] both a synopsis of the program's plot, and an emotional "hook" to stimulate interest. [my emph]
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Hope monger eats Washington, people unite, walls crumble.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:07 PM
real videa link. He really gets into it and goes off the text. Great speech.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:08 PM
I wonder if that phrase has any Google juice.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:10 PM
Hope monger eats Washington, people unite, walls crumble.
What's the primary hook: eating, uniting, or crumbling? ;-)
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 01:14 PM
Here's flash video of the Ebenezer Baptist Speech on yootoob (34 min.)
The version on the barrackobama.com site crapped out repeatedly on my modestly powered machine...
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 01:18 PM
Which phrase, Hope Monger Eats Washington?
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 01:20 PM
Yeah, maybe. I tried the whole thing which wasn't very edifying. Just "hope monger" is already well linked to Obama.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:30 PM
Yeah, it needs work. The imagery is eating leading to crumbling. Then there is the image from his Jerico reference of the sound of a united people causing the walls of the kingdom to come down. I figure it was in inside job.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:33 PM
It's so quiet around the Dumpster. A waste of Phil being out of town and not being able to keep tabs on us.
At least Albert and Stuart got in a few shots.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:36 PM
The S.O.B. (Supporter of OBama) is still outta town??
Albert and Stuart crack me the uck fup! Sucking gin from the carpet, I mean, wassup???
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 01:46 PM
I was listening to a radio program talking about unsung heros in music, you know, drummers, bass players, rhythm guitar and so on.
It's like that with straight men in comedy or satire, the best are often overlooked because they are practically invisible. And yet without them there is no party.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 01:52 PM
This is a real good flick in that vein: Rising Low. Related to Allen Woody, former bass player for Government Mule.
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 02:14 PM
How about Hope Floats wherein Barack accepts the VP nomination and is caricatured as a pair of water wings under each of Hillary's arms?
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 02:16 PM
...and Bill backstrokes through the frame in a white t-shirt wetly emblazoned: A TOWN CALLED HOPE.
(I suppose he could be spouting water out his mouth, too, the big whale.)
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 02:24 PM
Leaving the Mayflower Hotel with Albert to get in a cab, we heard music and raucus laughter. Coming down the street were about 40 students with signs saying, "Students for a Democratic Society," "End the War." Seems that the old riffs -SDS remakes, MLK remakes - are still the best. I keep seeing in my mind's eye, the face of Irving Kristol smiling at my egalitarian barbs. It must have reminded him maybe of his days as a Trotskyite. I might have been making him nostaglic.
The one point I made that got past the smiles in the room was about Dynastic Wealth. I asked one notable if he would like to leave a family name that would last 1,000 years? If so, if we do want a society populated with notable families, would that be like an aristocracy? And if so would he defend excellence, nobility, the classical learning that forms a public-spirited, magnanimous, elite? That line of thought did get past the smiles with which one greets golden oldies reprised.
I suspect that the rhetoric that finally brings down the walls will be more unsettling than that heard from Obama.
Posted by: phil | January 21, 2008 at 02:26 PM
nostalgia makes me nostalgic. i haven't felt it in a very long time...
...hey, mr. kristol. are you gonna eat that?
Posted by: archy | January 21, 2008 at 02:46 PM
What I like about Obama, his speeches and his campaign, is that he is taking a road that he can be proud of whether it works or not. The gambit is that truly working to unite the nation is more important than the presidency. Whether or not he wins, he has a platform and attention and the opportunity to do something with it. I do read him as the sort of leader who isn't telling us what to do, but inviting us to remake the world alongside him, and ready to make the best advantage of the opportunities that come his way. Not so much for how it effects him personally, but for all of us.
If you critique his speech as pure political sermon to the nation, in my opinion it gets very high marks. What do you think?
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 03:22 PM
(I suppose he could be spouting water out his mouth, too, the big whale.)
Have him do the crawl, relocate the spout, and take it direct to cable.
Posted by: Peter Goober | January 21, 2008 at 03:42 PM
Gerry, will he take the VP if offered?
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 03:49 PM
I don't know. I would if I were in his position and couldn't win outright.
To quote my wife, The Truth is a Great White Whale, with no apologies to Melville.
Posted by: Gerry | January 21, 2008 at 03:55 PM
I suspect that the rhetoric that finally brings down the walls will be more unsettling than that heard from Obama.
It's hard to get past the belief that Obama is preaching to the (Friedman) choir.
Posted by: JJ Commoner | January 21, 2008 at 04:23 PM
That would be a choir of whales (in the casino sense?)
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 04:44 PM
Or the fresh faced college kids (and their "fresh faced" elders.)
Posted by: Antoine Möeller | January 21, 2008 at 04:56 PM
Have been an Obama supporter for about a year. Living in NH got to see him up close and in small crowds a couple of times. Guy is amazing. Can think on his feet, and really engages with questions and ideas in a way I haven't seen from a politician in my lifetime.
I doubt he would take the VP slot, and I doubt it would be offered. The two styles of "uplift hope" and "51% mofo" don't mix too well. ;)
Posted by: Michael J. | January 23, 2008 at 10:23 AM
"51% mofo." A phrase to remember. Our turn to pillage.
Posted by: phil | January 23, 2008 at 01:32 PM