Obama's speech

sorry to post on politics. if it aint your bag, feel free to ignore it. but
whatever your political persuasion, wherever you come from, i think you'll agree
there hasn't been a speech like this from an american political figure in 40 years.

you may have seen clips on the daily show, or on the news with stupid commentary
from pundits, but if you missed the speech in its entirety, i think it's worth a
look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwe7wtvbluu

watch, ignore the comments, reflect.

it's also available on son of shun as avi. & for any interested in this sort
of thing (proper, healthy rhetoric) there's another on there, "river of blood,"
about enoch powell's 1968(?) speech. (i didn't dl - don't know british
politics)

well i was.
...heck, even that lunatic bill o'rielly seemed to have liked it...
i thought it was brilliantly eloquent & very moving.

i hope the american people have the sense to recognise the importance of having someone with
international appeal & intelligence as your head of state.
for the world needs someone with a different viewpoint & attitude to be in charge of that country. not
just for your own citizenry, but for most of the other parts of the world that is affected by us foreign
policy.


it's ridiculous how all the focus is on that pastor bloke & not on obama himself.
catholic church has paedophile priests, yet people still associate with the catholic church, islam has
crazed fundamentalists within, yet people still follow allah, etc...

no-one seems to mention that obama kept saying 'former' pastor throughout his speech.
my parents & cousins seem to dislike anyone not similiar to themselves. we argue & basically agree to
disagree. they raised me. i have my own mind. i am not them.
shit, some even voted liberal in the last elections down here. pissed that rudd got in, while i was
pleased as punch.

also it's actually kind of incendiary of hillary clinton & her 'not that i know of...' type of recourse she
takes when trying her sneaky & distancing form of tarnishment in regards to obama's character...
almost closet republican in many ways.

us politics just seems fraught with childish schoolyard taunting.

the amount of obvious racists on the comments pages of the washington post, new york times, etc...
is gobsmacking... the mind boggles.
they come out in droves down here on low-brow newspaper comment pages as well.

race obviously needs a massive discourse in the us. obama has helped that dialogue begin.
no-one else seems to have the balls to confront it.
i'm sure obama has always wanted to, but didn't want to derail or clog up his campaign while he has to
ward off attacks from his fellow democrat. i'm sure in time he would get around to it. kind of obvious
with his well written & thoughtful speech that he has the ability to express what those who criticise him
could never do.

i only have one possible word to describe obama. evil. wait, 2 words. pure evil.

i just fed it to my cat, he loved it

thanks dmf

sorry numi

aydin1954 feel free to delete it. i won't be offended. but i think you miss a
point: it isn't about the election at all. it's about never having heard a us
president (or possible president-to-be) make such a frank and mature speech in
my lifetime. i'd be just as impressed (though more shocked) had bush made it,
or had any other major world political figure delivered such a speech on the
reality of racial or cultural division.

...which you would \"remember\" from when you were, what, 9 or 10? you\'re
only
25.

i dare say, maybe you have to reach back further than your personal experience
to fully appreciate the power of excellent political speech, and it\'s ability
to elevate a culture.

paraphrasing: you say that \"99% of political speech is meaningless.\" and,
yet,
you watch mel gibson give \"rousing speeches\" as a character in a movie set in
a
culture, time, and place where speech had absolute impact.

well, 40 years ago (15 years before you could have experienced it), america -
our place and culture - could be collectively inspired and unified by a finely-
crafted, eloquent oratory. real political motivations aside, an amazing speech
was what \"got us to the moon, before a decade was out.\" speech used to matter.

i think quasipseudopizzaoid\'s intent, in the original post, was to say:
\"watch
this speech. listen to this speech. *this* is what a speech is supposed to be.\"

quasipseudopizzaoid didn\'t promote the message of the speech, necessarily; and
certainly didn\'t advocate for the speaker, as a candidate. had s/he, i would
have absolutely agreed with aydin1954 to delete this thread. hell, i hope i
would have requested it.

eztv is a pioneer site in a new media distribution model. it\'s also an
international site. as such, it\'s not within the site\'s mission to provide
chat-
space for even international issues, let alone those of any specific country
(and *ugh* especially not those of the crap-fest we americans call our current
political culture).

but what quasipseudopizzaoid posted here is precisely parallel to what eztv
does. the post pointed to an available example of a medium that was virtually
banished from the limited bandwidth of the old distribution system. the exile
of honest, focused, eloquent, inspirational rhetoric (as a communication
medium) has been so long, it takes someone who remembers it from 40 years ago
to recognize it.

metaphorically: what this speech represents is the delivery of a sonnet, after
a 40-year dearth of limericks, in a culture that considers two-lines-
rhymed \"poetry.\"

i hope the bit of international community that drops in on this thread will
bear with us, and help us re-elevate our culture by offering any links to any
other examples of excellent oratory. having seen this speech, i find that
spareakee-likee. (ha! see? i wrote a poem!)

thank you.

it really gets me every time people say that there is nothing there with obama
except for speeches. as someone who has read hundreds of pages of policy
positions of the remaining candidates, i can say that obama has the most thought
out positions of any of them. most importantly about his candidacy, however is
that he wants to get people involved and make the functions of the government
open and visible to everyone.

maybe no one will really sit and watch fcc meetings streamed on the internet or
discussions between the pharma industry and the fda, but now that stuff is going
to be available, and even the thought that someone in that position does
something "shady", they could end up on cnn in 10 minutes is enough to keep a
lot of bad stuff from happening. same goes for all those government contracts
that we spend billions on every year. sunlight is the best disinfectant, and
obama is the only one of the three that even hints that he wants to open up the
system to you and me. after 8 years of an administration that everyone agrees
keeps just about everything as some sort of secret, this is exactly the type of
thing we need.

the added bonus is that the people of the world already seem to like the cut of
this guy's jib more than any other candidate would also go a long way to helping
dig america out of this horrible pit of ill-will we have dug ourselves in. it
will be nice to be able to not have to wear my maple leaf backpack whenever i
travel internationally.

thank you, dmfaust. well met.

you and other fans of great speech may enjoy:
guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/greatspeeches
americanrhetoric.com
(sorry for not doing a little google-work before asking for pointers to
examples of excellent rhetoric, all)

that's the problem. we have to vote on what someone says they'll do and the
promises they make instead of what they will do.

i mean you could probably run quite a bit of footage of the promises and
things bush said in his speeches while trying to get elected, and the exact
opposite of those things happening or him doing nothing about them.

i don't think there is any good way to measure how good these candidates will
be in the presidential office. experience can't be the only thing.

personally, i like that obama isn't as experienced as the others. it means
that he probably isn't as corrupted as the other candidates. i just think the
political system is incredibly corrupt right now. no evidence really to
support that. it just seems that way.

the 2 party system is also so dumb too. but i don't want to get into it. i
can't say obama would make a great president because i don't know, but he
seems passionate about making a difference. hopefully, he can do that, and
it's not just a facade. i'm kind of basing this on his body language and
stuff. so i could be wrong.

i do think election are too much about popularity, good looking, and good
speech giving skills, instead of strong leadership, high intelligence, and
good problem-solving skills, and probably good ideas. but how do you measure
those and campaign them? i'm sure candidates wouldn't want to campaign on
their iq unless they were the one person with the highest iq.

you could also have strong leadership skills, a high intelligence, and good
problem solving skills, but if you're not passionate about being president or
don't put the effort into it, you're not going to do well probably.