Obama's Historic Speech and Why People Must Find Fault With It

You remember. When you were in school, sophomore year, learning how to write essays, the teacher would say "If you want to write a book or movie review that gets attention, and if the book or movie is pretty good and therefore gets many good reviews, write a critical review, make it negative so that people will notice it." So it's a little sophomoric trick to go out of your way to find fault. It's attention-seeking behavior. We're seeing a lot of that in the wake of Obama's historic speech yesterday about race and politics in America.

If anything were to happen to our dear Mr. Obama, if he were sick or injured or unable to continue his campaign for any reason, God forbid, that speech would be enshrined in the collective memory of the world henceforth. But as it is, in our sometimes shoddy little media-driven process, news commentators and talking heads want their fifteen minutes of fame, so they are trying to get attention by dissing the speech, by ripping it to shreds, by finding the most picayune little quibbles with it. Even the Clintons will probably find some way to diminish its greatness eventually, though they are smart enough to acknowledge it and lay low for a bit. Hillary said, somewhat proprietarily, "I'm glad he made it." As if she had told him to.

Come on! Let's hear it! Give it up for Barack! As the New York Times editorial "Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage" says, for starters:

"There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better."

Let's face it. He's younger than Hillary or John McCain. He's less experienced than Hillary or John McCain. But he is the very substance of greatness. He will learn and grow and we can nurture him with our support. He's grown beyond the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And there's plenty of reason to believe he can grow beyond Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He could lead us through some meaningful change. I'm starting to feel it in my bones.