Yes we can! does not inspire me much, unless it’s a Pointer Sisters song, or the title of Sammy Davis Jr.’s autobiography ( Yes I Can ). As Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, my response is usually, “How do you know?” It’s not like he’s ever done it before. He was pretty much a failure as a community organizer, his legal career was undistinguished, at best, his Illinois Senate stint, as well a his University of Chicago law professor job were part-time. He lost his only competitive political race, and was nudged, limping, into the winner’s circle of the nomination by rather dubious means. In other words, what makes anybody think “he can”?
Did I mention he’s black?
I wish that meant something. As a black woman, I wish the historic nature of having a black man running for President of the United States of America had more than symbolic significance as the fulfillment of “The Dream.” I wish we could be absolutely sure it meant that America had finally woken up.
If you’re like me and can’t bear the thought of enduring the sound of Obama’s voice or the spectacle of his preening, never fear, I am here for you. In another weird twist of fate, we are able to exploit MSNBC’s Obamalove to our benefit. They have helpfully provided a full transcript so you can read the speech and get it over with. I’m sure you have toenails to clip or recipes to file or something. Enjoy.
Who, in their right mind wants to be on another mailing list? Obama thinks you should be. In an attempt to beef up voter registration, Camp O is using the Magical Mystical Marketing and Malarkey Masquerade, or his acceptance speech, to reach out and touch the great unwashed. I am not kidding. Yahoo News is reporting that supporters were being asked to participate in a novel Get Out The Vote experiment.
In the hours before he made his entrance, these supporters were being asked to text message the Obama campaign and their friends and to make phone calls from specially tailored call sheets as part of an unprecedented effort to mobilize voters and get nonvoters to register.
WTF?
Obama’s campaign has identified 55 million voting age Americans across the country who are not registered to vote. It has done this by comparing registration lists with lists of potential voters gleaned from consumer databases the same way credit card companies track people’s spending.
Campaign officials estimates more than two-thirds would vote for Obama.
Optimism, or delusion? You decide.
About three hours before Obama was scheduled to speak, his camp sent a text message of its own to anyone who had asked to be notified of his running mate selection last week. “Final night of the conventions tonight — don’t miss Barack’s speech!” the message said. “To get involved locally, REPLY: VOL plus your FIRST NAME and TOWN”
Clever, right?
While the outreach to voters and nonvoters is by itself a useful tactic, the calls will generate useful lists of phone numbers, many of them identified by the specific issue of interest to the person on that end of the call.
I don’t know about you, but I get enough damned unsolicited junk calls, one more might just push me right off the edge. Besides, given Obie’s FISA vote, the last thing I want him to have is easy access. But what a great way to pimp a legacy, huh? MLK would be proud.
Imagine that Martin Luther King had stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial forty-five years ago today, demanding justice for African Americans from their non-representative government, without having accomplished a single Civil Rights victory.
Now, imagine Barack Obama today.
“But, but, but, Obama’s blaaaaaack! ( stomping feet ) You gotta vote for the black guy! Ya don’t want the whole world to think were, like, racist, or something, do ya? Huh? Huh?”
This has been the subtext of the Obama campaign since the earliest days. First, he had to convince black America he was really black; white America always thought he was more than black enough, thank you very much.
Perhaps what the nation has liked most is not what Obama has said or done but what he is. In short, Obama is a black man who does not scare white people. This is mostly not Obama’s fault. He is who he is. He has a life to live, a job to do and a book to promote. He cannot be held responsible for a white paranoia that–outside the music, sports and entertainment industries–demands: If you have to be black, then please don’t be too black.
No, it was black people who needed convincing, thus the “I am too, black!” phase of the contest. Obama himself shared the heartwarming fairy tale of his conception, “Selma Got Me Born” with an audience in South Carolina, and by extension, the world. Michelle Obama told black people to stop with the Jemimah mentality and, “wake up and get it,” Later, Oprah, safely black enough for all America, actually made an appearance for somebody other than herself, breaking a long-standing tradition, to stump for him.
Of course, this script was not written by an anxious Obama, motivated to legitimize himself in the eyes of his brethren, the architect of much of this racial bridge was CNN’s Roland Martin, who insinuated himself into the Obama orbit in much the same way Johnny Cochran took over the Dream Team in the O. J. Simpson case; he volunteered his advice based upon his observation of perceived impending disaster if the racial dynamic wasn’t altered.
Obama had no built-in advantages with the black community, he was foreign to it. Even in Chicago, though he had been involved in voter registration campaigns, community organizing and efforts to mobilize and coordinate black chuch out reach efforts, Bobby Rush had no trouble painting him as an out-of-touch, uppity snob, and ultimately crushed him when Obama had the temerity to challenge the incumbent for his seat in the House.
Mr. Rush told The Chicago Reader, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool. We’re not impressed with these folks with these Eastern elite degrees.”
He complained that for Rush to continually invoke his Harvard background as though it were a slur sent the wrong message to his young constituents. In a striking Martin Luther King Day op-ed in the Chicago Defender, he drew attention to tension among African Americans of Rush’s own generation, arguing that black disunity was part of what made King’s courage important: “A sizable percentage of the black elite in the pre-Civil Rights south,” Obama noted, “had vested interests in maintaining the racial status quo, and vilified protesters within the community.” (This year, Obama’s longstanding willingness to “call out” the black community has impressed many whites, and made some blacks ambivalent.)
Obama’s subsequent Senate races seem not to have relied on overwhelming black support, it is said he re-drew the map of his district to include more whites, negating the necessity of depending primarily upon blacks.
The idea was to create enough Democratic-leaning districts so that the Party could take control of the state legislature. That goal was fine with Obama; his new district offered promising, untapped constituencies for him as he considered his next political move. “The exposure he would get to some of the folks that were on boards of the museums and C.E.O.s of some of the companies that he would represent would certainly help him in the long run,” Corrigan said.
In the end, Obama’s North Side fund-raising base and his South Side political base were united in one district. He now represented Hyde Park operators like Lois Friedberg-Dobry as well as Gold Coast doyennes like Bettylu Saltzman, and his old South Side street operative Al Kindle as well as his future consultant David Axelrod. In an article in the Hyde Park Herald about how “partisan” and “undemocratic” Illinois redistricting had become, Obama was asked for his views. As usual, he was candid. “There is a conflict of interest built into the process,” he said. “Incumbents drawing their own maps will inevitably try to advantage themselves.”
For many black activists in Obama’s adopted home state, who might be expected to form the core of his political base, a central question still looms about the man who has risen speedily over 11 years from state lawmaker to U.S. senator to a sensation in the 2008 presidential campaign: As he works to appeal to voters across the nation, will Obama stand firm for black people and black causes?
We still don’t know the answer to that question. Obama has, throughout his career, been critical of African Americans. The New York Times relates a story from Obama’s early days as a community organizer, when a planned meeting between the tenants of the Altgeld Gardens Housing Project and the housing authority got a little out of hand.
The crowd of about 700 residents grew irritable in the stifling heat and booed the director when he arrived an hour and 15 minutes late, according to people who were there, as well as newspaper accounts.
The meeting became even more raucous after the director indicated that the agency still did not have a plan to remove the asbestos. The director abruptly left 15 minutes into the meeting after a resident wrestled with him for the microphone. Angry tenants followed him out the door, chanting, “No more rent!”
Later, relating the incident to a friend, Obama criticized the residents.
“Barack basically talked about how tough it was to generate real results through organizing and that it was embarrassing to him to have the residents out of control,” he recounted.
Who was in charge of the meeting? Why was he embarrassed? Because he failed, or the residents didn’t behave the way he wanted them to?
Obama’s views on issues important to black Americans are hard to pin down. In the Chicago Reader article from 1995, he said:
Let’s talk about creating a society, not just individual families, based on these values. Right now we have a society that talks about the irresponsibility of teens getting pregnant, not the irresponsibility of a society that fails to educate them to aspire for more.”
In 2008, he wants to legislate the problem:
Obama said he would co-sponsor a bill, with Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, that his campaign said would address the “national epidemic of absentee fathers.” If passed, the legislation would increase enforcement of child support payments and strengthen services for domestic violence prevention.
“They were spirited, good-humored women [the women he worked
with at Developing Communities], those three, women who—without husbands to help—somehow
managed to raise sons and daughters, juggle an assortment of part-time jobs and small business schemes,
and organize Girl Scout troops, fashion shows, and summer camps for the parade of children that wandered
through the church every day.” [Dreams of My Father, p.167]
It seems clear that Obama’s relationship with the black community is complicated at best; often divisive, in his campaign against Alice Palmer, who recommended that Obama run for her vacant Senate seat when she mounted an ultimately unsuccessful run for Congress, Obama refused to step aside when she lost:
Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer’s hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.
“I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant,” Obama said. “It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently.”
His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.
Right or wrong, the question is open as to whether the greater good was served. Rarely is any large accomplishment touted in Obama’s favor as a result of any of his actions. This is not limited to Obama’s relationship with black Americans, his record is equally thin in the national arena. Other than his criticisms of past politicians and activists and his willingness to shift the onus of responsibility from the government and place it on the overburdened shoulders of the victims, what does he offer? Is the tokenism represented by putting a black face on government indifference enough? Can the ideal of grassroots mobilization co-exist with the reality of corporate sponsorship? To whose benefit?
Barack Obama is both black and white, but when one researches his record, a case can be made that he can just as easily be considered neither. His lack of discernible core beliefs reflect questionable integrity and form a sharp contrast with the man whose legacy he now co-opts for his benefit. Martin Luther King was willing to risk his life, his freedom and his reputation, if proven necessary to advance the goals attendant to his firmly held beliefs. What will Obama risk? For what? The illusion of inclusion is relatively easy to attain, real equality is much more difficult to achieve. Yes, forty-five years ago today, Martin Luther King demanded that America make good the bad check it had issued to its’ black citizens. On this anniversary, Barack Obama will accept the nomination for president from the Democratic Party. Yet, he did not win it outright, his claim to the nomination is tainted and tenuous at best. He has been coddled, protected and assisted over the line like William “Refrigerator” Perry tried to carry Walter Payton across the goal line en route the Super Bowl. Only in the case of Obama, it will count as a victory.
The Democrats have nominated The First Official Affirmative Action African American Token Presidential Candidate.
It seems that Caesar Obama was not born to oratory. Color me surprised. Going back to his days as a lawyer, Obama was not known as a great speaker, according to a July 15, article by Ronald Kessler:
A review of the cases Obama worked on during his brief legal career “shows he played the strong, silent type in court, introducing himself and his client, then stepping aside to let other lawyers do the talking,” the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.
Another July article, this one in the New York Times, about Obama’s early community organizing years, claims that he was more comfortable telling others what to say:
The roles of the residents were scripted and the organizer was a quiet, inconspicuous presence.
AP writer Christopher Wills explores Senator Obama’s evolution from awkward to eloquent. In a 2003 speech in the Illinois Senate about racial profiling, he was said to be less than compelling:
It was the perfect moment for an elegant speech exploring the worries of black Americans and the duties of police officers trying to protect the public. Instead, Obama delivered a two-minute summary filled with jargon like “data collection process” and “management tools.”
He was about as emotional as a tax attorney.
Wills offers further observations regarding Obama’s early efforts:
His comments in the Illinois Legislature were typically brief and matter-of-fact. He was stiff and professorial on the campaign trail.
edit
In his first few years in politics, Obama was sometimes described as talking down to his audiences, coming across as a know-it-all.
edit
News stories described him as sounding like a television newscaster. A campaign speech might be a 10-minute recitation of his legislative record.
Hard to believe this is the same guy who’s about to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president with a globally televised speech in a 75,000 seat football stadium filled with dancing girls, balloons, clowns and barking fish, among other spectacular delights. ( Though, to be perfectly honest, his dubious speaking skills are not the only reason I question how he got here. ) The article does provide some clues to Obama’s success.
Kevin Lampe, a Chicago-based public relations consultant who helped with speech logistics at the convention, remembers Obama working hard to learn to read from a TelePrompTer, aiming his comments at both the TV audience and the crowd in the auditorium, and perfecting his delivery. Political speech coach Richard Greene considers Obama’s convention appearance the most successful political speech in American history.
“Obama would not be where he is or even close without that 2004 keynote,” said Greene, author of “Words That Shook the World: 100 Years of Unforgettable Speeches and Events.”
God bless technology, huh? If it wasn’t for TelePrompTers, Barack Obama might still be a geeky guy lurking in the background, telling other people what to say. But then, we, as a people, wouldn’t have “The Greatest Speech Ever Read By A Black Guy Running For President” to look forward to, would we? How else would we celebrate the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech”? ( Can’t remember what I did last year. ) This gives him a chance to pull out all the stops and really show off all he’s learned over the years. I’m hoping he does something really impressive and identifiably black, like, maybe, Moonwalk on Water. He did say the first black president is required to know how to dance, didn’t he, even though, now that I think about it, Moonwalking is only so black, all things considered. But hey, it would still be cool. Then I’d vote for him.
Yes we can! does not inspire me much, unless it’s a Pointer Sisters song, or the title of Sammy Davis Jr.’s autobiography ( Yes I Can ). As Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, my response is usually, “How do you know?” It’s not like he’s ever done it before. He was pretty much a failure as a community organizer, his legal career was undistinguished, at best, his Illinois Senate stint, as well a his University of Chicago law professor job were part-time. He lost his only competitive political race, and was nudged, limping, into the winner’s circle of the nomination by rather dubious means. In other words, what makes anybody think “he can”?
