mardi 8 janvier 2008

Quote of the Day

"It's hard to see how Senator Obama's stratospheric soar above partisanship can work. It's based on the assumption that the reason we haven't all gotten together and worked all this stuff out together in a spirit of harmony is because nobody ever thought of it. Does anyone really believe this?" -- "keninny", at Down with Tyranny (in a post that's well worth your time).


UPDATE: OK, so there are two of them. Only the great Lower Manhattanite could draw parallels between Barack Obama's oratorical style and the famous John Belushi "Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" speech from Animal House in a post that for my money is already one of the best of the year:

Those bold “We're on the verge of making things different” words of his, coupled with that enervating, hymnal and most importantly—declarative and soul-deep confident delivery is that sweet tea a lot of folks can't seem to get enough of. I studied public speaking and I can see he knows just what he's doing. The cadence and modulation, the sentence structure and idea framing...

Not “I want to do”.

Not “We can do”.

It's “Join me in doing”.

It's that “last battle in Braveheart” shit. With equal parts Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day throwdown from Henry V, and yes...maybe a splash or two of Belushi's rousing “German's bombed Pearl Harbor” speech from Animal House.

“Forget it. He's rolling.”

In fact, there may be a lot of Bluto's speech in what Obama does when, “he's rolling”. And I don't know if that's a bad thing, really. When our situation as a country is as depressing as it is presently, and all seems lost—damaged world stature, economy reeling, mistrust of our leaders, senseless, life-wasting wars to name a few bits of the overweening awfulness—maybe a rallying, hope-stuffed, emotional, declarative “Join me in doing” is the thing that's just gonna resonate most with that defeated group slumping about “Delta House”.

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