i found myself making a similar argument against Tony Blair when he spoke to the House and Senate. republicans and conservatives were all declaring him the new Churchill when really, it was just so extreme a departure from Bush's 3rd-grade book-report style of speech, and in a fashion that supported their world-view that made them think so. Tony Blair is a good speaker, but he's not great.

I also have never been all that impressed with Obama's speeches - it's what's behind them... the on the ground/web infrastructure, activism and all that that he is building that impresses me.

Anyway, though... I have no idea if it was intentional or not, but I'm sort of glad there are few or no spiffy soundbytes for people to latch on to. For one thing, for those who do want to do the work and who are interested, it encourages them to, if not consider the whole, at least consider big chunks of thought.

MLK wrote and gave wonderful speeches but for too many people the sum of what they know of them begins and ends with the soundbytes of "I have a dream" and "the content of their character".

Obama talked about talking about race today specifically in order to silence the fallout about Wright and all the new (unflattering) talk about race.

Really astounding.

Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

Interesting Manchurian Candidate reference, Eli10. Are you one of those who thinks Obama is a crypto-Muslim?

Kate, I thought the speech was great too, but the best since MLK? Compared to what, exactly? I'd buy the best by a candidate for president..

Regardless of what happens in this campaign, this will be a speech that I play for my children one day to give them an understanding of what race relations in America were like in 2008.

sounds like we're doomed.

I agree that this was the most honest, engaging, and forward looking speech on race in a generation. Of course, the best speech on race in a generation is a low hurdle. It was a very good speech nevertheless.

We cannot fix what we cannot talk about. We simply haven't talked constructively about race. So it's about time someone put race into a political context as something other than a wedge issue.

It was one hell of a speech.

Yet, predictably, the only takeaway from the speech for the pack of faeces-tossing howler monkeys at The Corner is something about Obama being a bad man. Not sure why: I think it's because he doesn't believe that Republican Free Marketeering eliminated race relation problems and that he believes the civil rights struggle was more than just Liberal Agitprop or something like that.

(Oh, and something about throwing momma from the train. I couldn't make it out for all the frightened hooting.)

EXTRA, EXTRA: Obama Rats Out Racist Granny to Save Career.

I don't understand the outrage regarding his comment about grandmother. Many bi-racial individuals have relatives who say something racist but they still love them. To me the outrage shows very little understanding about race and its impact on personal relationships.

Obama betrayed the woman who raised him to save his career. After 20 years under Wright's tutelage, we now understand why Obama won't wear the lapel. He really does hate America. Obama needs to take his racist and America-hating show to some other country. It won't play here.

But most of all, I agree with Addie's assertion that this was the most important address on race since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Kate if you truly believe this then my opinion of the American Prospect as an arbiter of liberal intellectual talent and disburser of sound opinion just seriously nose-dived

He told that story in his book, which was published in 1995. He hardly "betrayed" her to "save his career." Shame you can't handle reality, Tom.

micheline,

from your keyboard...
To me the outrage shows very little understanding about race and its impact on personal relationships.

to tom's brain (as it were)...
we now understand why Obama won't wear the lapel.

and with 13-year-old stories, it's not surprising that our young newsies are reduced to trolling the tubes.

The remarkable thing about Obama's speech is that he treated his prospective audience as adults, capable of handling complex and sometimes contradictory ideas, and then carrying the conversation forward to try to reach a consensus among people of good will. At its best, Obama's campaign has been a conscious rebuttal to HL Mencken - he may actually believe that it's possible to win without underestimating the intelligence of the American people. There is a lot of empirical data to support Mencken's view, but maybe, just maybe, Obama will ultimately prove him wrong.

I loves the headline in the Washington Times.

"Obama Opens Up on Society's Racism"

Makes him sound like an AK47-toting black nationalist.

It was a pretty good speech until it turned into a campaign speech, with all his normal statements about change and unity. I was hoping he would help us to come together to try and understand one another, instead of pointing out the obvious, that we all have racial issues and we should let them go because we all share the same problems.

Interesting. I disagree, though. I do find Obama to be a truly great speaker. One senses -- or many of us sense -- almost immediately that he doesn't speak in platitudes. That he doesn't play it safe. That he says things that make the listener nod in recognition - "yes, that's how it is for me" -- or sit up in genuine curiosity -- "is that how it is for them?" Most of all, that he teaches.

I find all of that amazing, and something I haven't heard in a long, long time.

Not sure what to make of those who don't hear that, but I guess that's what makes horse races.

"As I said earlier, it was the appropriate response not just to the Wright flap, but for framing the relevance of his candidacy."

On many levels, I agree.

But unfortunately for all the power of his words, I am still bothered a few things.

1) Is it really lost on so many of you that again we have an Obama "crisis" in which the "story" keeps changing?

Yesterday Obama admitted that he HAD heard Wright say controversial things in the past but didn't agree with them. That is markedly different from what he has stated in the past ... heck, just go back to last Friday when he appeared on Countdown and other news programs. In those appearances, he used the same talking points that he and his staff have stuck to for months. [Because contrary to the claims made that this situation is recent (or, as Ezra rather laughably alleged last week, was the product of a Clinton oppo dump) the Wright thing has been brewing for a long time.]

This brouhaha is not the first time that Obama has reacted this way to a problem. Look at the Rezko affair. How many times has his story changed as new information has dribbled out about THAT?

2) Obama's speech yesterday may have been honest and truthful insofar as the state of race relations in America, but it was also an exercise in political damage control. The senator didn't give the speech because he was moved, at this moment in time, to talk about race for the good of the nation ... he gave it because his campaign was embroiled in controversy.

A number of pundits have categorized the speech as a call for honest and thoughtful discussion. I would love to agree with them BUT ...

I cannot help but be a little turned off by the fact that while Obama COULD have given this speech at any time, he didn't. Instead he saved it for an occasion when he needed to direct attention away from reasonable questions about his judgement.

Benjoya,

Please do not equate me with Tom. I happen to think the right's reaction to his comment about his grandmother is quite stupid.