comments

1. Deron Bauman on January 12th, 2011 at 8:44 pm

   I forgot all about it! I’m sorry I missed it.

2. Elizabeth Perry on January 12th, 2011 at 10:49 pm

   Yes, and yes, and yes.

   Thank you, Cindy.

   (The video is online – so nobody needs to miss it.)

3. Rick Neece on January 13th, 2011 at 3:32 pm

   Thanks for the link, Elizabeth. I wouldn’t have seen the speech otherwise. And yes.

4. Cindy Scroggins on January 13th, 2011 at 4:09 pm

   Yes, Elizabeth, thank you. It’s a long speech, and the first 15 minutes or so are filled mostly with sincere but expected condolences. The power of the speech comes after that, when he addresses the larger issues surrounding national events such as this.

   If your time is limited, I suggest starting at about 16 minutes. It will fill your heart.

5. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 5:05 pm

   I suppose the condolences and acknowledgments that fill the first 15 minutes of Obama’s speech are now de rigeur, but I cannot help but think that when Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, he said his piece in fewer than 300 words.

   I found the lengthy preamble excruciating. It reminded me of the bloated credits that now roll at the conclusion of major-release films.

   It’s too bad, as his call to “expand our moral imagination” was a fine though painful demand. It just seemed to me as though the bulk of the speech catered to idées reçues. I have little faith that most of us who heard his words will expand our moral imagination, though I will be happy to be surprised.

6. Rick Neece on January 13th, 2011 at 5:48 pm

   It seems to me, while, yes, this was a prepared speech, planned with media complete with photos of those mourned and those suffering (propped up at the right moment on the screen) by the act of an extremist, yes, terrorist (who was perhaps demented by the vitriol of the media and family issues and who knows what else), a reasoned and moderate call for change. (That’s a crappy sentence, my apologies. If it can’t be scanned I’ll try to clarify.) The terrorist is nothing more than a murderer on a grand scale, whatever his reasons.

   The trouble with a moderate stance is it contains no vitriol. It is the problem for moderate thinkers, but if there is one who could call for moderation within a medium where the extremes are shown as normal everyday existence, this speech would be it. (Sentimentally presented though, it was.)

   It calls for a toning down of the rhetoric. Let rhetoric come without calls for murder, without war language. Without hate.

   I’d like to think it is possible. Perhaps we have a chance.

7. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 5:54 pm

   I agree, Rick. I just wish it had been a more effective speech. Perhaps impossible in light of the message. “Settle down, people” is not inspiriting to most.

8. Rick Neece on January 13th, 2011 at 6:15 pm

   It did lack the “I have a dream…” quality.

   And further, and more confusingly, I’m not saying free-speech should be squelched, just there should be something like an awareness of when it goes to the point where some crazy can take one’s words and hold them as reason to excuse extreme acts. Is that what I want to say? It’s hard to say. I don’t know. Why can’t love be the place where starts any conversation.

   Sometimes I hate the way I say things. They don’t come close to approximating my feelings.

9. Cindy Scroggins on January 13th, 2011 at 6:19 pm

   It’s generally the people who don’t worry about moral imagination themselves who find calls to it tedious.

10. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 6:29 pm

    Whew. Deep breath. Guess I just wish that Obama had acknowledged that crazies are always going to pick up on one tenor of the time or another. (Thinking: John Wilkes Booth. Et cetera.)

    And just wishing that he had conceived a more powerful way of telling the rest of us to “expand our moral imaginations,” which was, I think, the core of his speech and the most important message he had to import. It was a tough message to deliver, and I think he did his best, but I fear it was not delivered in a vein powerful enough to reach most of us.

11. Daryl Scroggins on January 13th, 2011 at 6:41 pm

    I have not held to much hope that anything might stop the rising faith in violence in our country, but I found myself in tears through this whole speech. How does one measure another’s heart? There is a power that comes through sometimes that must be judged in relation to one’s knowledge of all who have sought to call upon it. Obama passed my test. Am I now a “youthful” idealist? No. Am I a sentimental fool? If so–I’ll take me–you take you.

    I guess the clip is a poor substitute for seeing and hearing the thing as it unfolded. I particularly liked the Native American blessing at the start of it; it made me wonder what the Christian Right Wing will make of that–given that “Happy Holidays” is an attack on Christmas. Here Obama’s speech was not one designed for a one-person event. It was his responsibility to honor those who had spoken before, to gather the threads already presented, to amplify the best hopes in the hall, and to speak, then, to a nation–its future and its past. That is not likely to be accomplished well in a few paragraphs.

12. Rick Neece on January 13th, 2011 at 6:46 pm

    Well said, Daryl. Thank you. I had the tissues at hand, myself.

13. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 6:54 pm

    Oh, Daryl, I could not agree more that Obama’s responsibility was to acknowledge and honor those who had spoken before. Nor that it was a weighty responsibility. I just think that it could have been better achieved with less verbiage.

14. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    And believe me, I’m not meaning to be an asshole, but wasn’t this a motherfucker of a speech? I’m just wishing Obama could have come even close to whomping people with such words.

    Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate . . . we cannot consecrate . . . we cannot hallow . . . this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

15. Daryl Scroggins on January 13th, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    A good speaker reads the audience in front of him or her. In an actual gathering of people (aside from the television audience) there is a palpable interactive energy that guides response and need, and, in the end, duration. If Obama had been giving a speech from the Oval Office, I would agree that it might have best been shorter. When it’s a live audience, though, I’ll give the right of call to the person standing there.

16. Sheila Ryan on January 13th, 2011 at 7:12 pm

    Daryl, I concede your point (and I don’t even think we’re disputing). I guess it just depresses me to ponder the implications of Obama’s having had to adjust his rhetoric to his audience.

17. Mary Jeys on January 16th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    I also watched this speech after Cindy’s post here. I’ve been thinking on it since I watched it that night. What I appreciate about Obama is exactly his adjustment of rhetoric for his audience. He is a rhetorical centrist as an orator. This is how he got elected. His words hold power from commanding reason in the middle. Obama chooses his delivery very well- waits for silence, commands the front without shouting, and ramps to a point from reasoned middle cadence- not from yelling to the edges.

    Also, it was nice to hear an audience of college age students buzzing with emotion and enthusiasm for the next moment. I think that gave the whole thing a wonderful hopeful gloss.

18. Rick Neece on January 16th, 2011 at 4:01 pm

    Beautifully said, Mary.

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