|
| ||
|
| |||||||
|
January 1, 2008 Obama's Oblique Race CardBy Lee Cary
Barack Obama's new stump speech employs the homiletically lyrical style of his well-received Jefferson-Jackson Day delivery, while making oblique reference to the race card.
On December 27, Barak Obama rolled out his new, revised stump speech to Iowa voters. The speech uses several literary techniques typical of Old Testament Hebrew poetic parallelism. For example: [Synthetic parallelism where successive lines add to the first.]
[Antithetic parallelism finds the second part of the line contrasting with the first.]
[Climatic parallelism follows successive lines to a climax.]
Obama's new stump speech continues his oratorical practice, patterned after Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, wherein identical lead-in words, followed by slight shifts in meaning, are repeated at the beginning of a series of sentences, most notably at or near the close of a delivery. For example, at the close of his new speech, Obama said:
Then, as a political altar call, Obama moves into his close with a five-fold repetition of "believe."
While Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has gained the most media attention for using religion to promote his candidacy, Barack Obama has made the most effective use of speech patterns from American church sermonizing. The leading public figure in that venue from the 20th Century was Dr. King. As Obama did in his Jefferson-Jackson Day speech, he invoked Dr. King's phrase, "the fierce urgency of now," as a key concept of his candidacy. He used it again on Meet The Press, December 30th. We will likely hear it again, and often. MLK overlaid the language of Christian eschatological expectations onto the Civil Rights Movement, most notably Jesus' non-violence, and blended it with Old Testament exodus motifs, likening himself to Moses leading an oppressed people to a new land. Obama is implicitly packaging himself as the leader of a people wandering in a political wilderness, escape from which requires the eschatological "fierce urgency of now" that demands radical change. Change that he alone claims to be able to bring. His language is a whole lot more linguistically crafted and artful than Hillary's policy-wonk approach (e.g., her Christmas TV ad) and Edward's divisive Two Americas theme. Obama's oratory displays implied biblical imagery applied to a partisan political setting. If truth is the first casualty of war, then history is stressed by political speechmaking. In the context of making the case that his candidacy is about both change (Clinton's co-theme, along with experience) and hope, Obama offers five (numbering added) historical episodes to illustrate how hope and change are linked.
The concepts of hope and change are, of course, inseparable. Only a masochist undertakes the role of change agent against determined opposition without the hope of, at least, partial success. But, was not the "guiding force" behind [1] the American Revolution, the drive for independence from a distant taxing and controlling government; [2] the abolitionist movement, the zeal for freedom; [3] Lincoln's wartime leadership, including the suspension of habeas corpus, his overriding objective to save the Union; [4] the self-sacrifice of the World War II generation, their all-consuming drive toward victory; and [5] the Civil Rights Movement, a non-violent appeal for justice? After all, hope alone is no virtue. Even despots are driven by hope that their tyranny will succeed. Three of the five historical illustrations chosen by Obama's speech writers are race-related. That can be no accident. One illustration blatantly promotes revisionist history. Abraham Lincoln resisted Confederate succession with force of arms not to free the slaves, but to save the Union. Putting aside whether it yields him the votes to win, is there anything worthy of criticism with regard to Senator Barak Obama's somewhat oblique playing of the race card?
As an American Thinker, that's for you to answer. on "Obama's Oblique Race Card"
|
Recent Articles
Blog Posts
|
|
||
Share
