Why he's in church. I mean, not sitting in the pew, but the President's in church. This isn't the speech you give to people to convince a hostile crowd. This is a speech you give to people who know that they have to face a hostile crowd, but for now they're safe and they need their spirits built up, so tomorrow they can get through the grind again.
I've seen the same theme play out again and again in small churches all over. I've seen Crow Preachers, White Preachers, Cheyenne Preachers, Blackfoot Preachers, Catholic Priests, all give this type of message. I've seen this type of speech at revival tent meetings, and in places where the pews were so plush people were afraid to fart. I've even seen my father give this type of sermon, but that part of my upbringing is another story.
Obama's at the high church of blackness --meaning no offense to anyone-- he knows the drill. The general theme of these speaches is always the same. First make people feel good about themselves and connect them with their history. Then illustrate present problems and dificulties. Step on a few toes and let people know that they can't rest on their laurels. Link the present dificulties to the triumphs of the past. Tell people that if an older generation can over come harder things that they should have no problems overcoming present dificulties. Make a few appeals to personal responsibility. Finally, End with a benediction or a story that links everything together and shows the indomitability of the human spirit.
I think what Sorn says gels really well with how Obama began the speech--"It's good to be among friends." I don't think people get that. When Obama talks to black audiences, it is, for better a worse, a different kind of conversation. Not for political reasons (maybe I'm naive) but for organic reasons. A lot of this has to do with that "he's not really black" line of thinking. Which extends from their own racism, from their belief that they fucking know what black is. Which itself extends from their desire to get up from under history. The South isn't the only place with a Lost Cause.The New York Times description of this speech misses the boat entirely. However, I think that's for a few important reasons. First how many reporters go to church? No offense intended but the structure of a sermon, which is what this is, is different from the structure of an ordinary political speech. I think if more reporters were more familiar with a bit more puplit pounding they'd understand. Second, and I've seen this play out with Native Americans if not with African Americans. Mainstream society has two stereotypes that they love to continually play out when they talk about minorities. Either members of minority groups are portrayed as drunk, lazy, good-for-nothings, or they are pictured as noble savages resisting the incursions of the evil white man. An alternate variant on the "noble savage" stereotype exists as well. Usually in this variation the "good minority" adapts themselves to the progress of "civilization."
I think the headline of the NYT article, if not the entire article, is a lazy, half-assed, way of reporting on a sermon that was meant to be and was inspiring, if only in a typical Sunday got-to-meeting type of way. In the article the two ways that mainstream society have of viewing those outside are fused. We get both types of stereotypes. On the one hand there's the noble savage stereotype in Barrack Obama. On the other hand, there's an element, in the article, of the "good" minority who's come back to tell the "bad" minority how to adopt the white man's ways and be successfull.
The problem with this entire way of reporting is that somewhere in the fusion of stereotypes people loose their humanity. I said before that the speech was a sermon, and, in the best sermons, people are preached to both individually and collectively. Collectively the president brings everyone into contact with their history. Individually he brings his struggle into relationship with the individual stuggle of the audience members. The end result is to give strength to the individual by preaching a collective message of hope, and to inspire the collective by preaching an individual message of perserverence. Watch the conclusion of the speech again, like all good preachers, and I maintain that on this occasion Obama is a preacher, Obama uses the individual stories of people like Moses Wright to give a strength and a voice to the communal experience of African Americans.
Of course the NYT got it wrong. First they don't understand the tradition, and second they don't understand the dynamic between the individual and his group. Of course if their reporters went to church a bit more, or if they stopped viewing ethnic minorities as monolithic communities they might get a bit more right. However I don't see either of those two things happening in the near future.
I'd add just two more things. 1.) As someone else, mentioned I thought his juxtaposition of Christianity and slavery, was really powerful. 2.) My strong reaction to the Times (perhaps overreaction, and the ongoing "Obama lectures to the blacks!" narrative comes from a biased perspective. I'm a journalist. It's a point of professional pride.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Props to Sorn for breaking it down!
I don't know. Maybe I am older than most of you on this site. I am certainly more cynical.
Don't get hung up on what the MSM reports. Or HuffPO. Or any of them. Even TNC. Sometimes.
(But TNC, you are one of the exceptions on the internet. I can see that you speak and write from your heart. and more importantly from your mind. but...)
For the media, people it's all about the $$$$$. It doesn't matter if it is relevant or or misguided, or even true...it only matters that it generates traffic. and traffic means $$$$$.
Mr. Obama is speaking for the record and to the people. After all the noise of the news cycle is gone, the substance will remain. He is relentless that way. At least, so far.
His speech yesterday was to the African-American people. It had nothing to do with anyone else. He doesn't even care what you think. He was speaking to his people from his experience. Nothing more. Sorn said it precisely.
He is the best we have. On the other end of the spectrum is Ms. Palin.
Read. Listen for yourself. Decide what you feel and thing. Then get on these sites and try to convince people. That's what this is all about.
What! I'LL CUT U!!!
Sorry. Just wanted to inject some levity.
That's what I like about ya, man. You keep doin what ur doin...you da MAN!
Seriously. Don't quit. We need this in the world.
Especially in this internet world.
C ya at Antietam!
I linked to this once before but folks may find it particularly interesting here on an NAACP-anniversary-related thread. I don't think Coates has ever mentioned it, either because he's insufferably humble or because he just tossed it off all in a day's work and didn't want it to distract blog readers from his Civil War obsession, but here's his Nation piece on the NAACP's new leadership....
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090720/coates
I agree, it does seem primarily about the $$$ for the MSM. There is no other explanation for why they keep covering the racist tea parties when only 60 people show up. It feeds into their loud, shrieking, 24/7 cable news cycle.
And as for the NY Times with their increasingly lazy reporting style and descent into tabloid headlines, who in the world do they think is going to pay to read their website? I don't care if it is only $5 per month. That's money I can spend on lunch or something else worthwhile.
I totally agree--people should read and listen for themselves. But so few actually do. They will just get that sound bite on NPR or FoxNews, or see the headline in the NYT, maybe read a few paragraphs of the article. So whatever sum a journalist slaps onto an event does matter.
But I feel like I'm bringing things down by saying this on a Friday morning, when otherwise things should be looking up, uP, UP!
sorry, my stupid fingers...
It should have been "Decide what you feel and think." in the last paragraph.
i had just posted this response to sorn's very insightful evaluation of the prez's speech/sermon so i'm glad that the conversation is being extended along these lines:
sorn i think that you have captured exactly what was happening within the speech/sermon and the setting and certainly the NYTimes, or anyone else who hasn't spent much time in similar circumstances as evidenced by some of the talk here about homosexuality in many traditional black churches, would likely not understand this rhetorical mode. but i would guess that there was also (in the headline) a context here of the discussion in the media and elsewhere about whether or not the NAACP is an organization whose time/mission has passed and they may have been reading into the Prez's speech his saying that this was so. having spent most of my life around the liberal 'elite' (the academic/community work, not the washington insider strand) i do have to say that this is not about denying or getting past history (these are people who are deeply committed to the role of history) but about a need for hope in the face of what often seem like daunting and perhaps unsurmountable odds. all of those teachers, ministers, social workers, lawyers and such who have struggled so hard to try and make a difference and see so little progress and so much suffering found in Obama a reason to believe and this kind of faith is often blind to how it comes across to non-believers, especially when it is celebratory.
wow! was that one big long sentence?
DMF. You are one of my favorite commenters. But you gotta through a few periods in there. I know, I know. Me lecturing on punctuation. Oh, the humanity...
It's not right to have favorites. And if you do have favorites, do what I do with my kids, tell them in private. Don't let the other's hear!
my bad, i have been trying to pay better attention to this but sometimes i get caught in a train of thought mode, i will renew my efforts at editing before posting.
dude, tell me about it...
Call it "spontaneous bop prosody" and don't trip...
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/kerouac8.html
First of all, dmf, and you can take this from an English teacher, the problem is not for lack of periods, but capitalization and comma omissions.
Secondly, on blog posts, it's good to break down (I have this problem, so I entirely sympathize) paragraphs to newspaper rather than academic lengths.
Seriously, dmf, you really need to meet Mr. Punctuation!
I am going to presumptuously post a link to an on-line writing tutor developed by my university to help students learn the mechanics of writing. It's actually really useful for everyone-- my husband, who is a fledgling writer of fiction, found it really useful, as punctuation is not really his friend, either.
http://telstar.ote.cmu.edu/writingtutor/
Friends don't let friends write run-on sentences!
wow. really? mr.punctuation? with all due respect this is a conversation of ideas in progress and not a grade school grammar assignment so maybe you could find some way to limit your work life to work...
One note was enough. I shouldn't have piled on. Let's leave it here.
Like I said, DMF is one of my favorite commenters. Some of us are skilled at punctuation and grammar. Others of us (me chief among them) have to work a lot harder at it. No need to rag on people. Especially about something that they've acknowledged--as DMF did.
my apologies as well. I shouldn't have started it.
Just in a playful mood on a beautiful Friday morning.
Cuz, ya know, my righting is always so puurfect I like funnin other peopul.
Good writing. That "noble savage/good minority" bit screamed Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to me the moment I read it.
Excellent post and comment by Sorn. I have not read the speech, so have to reserve comment and opinion. Two observations about Sorn's comment, though.
1. His point about reporters not going to church is right on the money. I wonder, though how many people would turn this around to other people's worship and sermons. We are daily bombarded with the words and speeches from other cultures that are culled from their religion's version of sermons or ritual. How much does your average American know about Muslim worship and/or whatever passes for sermons? Closer to home how often were we bombarded with images of Palin's Sunday escapades specifically or "wacky" evangelical or pentecostal practices such as speaking in tongues without their context as part of a Sunday church experience. Not only do reporters not go to African-American churches, but they don't regularly go to poor white churches much. I have no answers to this, but I was a little chagrined that the best defense of Reverend Wright during the campaign was Huckabee who understands the role of a good sermon and how dangerous it is to quote it out of context. (It just occurred to me that coach's pep talks before big games might be analogous. In context they are inspiring. Quoted in isolation they look really stupid and even a bit jingoistic. Just thinking out loud.)
2. This passage from Sorn tickled me: "I think the headline of the NYT article, if not the entire article, is a lazy, half-assed, way of reporting on a sermon that was meant to be and was inspiring, if only in a typical Sunday got-to-meeting type of way" Anyone else see this as ironic? "Sunday go-to-meeting" refers to Quaker worship which attends a "meeting" not church. But Quaker worship is silent unless a member of the meeting feels moved to speak, there are no sermons. Anyone else see the irony? Anyone?
Nice post Sorn and TNC. Best community of commenters on the web, present typist excepted.
Yep yep yep. I just don't understand this. I don't get this aversion to doing actual research and analysis before writing up these stories. Doing research is their fucking job, and they refuse to do it. Why is it considered such a chore to do background research before writing about things?
Only it really isn't. Reporters are sent routinely sent to Iran, Honduras, China, Iraq & Afgahnistan and god knows where else to do research on stories. But when it comes to just walking across town to sit for an hour in a black church somehow that isn't worth the effort. Which makes me think that something else is at work here. Can't be laziness, so much as a deeply held desire to remain ignorant.
On the one hand, I am worried because Obama is playing into these peoples hands. But on the other, I know we (and I do mean we as black people, including Obama) can't stop doing this just because a significant portion of whites in the media apparatus and ruling class remains willfully ignorant. There is too much at stake.
I just wish we had better options. I wish we had people reporting in good faith.
Yeah, we're stuck. It's the old "eating your watermelon around white people" problem. What are we supposed to do? Not talk straight?
You realize this cuts two ways - we absolutely can't serve watermelon when black folks are around. And most of us are crazy for watermelon. Really cramps our style. (I was surprised that Buchanan failed to mention this on Maddow's show.)
Actually that reminds me of a family joke - my wife collects Aunt Jemima figurines, and stuff like old ads for "Uncle Remus Syrup" that are scattered around out kitchen. Mostly when folks see this shit they thinks she's brilliantly ironic - or at least cute. But I've been alone in the house when a black person I don't know comes from, like, the phone company to do some minor repair and they take one peek at our kitchen, take a look at me and I can see the steam coming out of their ears.
On topic - Sorn nailed it...
(Note - the wife's "AA" so she's flipping the imagery. Me...not so much.)
Don't read the speech. Listen to it. I saw just a clip of the last 5 minutes or so and it was rousing. There was no doubt in my mind that Obama was using the cadences and the rhetoric of the black church, and I've never even been to one. The delivery was as much the message as the content.
A beautiful piece of work.
I wonder if the NYT reporter WENT, or just read the transcript? Might explain the inability to recognize the speech for what it was.
But isn't the article in the New York Times problematic in the opposite way, where it states:
I would say that "I have the blood of Africa within me" is just not a very suitable statement in a discussion, say, about the financial crisis.
"It's good to be among friends." THAT, Mrs. Palin, is how you wink.
I think you meant "throw."
Which is hilarious, since it was in a sentence correcting another commenter's grammar.
Please don't cut me, TNC!
Yeah, that's kinda the point...Damn me...
Thanks guys. I'm a bit embarrassed. I wanted to hear what Mr.C. had to say. This note was just a few words from the heart. Nothing special.
Thanks to TNC for having this place in the first place.
Now if we could just move him over to the times.........
Fuck the Times. Stay here.
Remember you are judged by the company that you keep. Why would TNC want to go to the Times??? Buncha sell-outs...
oh, wait. You want responsible MSM. I forgot. Yeah. I guess I see your point.
Maybe I am being rude, but who cares? Most of my favorite bloggers have moved from one publication to another or from being independent to a publication five times or more since I started reading them and not only do I often not notice as url's tend to redirect and nothing much changes in their writing, but after I do notice I rarely care. Unless something goes wrong like the new site is more unstable or the ads are particularly troubling, it hardly matters from this end whether someone like Drum is at Mother Jones or Washington Monthly or where Sullivan is at this year. I am sure there are important differences on the back end, but I say the blogger should go wherever the want. Time has long passed when a columnist moving from the Baltimore Sun to the Chicago Sun-Times meant I couldn't read them anymore.
because sometimes, "Remember you are judged by the company that you keep." Like I said.
Here's another one trying to make my point...
"If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas".
I don't know whether to believe that the NYT and most of the mainstream media is incapable of grasping the point Obama is making or if they're really this deliberately lazy and tone deaf. I'm leaning toward the second view. He's speaking English, so there isn't a problem with comprehension.
Neither of those options are mutually exclusive.
My take on the MSM is that they're not educated enough and not well researched enough to cover a host of today's issues. On one hand, they can't tell the difference between a fact and a factoid. On the other, they're so invested in the idea of a false balance between the two, even when the factoid is completely devoid of fact, that even when they do know the difference, they won't bother to mention that difference.
Further, when it comes to social hot button issues, many of these stenographers can't remove their own personal cultural blinders. I don't think that most of them have the necessary experience to conceptualize what Obama actually said, and certainly not why he was saying it. They can't conceptualize it because they can't contextualize it. That would mean not just removing cultural blinders, but realizing that said blinders are in place.
TNC,
Little off the subject on this, I was happy that the Pres Obama was able to deliver the speech on the NAACP 100 year anniversary and maybe this is the turning point of this organization which has lost a lot of original meaning/approach with it's invovlement with the movement. Obama speech hinted at that. I remember one of your posts back in February 2008 (Uhhh Tavis... Now is not the time), that really sumed up the NAACP in it present state.I heard collectivley Obama calling them out also.
"What people don't get is that we're witnessing the end of gate-keeping in the black community. With John Lewis and the like unable to deliver black voters to Hill, with talkers like Sharpton and Jesse basically sidelined during arguably the most important event in black America since '68, with Julian Bond on the wrong side of history, we are seeing the complete scrapping of the black America's shadow government--presidency, congress, cabinet and all. That's a good thing--it's like all the Popes of Blackness, as Jimi calls them, are coming out of their face, only to be exposed as utterly irrelevant. I told you guys earlier--anybody can get got. In the words of Cedric the Entertainer, Barack keeps trash bags on him. He's so sincere. This some sincere shit right here."
I hope the next 100 years as the President states is the best for Black People in America
Very nice post, Sorn.
Bill cosby was mentioned in the comments on your first post on obama's speech. I have never cared for him, his alleged sexual harassment, or his television program, and i was creeped out by the out-of-context excerpts of his speeches and interviews. I went and googled for your writings on cosby, TNC, and i just finished reading "the audacity of bill cosby's conservatism, this is how we lost to the white man."
My head is still spinning, trying to absorb it. You blended together so many elements: history, historical philosophy, social movements, black activist movements, personal stories, interviews, bigraphy, musical styles...Whew,you wove it all together, and really put cosby in so many other contextual frameworks that were unknown and unguessed to me.
It was rather brilliant. Thanks, dear.
Thank you!!! That is so kind!! I wrote that story like it was going to be my last. And the time, I thought it might be!
Well, you deserve plenty of praise. I don't know if you had to crank and churn that piece, but it read like it flowed like honey...like it was all up there in your head and heart, and you were the scribe, putting it all down. I repeat: Whew! Looks like you are gonna force my old brain to sharpen itself up; it couldn't hurt, eh?
(Gonna tell us why you thought at the time it mighta been your last?)
I started that story at TIME magazine--they were only going to give me a page and a half, as I recall. I got laid-off in the middle, and had no idea where I'd take it. Plus the whole business was/is falling apart. I wrote that story on unemployment checks, and sunshine. The Atlantic was nice enough to take a chance--I'd never written for them, before. To the extent that I got a "big break," that story really was it.
Lucky us, then!
So I don't get what this big controversy is about? I get that the NY Times covered only a small part of the speech, and see how that is reductive, but I also don't see how that doesn't happen every day to just about every story? I'm not trying to say that story wasn't giving an inaccurate picture of the speech, but rather wondering - isn't this what they do with everything? Try to find something they can sell as news and focus on just that? Typically trying to find controversy. Not right, but the cost of doing business in this media age.
I sort of look at it like this - Obama and his folks know how the press works as well as anyone, and most likely considered how this speech would be covered ad nauseum, and in the end decided it was in their best interests to let the press pick up on this aspect of the story and ignore the rest. So cynically, the right message gets to the right audience, politically speaking. Black audiences and more sophisticated observers will get the greater message, but skeptics will only hear the "Obama lectures blacks" narrative. Which might very well work politically for the White House. Yes, I'm a kool-aid drinker on Obama's rope-a-dope, he plays chess while everybody else plays checkers. So maybe the NYT is garbage, but the White House knows that and probably played right into it.
Plus sometimes the racial narrative seems just a small part of a much larger narrative that's forming, which is that "Obama lectures everybody".
I wouldn't subscribe a profit making motive to the NYT's headline regarding this speech. It's more likely just ignorance and laziness. I've read stuff by MSM writers, black and white, that is just horribly factually wrong. Hell, I read that stuff just about every day. People, and that includes writers, get an idea into their heads and it is very difficult to let go of that idea.
I for one have the idea that President Obama isn't really black, unless he wants to date one of my female relatives, yet TNC keeps emphasizing his blackness. It's put the 1967 Batman "Zap Kapow" on my teeny mind.
Also I understand the idea that this speech was "intended" as a sermon for black folks. I think that's a bit naive. Methinks, El Presidente put that line about the church next to the slave holding area in the speech very purposefully. His intended audience was larger than just the folks in that crowd and while they may not be that familiar with the "black" church I suspect many of them are very familiar with "their" church.
c'mon.
It's always about the dollars. If it makes you buy the paper because it offends you, if it makes you buy the paper because you're miffed about the "ignorance and laziness", if it makes you buy the paper just so you can shake it and say "look at this mess..."
It makes you BUY the paper.
Or look at their website. Where you click through the ads (more $$$)...
...at least you do if you are the white dudes. (Brotha's don't ever click through. ask TNC.)
How about Pat Robertson addressing the NAACP on reverse racism? Let the NYT provide the headlines. Better, give the job to rikyrah. IN ALL CAPS.
"Robertson tells blacks - Not all white people click through internet ads"
mebbe the POTUS shouldnt be playing black pastor in the first place. it's not the NYT byline or article that got me, it's that same xbox line he's used since he came on the national scene; it's the same approach he took in the Ghana speech. Obama is the POTUS. In no address is he ever just speaking to one specific crowd- AA, white, muslim, african or whoever.
I think the genius of the speech is that, while it used the format and style of a sermon (as those familiar with sermons are saying), it WAS for the entire Republic. Political appeals based on emotion generally leave me cold, but I found the President's speech to be stirring, thrilling, moving, and inspirational. I'm still feeling that today. President Obama was not just preaching to the choir. He was speaking to all of us.
i think i essentially agree with you. however, i see the ultimate broad reach of his speech as more of a reason to not employ the xbox line. I find it to be a criminally generalized reproach. Were it employed by a republican that person might very likely be tarred a racist. others may not take umbrage for any number of reasons but it's my feeling he can and should be more thoughtful than that.
This was a wonderful reply, and yes, it's over at JJP.
The NYT has changed the headline:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/us/politics/17obama.html?hp
When did Obama pay Franken for the rights to the whole "Stuart Smalley" schtick?
There has never been an Italian-American president.
There has never been an Asian-American president, of any type - Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, etc.
Ditto Indian/Pakistani and dozens of other races and creeds.
The playing field is as level as it's ever going to be, but you can't tell the NAACP that.
The NAACP is a one-trick pony, 100% focused on perpetuating the idea that when black's fail it's not their fault (or, the flip side: when they succeed it's in spite of odds that would make Homer's trials look trivial).
Don't blame President Chauncey for exploiting this, because he's not. Benefitting from it? Yes. Exploiting? That implies knowledge and brains, which Chauncey simply doesn't have. He's just spewing back what he's been fed his whole life. That's about all you can expect from the College Instructor In Chief.
"So long, RobM1981. Have a good trip" (Tony Montana's voice)
You're doing it wrong.
Yeah,
it should be something like:
"Say hellooooo, to my little friend".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gy-Cq75BWY
Banned. Not deleted, though. This post is slightly, unintentionally amusing.
I actually found the banned one's "Chauncey Gardner" schtick kinda funny. I hadn't seen that before.
It was more creative than the "Obama reads off a teleprompter and has no talent" crap that gets put out.
I just feel bad for the Republic that Barack Hussein Obama doesn't have the love for America that Senator Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III has.
When I think of MY America I think of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Sarah Palin. If only we had intellectual and moral giants such as them to lead us through the wilderness. Assuming they weren't too busy making racist jokes or quitting governorships that is........
I saw the headlines and my heart skipped a beat, I have since read the speech, so I feel somewhat better. I am slightly tickled by this though;
"Mr. Obama spoke directly about his own upbringing, crediting his mother (who was white) with setting him straight, and departing from his prepared text to talk about how his life might have turned out had she not. “When I drive through Harlem and I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners,” he said, “I say there but for the grace of God go I."
The brackets caught my eye, and I sighed, I just could not be bothered to get riled up.
TNC,
I think the above piece by Sorn would be much more effective if it was cleaned up a bit and relieved of the spelling and grammatical errors.
It is understandable that blogs aren't the same thing as editorial pieces or articles, but I have noticed rampant errors in entries here.
Although there are many here who will love you regardless, I know that quite a few readers will be turned off or stop reading altogether when the message isn't portrayed properly.
If there isn't an online editor at The Atlantic, maybe it would be possible to just run things through spellcheck before posting.
I'm not the only one who has noticed this, and unfortunately it reflects poorly on the publication and your reputation as a writer.
I would recommend cleaning up Ta-Nehisi.com as well, when people do a search for you it comes up as one of the top hits.
Apologies, for the poor paint and polish on my post. I need to work on that. It's like TNC said about scrubbed accents. Scrubbing is good, scrub too hard and the same thing happens.
I wish a relaxed and easy formality wasn't a practiced art, but it is.
Norman Maclean said that "My father, being a scott and a presbyterian believed that salvation came through grace, and grace came by art, and art did not come easy."
It's really hard to write coherent thoughts and be grammatically correct, but no one ever said that the best things in life were free of effort.
Excuse me,
The actual quote is "My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
a faulty memory will kill you every time.
great quote either way
This sh*t is getting ridiculous. This is one of the few public forums where there is a serious, but good humored, CONVERSATION going on and the value is in good IDEAS. Now if someone's writing is making it impossible to get the point that they are trying to make then by all means let them know as this is self-defeating. Otherwise get over yourselves and either make peace with this as a group of people working together to piece together NEW understandings (or at least deeper/richer ones) or by all means please try another of the many many other blogs out there.
Dude, DMF.
Unless one has to buy it humility costs little and does much. Since we did the religion thing today, there are a few things to keep in mind.
A soft answer turns away wrath but harsh words stir up anger.
I'm no longer a Christian but it's still good advice.
Sorn, seems to me that there is due humility and then there is standing up to bullies. I'm all for anything that adds to the quality of the back and forth here but there is something to be said for people respecting the form of this exchange and being appreciative of it. There was no reason for you to be put in a position of having to apologize for that excellent post that you made. Its T's house and he found it worthy enough to repost. Hospitality is not about letting people ignore the the local customs/values in order to make themselves comfortable at the expense of others. All I was saying is that if things like ideas in progress and or swearing aren't someone's thing then there may be a better match elsewhere. Sorry if any of this gives offense but maybe on this particular point we just don't agree.
CONVERSATION, IDEAS, and NEW understandings (or at least deeper/richer ones) when presented in the written format are always taken a bit more seriously when presented correctly.
My post wasn't directed at Sorn, as he doesn't have his name on the letterhead.
There was no bullying on my part or disrespect in regards to the "form of this exchange."
Lucky us!!!
I hadn't thought about the sermon format. Now that the insight is there, I'll check for it.
.
If nothing else, I'm so pleased to have a president I can not only tolerate listening to, but actively enjoy. I can't wait to get home and play the speech in full. Even the snippet on NPR this morning was a great way to wake up (usually, they just say things that aggravate me out of bed). Obama gives a speech like no one else and I feel privileged just to get to listen. Compare and contrast to our previous president who would make me cringe within 3 seconds and gag by the time I could change the channel. I only ever listed to one of his complete speeches, but I spent half the campaign listening to Obama's talks on youtube. The difference and quality is so striking.
Crikey, i didn't mean any disrepect to you or your publication, ta-nehisi. I shall endeavor to use capital letters in my comments. Starting another day, that is.
I heard an excerpt from the speech this morning on the radio, and said to my spouse, "It's cute how he thinks these are exciting times." Maybe it's more inspiring than cute, on second thought.