The Daily Show, revealing an uncomfortable truth, and demonstrating why they will continue to be relevant for the next four years:
It's true: Bush and Obama can use essentially the same phrases in their speeches, and one makes me want to cheer, while the other makes me want to throw shoes. Cheese does taste good on Italian food, and it is disgusting on Chinese food.
Jason Jones makes the crack that he doesn't think Obama really means it, and that gives him hope.
For me, it's the opposite. When Obama talks about Freedom, I hear the voices of 400 years of oppressed African Americans. When Bush talks about it, I think of invading other countries for oil and the freedom to consume everything we want.
When Obama talks about ushering in a new era of peace, I think of mutual respect among nations. When Bush talks about it, I think of the peace of domination and hegemony.
I'm not saying this is right. I'm just saying that's what I hear. It's not the words that matter as much as the actions that back them.
4 comments:
Dan, kudos for posting this.
Obama does give me hope. I hope our country doesn't turn into a disaster area once the tex increases hit the wealthy. I hope too many people don't kill their unborn children. I hope our country doesn't let down its guard against Islamic terrists.
I hope.
That's not hope, Robert. You are expressing fear, not hope.
But apparently you're holding up OK under the new administration.
Happy new year.
It's been a long winter, and I been wonderin'
when's it gonna end?
Walkin' in the summer's
like walkin' with a lifelong friend.
Could be another year 'fore we finally round the bend. Might be a decade or a day. I wonder how long I'll have to cry and wait.
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sonsabitches....
Read the rest of this column in Smile Politely at http://www.smilepolitely.com/opinion/the_world_in_a_bean/
...Like everyone else, I have been listening to and re-reading President Barack H. Obama's inaugural address, going over it with a fine-tooth comb. The pundits can't agree on the greatness of the text — Leonard Pitts thinks it is "miraculous," while Karl Rove heard it as an "angry frenzy of untruths" — and these differences of opinion only add to the speech's dizzying potency.
Roland Barthes is dead, but I have a feeling every word in Obama's speech will be parsed to within an inch of its life eventually and repeatedly, year after year. I have been sitting here staring at the computer screen, a post-inauguration vacuum in my head since the evil Elvis left the building, so I thought I might as well start in on the dissection, tackling the speech that kicks off the rest of our lives in these United States of America....
from CHUANG-TSE MEETS JESUS, Jan. 26, 2009, Smile Politely
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