"He could have been me"

Repeatedly, President Barak Obama has proven that words matter, especially when spoken in the liminal zone between the professorial and the poetic.

He is one President who has managed to stay in power and enter people's heads via the power of words. That's a refreshing fact, like a cooling rain shower, in an era of arid technology.

In his poignant statement, delivered in the wake of a brewing protest movements that take a stand against the George Zimmerman verdict, the President succeeded in making the occasion of Trayvon Martin's tragedy, as his own. 

Some highlights from the speech are:

When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son, [...] Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, thirty-five years ago.

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.

We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys. And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them, and values them, and is willing to invest in them?

The text of Obama's statement is to be found here.

Barak Obama, the storyteller

Ron Suskind's analysis of how re-elected President Obama can tell a "story" to Americans that will inspire them with confidence, intersects with important lessons about the art of storytelling itself.

Stories that "sell" these days are told in totally non-traditional ways. In other words, mode, style, form, all have to adapt and adjust to the continually changing contours of that ever-morphing beast called "audience."

Suskind sheds a bit of light on the death of the third-person, all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient narrator (reminds me of the late Victorian novelists).

When Obama wrote his compelling autobiography at age 33, he was the classic omniscient narrator, omniscient to the extent of re-inventing the truths of his life to suit the needs of a personal narrative that would catapult him into the arc of a presidency.

But after he actually became the president, Obama could ill-afford to play a role the omniscient narrator part of him had helped create. He was at a loss at how to now play the role that others--i.e. the public--"wrote" for him through their yearnings, wants and impositions.

Now, it's time for the omniscient storyteller to become a character himself: To stop writing about "history" and become a shaper of it.

Gandhi once said that real change happens when people become change itself; echoing that call, Suskind asks Obama to be more porous to spontaneity, improvise more, be less calculating, be more receptive to lightning reactions:

Don't tell the story, be the story.

In a writer's words, "show, don't tell." 

Reasons why Obama should win...

The 2012 Presidential elections: 

[...] because he’s a seriously intelligent, thoughtful leader more in tune and in touch with Americans’ lives than his sheltered opponent is. He still has poetry in him, and he still has fight. But this campaign has illuminated nothing so brightly as the limits of his magic, along with shortcomings that he would carry with him into a second term (should he get one) and would be wise to address.

Frank Bruni, NYT

A thought on the Presidential debate #1

On my way to my neighborhood grocery store, I cross a street with two-way traffic and without a walk sign.

Needless to say, I have to keep my ears and eyes open for cavalier drivers.

Today, a young woman in a SUV stood still for more than 40 seconds, allowing pedestrians to cross. Seconds before I acknowledged her courtesy with a wave of gratitude, another driver pushes through with aggression and swerves into the street inches away from my toe.

A courteous driver and a bully of a driver: Who gets abused and whose behavior is deemed normal? The driver behind the courteous one screams "fuck you!" at the latter, to my shock and chagrin.

Having watched the first Presidential debate on Wednesday October 4 the picture of the drivers and the performances of Obama and Romney seem to be a bit analogous.

Romney is the driver who almost crushed my toes and rudely hogged the space at his disposal. Romney did the same in another context. His goal was to hog the limelight (instead of earning it over the evening), and he scolded the moderator. He also seemed anxious to steal time away from Obama.

Obama might have been the courteous driver who stood while pedestrians passed.

Yet, it was Obama who got clobbered by the media as the one who sleep-walked through the debate, and Romney received praises for his aggressive and blunt "style".

Americans look more and more like the surly guy who screamed at the courteous driver. Too impatient, myopic and precariously perched to reward the undeserving candidate.

Xanax President

President Obama’s stylistic strategy during Wednesday night’s debate seemed to be to try to stay right above the rancor, to appear dignified, presidential. The problem with that approach is that the line between dignified and presidential and anodyne and weak is the width of a cat’s hair.

--Charles Blow's assessment in nytimes. The message: ability to be rancorous=sign of confidence.

Frank Bruni's take on Obama's "ambien" performance last night:

He toggled between light and heavy, scathing and upbeat, and demonstrated improved (though not great) control of that annoyed, tight, fake smile that plays so disastrously into his cartoon image as “a wealthy plutocrat married to a known equestrian,” in the inimitable words of Haley Barbour.

Haven't and won't delve into the Republican posts as the vitriol would be too much to bear. Extreme avoidance of the George Wills and the Charles (Sour)Krauthammers.