this whole speech thing

for the first time in god knows how long i forced myself to sit down tonight and endure a contemporary politician's speech in its entirety.

i loathe political speeches, knowing as i do that, far from being the honest expressions of their deliverer's positions and intentions they purport to be, most of them are nothing more than carefully and cynically crafted infomercials--assembled, polished and focus-group-tested creations of canny ad-agency types designed to appeal to whatever specific demographic is being targeted that particular day.

but this one was important, so i watched, and--in spite of myself and all the fucking flags--i was impressed.

first and foremost, i was impressed by barack obama as an orator (of course, after seven years of watching the decider incoherently mangle his handlers' words almost anyone would sound good by comparison, but no--this guy is good by any standard).

secondly, i was impressed by the quality of his words; even though there were undoubtedly a lot of cooks involved in whipping up this broth, obama's authorship was undoubtedly the key ingredient--very rare these days--and his treatment of his subject was masterful.

finally, i believe that this is as honest a speech as we're ever gonna get from a politician--especially on a subject as sensitive as this one--and i even believe that obama himself believed what he was saying.

problem is, i'm not so sure that i do--here's what i got out of it:

• due to their history of injustice at the hands of the white man (and in spite of the fact that white america is today almost completely neutered by racial political-correctness) blacks get a pass when it comes to venting their indiscriminate and often-irrational spleen at whitey around the neighborhood and in church--even though such vitriol does nothing but legitimize and perpetuate black racism and victimhood unto each succeeding generation;

• the problems in the african-american culture would have less to do with the foregoing, of course, than with the fact that we just haven't dumped enough money on said problems yet (a thought that--especially in light of where such thinking has gotten us to this point--sends shivers up and down my lily-white property-owning and taxpaying spine);

• the inescapable impression that, despite his silver-tongued conviction, obama really doesn't think that anything jeremiah wright has ever said is really that far off the mark (i mean, me? i'd cut off my left nut before i'd let the likes of the good reverend within a country mile of my young, impressionable children, but obama took his to that church on a regular basis--so, loving his kids as he undoubtedly does, i can't help but think he must've been philosophically sympathetic to what they were exposed to week after week).

[and as further reinforcement of that last point, please click here and read a very interesting article by byron north of the national review (yeah, that conservative rag). seems that after the speech, he interviewed a number of the handpicked attendees--black professionals very much like barack and michele ("for the first time i'm proud of my country") obama--and they confirmed not only that the words and message of rev. wright were far from unusual in african-american churches, they openly and unabashedly agreed with them. and understand that, while such comments are far from a statistically-legitimate sampling, they're still food for thought for this white boy.]

so did moderate white america buy the message, or do they share my concern that, as mr. north put it, "Rev. Wright’s comments are not the subject of universal disapproval but are in fact positions with which many of Obama’s supporters agree"?

i guess we'll know soon enough.