Friday, August 29, 2008

Dirka Dirka Obama Jihad



Obama jihad, change!

Well, the big show was last night. The speech every talking head and pundit has been yapping about all week brought some climax to the DNC love-fest.
It’s a lot of talking, a political convention. I had almost forgotten how much talking there was. The party rolled out everything they had; Kerry gave a speech that probably would have gotten him elected if given it when he was a candidate, Gore only made me drowsy this time and there was the Clinton double punch. Michelle Obama set the bar pretty high, early in the convention, most all of the professional talkers met the mark. Joe Biden did a fine job of introducing himself to the 95% of America who had no idea who Joe Biden was.
Then there was the talking about the speeches. I largely tuned out for the post speech analysis, as I am fairly adept at forming my own opinions.

But that is all foreplay review, we all knew that penetrating psyche of undecided voters was the point of Barak Obama’s speech.

The speech itself was really a bit less than I was expecting. I appreciate that Obama and his writing team held back, though. Obama could have gone all in, attempted to make his own “Dream” speech or top the “Ask Not” rap.
Going in that direction would have drawn hyper-analysis and opened the door for all manner of rock-star criticism from the right.

Instead we got a pretty straight nomination acceptance talk. It had plans, it had some numbers and it had some occasional fire. Enough fire to keep listeners engaged, not so much as to draw direct comparisons to some of the greatest, most historic speeches.

As for substance, well, it was a forty minute speech. I don’t expect any candidate to fully explain how they might fix healthcare, Social Security, global instability, receding economies, famine, women’s rights, genocides, wars and flagging national pride in forty minutes. Candidates have position papers to explain those details; most people don’t read position papers though. Obama touched on all of those topics, however briefly, usually including the word change in the sentence.

In a convention that was unprecedented in its scripting and level of production, the speech Barak Obama gave the headliner act. It was the big close on the sale.


Barak Obama has called us to put a jihad on the GOP.

If you don’t like that, I’ll put a jihad on you.

Dirka dirka. Obama jihad, change.


Note: This is an edited version of a submission to Authwhore.com

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