8 Comments to “An Impressive (and Maybe Historic) Speech”

1. MikeFitz Posted: Mar 19th, 2008 at 1:00 am

   1 I con­cur. I too can imag­ine Hilary “los­ing to John McCain on pure back­lash.” I’m sure McCain is qui­etly cheer­ing Hilary on.

2. West End Bob Posted: Mar 19th, 2008 at 1:33 am

   2 Totally agree with you, David. Hillary would not be a good choice for the dems this time around. Obama sounds like some­one that US cit­i­zens could actu­ally be proud of, for a change .…

3. Al Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pm

   3 A bet­ter link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo from the Obama Channel Watch­ing yours now. Wow! My inner cynic is get­ting real pound­ing with this one. Some­one showed me Marc Cooper’s response to the speech: http://marccooper.com/we-o-boomers/ I agree with his con­clud­ing paragraphs: Instead, we’ve looked around and reached three sim­ple conclusions: First, that John McCain, whose per­sonal courage can­not be denied, and who has had some dis­tin­guished moments in pub­lic life, now finds him­self posi­tioned in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem with lit­tle to run on except a plat­form of mil­i­ta­rized jingoism. Sec­ond, the elec­tion of Hillary Clin­ton would be an absolute guar­an­tee of the polit­i­cal sta­tus quo. There might be a for­ward shift here or there com­pared to the Bushies, but the sys­tem itself would remain intact. And we are con­vinced that her deci­sion mak­ing would, indeed, con­tinue in the well-known Clin­ton­ian tra­di­tion of unmit­i­gated expe­di­ency — as has already been more than amply demon­strated dur­ing her lam­en­ta­ble campaign. Finally, we do not invest naive hope in Barack Obama. We O-boomers are, I fear, ready to be dis­ap­pointed by a Pres­i­dent Obama. It’s a well-worn reflex with us. But for the first time, in a very, very long time, we can sense at least the math­e­mat­i­cal pos­si­bil­ity of some refresh­ing change if he is elected. His speech this week served only as a geo­met­ri­cal multiplier.”

4. David Drucker Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 5:51 pm

   4 Author Comment Thanks for the alter­na­tive source, Al. I’ve updated the video to point to that copy, as its qual­ity is bet­ter, and it is free of those dis­tract­ing crawls quot­ing sound bytes uttered 2 to 3 min­utes ear­lier as you watch it. I know what Marc Cooper means about being dis­ap­pointed so many times. I too have been dis­ap­pointed, but usu­ally it’s more by the Amer­i­can elec­torate than by the can­di­dates. It will be a long time before I for­give the US for their votes of 2000 and 2004 (even if it was merely for not pro­duc­ing a major­ity great enough to over­come ‘the cheat fac­tor’ that the the Repub­li­cans employed in order to claim victory). The O-Boomer ref­er­ence reminded me that I recently found out ‘Gen­er­a­tion’ I am a part of; I am def­i­nitely not a ‘Baby Boomer’ as the expe­ri­ences of the vast major­ity of Boomer’s are not mine; I was too young to par­tic­i­pate or even iden­tify with Wood­stock, the Sex­ual Rev­o­lu­tion, the Bea­t­les or the Viet­nam War, and I don’t quite iden­tify with the cul­tural land­marks of Gen­er­a­tion X, as Vancouver’s own Dou­glas Cop­land so aptly coined in his book of the same name. Instead, I am a part of Gen­er­a­tion Jones. The Jones part is a com­mon name that evokes the sense of a large, unknown group, but is also a ref­er­ence to hav­ing a “jones,” or crav­ing, for the ideals put forth in the ‘60s. As some­one who came of age in the 1970s, a decade known for Water­gate, bad clothes (poly­ester shirts with busy prints, side-burns) and the Nixon pres­i­dency. Gen­er­a­tion Jones (born between 1954 and 1964), I can relate to how it started out opti­mistic like the 60’s, only to see ide­al­ism shat­tered by the finan­cial hard­ships and Sen­ate Hear­ings of the ‘70s. The char­ac­ter of that gen­er­a­tion became a mix­ture of ide­al­is­tic yearn­ing and cyn­i­cal alien­ation. It was the gen­er­a­tion of ‘Whacky Pack­ages’ (Remem­ber those, any­body my age? They were bub­ble gum with sets of stick­ers por­tray­ing dis­gust­ing par­o­dies of pop­u­lar con­sumer items. Instead of Skippy peanut but­ter, you saw a sticker for ‘Skimpy’. Instead of Cap’n Crunch cereal, there was ‘Cap’n Crud’. It was our way of equat­ing every­thing we saw with decay, cor­rup­tion and disappointment). So I know what you mean by hav­ing to bat­tle with your ‘inner cynic’. We’ve all got that big-time.

5. Al Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 8:22 pm

   5 Happy Easter David, I’m Gen J too.:-), but I don’t remem­ber Whacky Pack­ages — maybe it was only in Amer­ica. My favourite agit­prop was an ad found in National Lam­poon [a most cyn­i­cal humour mag­a­zine of the times.] It was a sticker with a pic­ture screw on it. You would peel off the back­ing and put it on the bumper stick­ers that read: “I ‘heart’ my dog.” I’m not sure if it was from the 70’s but matches the sen­ti­ment. I never bought the pack­age but it made me laugh out loud when I saw it for the first time. Today it would be cheap enough to make them at home but I don’t see many bumper stick­ers like that any­more.… Pity.

6. David Drucker Posted: Mar 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am

   6 Author Comment It may be too late to start putting those ‘screw’ sticker over­lays on cur­rent stick­ers. I do remem­ber, how­ever, a great sticker that really ‘stuck it’ to all of those ‘I sup­port the Troops’ yel­low rib­bon stick­ers that you saw in great num­bers, stuck to SUV’s (and ignor­ing the great dis­con­nect between sup­port­ing sol­diers and con­sum­ing large amounts of petro­leum that had a lot to do with putting them in harm’s way in the first place) here.

7. David Thompson Posted: Apr 23rd, 2008 at 4:51 am

   7 Just stum­bled across your blog, I did. I also noted the news of Obama’s speech as extra­or­di­nary. If it was any politi­cian that I know of, they would of denounced the per­son in ques­tion and moved as far away from them as pos­si­ble, but instead of doing what every other suc­cess­ful politi­cian would do, he took a dif­fer­ent path and a truth­ful path. There is no doubt in my mind that Obama is the per­son who can restore the U.S.A. within and through­out the world. The obsta­cle I fear the most is the fear tac­tics from the Repub­li­cans. The war on ter­ror­ism will be a huge issue, and I think fear will be a fac­tor play­ing for the Republicans. Now about those awe­some bumper stick­ers, where can I get one?

8. David Drucker Posted: Apr 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 am

   8 Author Comment Thanks for the com­ment. I won­der if Hilary will have worn out the ‘fear’ card for the Repub­li­cans? After enough times, the cry really does sound like ‘Wolf’ Actu­ally, what is wor­ry­ing me more these days is Hilary. With her win in Penn­syl­va­nia, she now has blunted Obama’s momen­tum. She will con­tinue to chip away at him. The race for the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion has gone on far too long already, and if it con­tin­ues to the con­ven­tion, you can then, indeed, count on McCain to beat whichever nom­i­nee comes out of that futile exercise. If the Democ­rats do lose to the Repub­li­cans this time because they aren’t able to unite behind the right can­di­date to beat him, then as I’ve said before, it’s time to dis­band the party. There is no place in a 2-party sys­tem for a party whose sole pur­pose seems to be to lose elec­tions and give the impres­sion of choice. If Democ­rats can’t win after the most hor­ren­dous pres­i­dency in his­tory led by the oppo­si­tion, then they don’t deserve to exist. Hilary couldn’t beat McCain now, and it’s even less likely she could do so after limp­ing to her own fin­ish line — or worse, by get­ting the nom­i­na­tion through the fiat of a smoke-filled room in a bro­kered con­ven­tion that feels like the Supreme Court Florida deci­sion of 2000 all over again.