Chris Matthews, "the greatest speech on race in America ever"

[baghdad_bush]

As of 9 this morning(2-20-08), the number-one most-watched video of the day on YouTube has been Barack Obama's speech on race, which at that point had generated just about a million views in less than 24 hours. Let me rephrase that. Nearly a million views for a 37-minute political speech not involving a woman singing in hot pants:

You may suspect that I'm another journalist seizing on an opportunity to swoon over Obama, and I can't blame you, given the over-the-top hosannas of the past day. (Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews called the speech the greatest speech on race in America ever, and unless I missed something, he didn't make an exception for Dr. Martin Luther King.) But actually, I want to seize on the opportunity to swoon over YouTube.

More at...
http://www.time-blog.com/tuned_in/2008/03/youtube_dumbing_us_down_or_sma.html

[stellanoir]

1. Here's another one that should have been shouted from across this country

over the last week and that I hadn't heard before this morning.

"Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power.""

[keep_it_real]

2. Good article

[Rageneau]

3. Prediction: This "Greatest Speech on Race Ever" will quickly fade into oblivion.

Only a language-lout or a hopeless cultist (like Matthews) could think that Obama's recent pedestrian and self-serving speech about 'race' (but actually about his sputtering campaign) can compare to the soaring orations of Frederick Douglas, ML King, or even Jesse Jackson.

The people who are praising Obama's speech so effusively today were going to praise it just as effusively the day before they ever heard a word of it. Because it is not the words or ideas of this man that they adore, it is the physical human male himself. Change his physical appearance and his support would plummet. He would not be HALF as attractive a candidate were he white. (Whereas Hillary would have exactly the same appeal were she a black woman.)

School children still memorize and recite the long-ago speeches of great black Americans. I will be surprised to the point of stupification if any child is memorizing and reciting this speech of Obama's in a year or two.

And, in five years, I'll be surprised if anyone even remembers it.