Obama’s big speech

Over the past week or so, what’s best described as insane comments made by Barack Obama’s minister have been brought into the limelight. Clips of Jeremiah Wright ferociously taking aim at the government forced us to question Barack’s judgment and character. Today in Philadelphia he took the opportunity to not only denounce Wright’s rhetoric, but to properly address the issue of race. Barack Obama was given a chance to define his candidacy and he succeeded.

I’m pleased to say I watched the entire speech, and I strongly urge everyone else to do the same. It’s about 40 minutes long, but I fear much of the message will be lost in the cable news media of sound-bite analysis.

Eloquent and candid as ever, he says.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

Or we can change. We can abandon the politics of fear, distraction and cynicism and make these elections about things that actually matter.

Rather than ignoring the situation, Barack has brought it out into the open. A bold move that really separates him from Hillary Clinton. Instead of running away from these issues, Barack used them to promote his solutions and presiding message of hope. The candidacy of Barack Obama, most gloriously manifest in this speech, is ready to bring about the change America needs.