Mile High Recap
My apologies for not doing a better job of live-blogging of the Obama acceptance speech last week but I thought it better to enjoy the event than spend the whole time furiously punching my cellphone keypad. Hopefully, most of you saw the speech on your own and weren't counting on yours truly for any vital insight or analysis. But assuming that most of you didn't know many folks who attended the event, I thought I would jot down a few random thoughts unrelated to the content Obama's speech:
- I realize that this was a made-for-TV event and passing out American flags was a clever marketing idea. But this was a very patriotic event in a way that I hadn't ever experienced first-hand. By patriotic, I don't mean in the way that the G.O.P. has co-opted the words and symbols of our country but in the IDEA of America. It felt cathartic being able to chant "U-S-A!" without an ounce of sarcasm - almost like watching the Olympic men's hockey team upset the Soviets in Lake Placid in 1980 all over again. As you can see, everyone got in on the action:
- I've posted a few more photos (and a very short video) that you can check out here but if you really want to get a feel for the layout, check out this interactive photo from the NY Times.
- As far as the other speakers featured that night, I think Bill Richardson gave the best received speech of the lot. I was quite unimpressed with him during the campaign, as he seemed to go to his resume as a crutch whenever he was asked a tough question, but he was terrific last week. His pointed references to the failures of the current Administration to uphold and protect the Constitution got some of the loudest pre-Barack applause of the night, and rightly so. Just like I found it refreshing when John Edwards called the poor the poor, instead of "hard-working middle class Americans" on the campaign trail earlier this year, I liked how Richardson laid it out plainly:
"It's time we had a president committed to fighting poverty in the Third World and ending the genocide in Darfur; who leads international efforts to stop global warming, strengthens our friendship with Mexico and Latin America, and stands behind Israel with full-time diplomacy to achieve peace in the Middle East; a president who ends the global scourge of AIDS in our time and sets an example of moral leadership by following our Constitution, shutting down Guantanamo and ending torture."
- With the Republican National Convention now blessedly in our rearview mirror as well, it's worth noting the stark contrast of the audience. Not only in terms of demographics, which was fairly obvious to most TV viewers, but also in terms of the general vibe. It was a very positive crowd and even the red meat that they were thrown by some speakers made them rally around their candidate and ideals more than hating their opponents, which seemed to be a constant undercurrent to the recent GOP gathering.
