Can you dig it?
No I can’t. It’s late at night, Paris time 6am, and I find myself dealing with horrible jetlag by staying up to watch coverage of Super Tuesday, those darn American elections. And, after sitting through the different speeches, Senator McCain’s victory speech was cut short by none other than Barack Obama. Call me a pessimist, but I have a deep fear of rhetoricians. So, it was lingering distaste that I sat through the beginning of his speech.
It was speckled, in the beginning, with informal English, well employed to disarm the audience. It’s a nice trick, one that was of great use by that other great rhetorician, Bill Clinton. But, what threw me off was the slow, slightly dropping tonality of his utterances. If you could draw it in the air, the sound would arc down, as if the tape playback had slowed down, dropping the pitch. It reminded me of that satin dressing coat clad gang leader, Cyrus, from The Warriors. As he pontificated on, the utterances almost Baptist in demanding response, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.
Now, perhaps this is a false allusion, perhaps Obama will be able to tie the US together in some unprecedented display of bi-partisan unity. Somehow, I fear that is the same dream that haunted our dear Cyrus. “It’s all for the taking, if we want it.” But is it really?
