“They said this day would never come.  They said our sights were set to high.  They said this country was too divided….but at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do…”

Personally, Democratic Nominee Senator Barack Obama’s victory speech on January 3rd following the Iowa caucuses was my favorite.  It really gave me sermonic spotlight.  The “they said we’d never make it…” was definitely shoutable.

But, last night was nothing to sneeze at.

Let me personally go on record, and borrow some words from Lady Michelle Obama, know officially known as Michelle-O, and sayd that for the first time that this  uppity Negro was proud of his country.  I sat in my new room (yeah, I found housing—give God a shout of praise) and I was cleaning up the atrocity that was and still is my dorm room and I heard Dick Durbin give the introduction and I saw Obama walk out onto the stage and I heard him say

With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

I realized that he actually did it.

I know I never thought I’d see this day.  I had really put a black candidate down the road about another 40 to 50 years.  Yeah, I know I’m flip-flopping [Editor’s Note: by the way, that was a GRRRR-REAT line from Bill Richardson “John McCain may pay hundreds of dollars for his shoes, but we’re the ones paying for his flip-flops!] about the whole existential black thing, but let’s face it, a man up there with my skin color just accepted the nomination for the presidency of the United States of America.

I really don’t have much to say about the speech.  I think he did his job of shoring up his base and sticking it to the Republican party.  Following the stupidity of a sponsored forum panel on our campus by the Let Us Make Man organization that posed the dumbest question I’ve heard for a panel “Is Obama’s Presidency Ordained By God?” (and clearly God wasn’t sitting on the panel to answer that question) there was an after party of some sorts on our yard where a big screen was set up to watch the Convention speeches.  And to whoever’s credit, this was organized enough where the local Atlanta news outlets did show up on campus.

Now I know I’m about to alienate half my readers, buuuuuut….I watched all of this on FoxNews.

**runs and hides from the rotten fruit thrown at me***

Honestly, out of CNN that had the damn fact track running non-stop and making my 13 inch even smaller than what it needed to be, and our dorm not carrying MSNBC (I should talk to someone about that) it was between CSPAN and FoxNews.  I simply chose FoxNews because the sound was miked up better than CSPAN and the aerial shots were better. 

Now, I didn’t know what to make of the fact that the irreverant bastards at the Cult of FoxNews with the O Mighty Leader Karl Rove, Of Many Chins where they worship the Almighty Richard Cheney, who rules with his Shotgun of Fury and they have the Pastor Sean Hannity and Co-Pastor Alan Colmes who CLEARLY is under a mindspell of only Rovian nature.  With Deacon Juan “Step-and-fetchit” Williams who last night totally made me put him on my $Hit List with his MLK comment.  Allegedly all this talk of patriotism is a mess because they sho’ took their time to stop talking during the National Anthem iin this one cell phone clip.  I mean, I didn’t stand for it either, but you don’t see me and the UNN going on and on about lapel pins and whatnot.  And then they started back up during the benediction and didn’t at all acknowledge Nancy Pelosi coming back out to close the convention with the gavel.

Those bastards.

To Chris Wallace’s credit, although it’s a small credit to the number of issues I have with him, he was able to say Obama delivered the speech and did it well and was able to say the Obama leveled with his critics and brought the issues to the Republican table.

I do believe that Lord is calling us to a higher place of watching news–go to C-SPAN, that’s the only no-spin zone Bill-O the Clown who’s really vying for Pastor Hannity’s position because he knows he’s smarter than he is, because it’s no commentary, nor commercials.  Prior to the speech, I was flipping between Fox and CSPAN during commericals and unnecessary talking.

What I think is sad, and I realised this last night, that if one doesn’t agree with the Republicans and say exactly what they want to hear, then all of a sudden Obama is just speaking in filler and doing nothing but “glitz and glamour.”  At first I really thought these people were just lazy journalists or just outright liars (well, they still are that over at the Cult of FoxNews) but when forced to deal with the answers that Obama gave last night, they 100% dismissed them and acted as if he said nothing.  I would have rather them went point by point and say “I disagree with his proposal to cut taxes because…” I can fully respect that, but these bastards.

Yes, that’s about the most impolite I can get about FoxNews.

To completely refute Juan Williams, I was pleased with his reference to MLK, I think it was just enough to recognize the historical value of the day, especially since CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin had raised the ire of Roland Martin when he commented that when the DNC trotted out Reverend Bernice King and Martin King III and the civil right car crash equivalent of U.S. Rep John Lewis and did the montage of King, Jr. that it was intentional in order to distance Obama from being categorized as a civil rights leader.  Honestly, I think Toobin was right.  However, I think Obama gave due justice and honor to King.

Let the record show, real talk, folks died for Barack Obama to be standing up there last night.

This was not some mamby-pamby “Oh, let’s nominate a black guy” thing.  FoxNews did fail to talk about the emotion in the room as they said he was too programatic in his speech (if it was the opposite, they’da said he wasn’t programmatic enough) but many other reporters did say the level of emotion was quite high. And to Fox’s credit they did do more than one shot of this one couple.  The man was clearly black and his wife, perhaps was mixed with something or just one of them “light-brights” as I joke around (yes, it’s all in fun).  Whatever it was, there were a relatively young couple as they embraced each other and were both balling like babies.  It was the ol’ ugly cry where their dignity just flitted away into the twilight of the open air stadium.

The following are pictures I pulled from Yahoo! and the Reuters news service:

 

And I too, realised that folks died for this man to be where he was–and I think he realised it himself for the first time.  That even Jesse Jackson, Sr. built the bridge that Obama was able to walk over.  I although I personally don’t like to gloss over the first 2/3 of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, particularly the part where he said

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.'”

and also

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

and also this excerpt as well

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

And Obama did a very good job of echoing the refrain “Now is the time” (check out Romans 5:6 for my Bible readers) and I really began to question the sanity of Juan “Step-and-fetchit” Williams with that sanctimonious and supercillious smirk on his face when he said that Obama just glossed over MLK.

He finally started talking like he owned this campaign and not the other way around. 

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So at the end of this month of August, as the cosmic forces come together and we enter what we know as September, I wonder what the future holds.  But as the church folk say, tomorrow has it’s own worries, so don’t worry about what he future holds, but rather focus on who’s holding the future.

I’d love to hear what you all have to say about the speech last night.  Especially what is your take on the outright unmitigated gall that the bastards over at FoxNews speak and act, calling it real news.  Will this be a day that you’ll always remember–who you were with, where you were, how you felt, what time it was when you saw it?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL