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Obama in Hartford

The 17,000 person crowd was large and enthusiastic.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, in introducing Barack Obama, the apostle of change, was his usual bombastic self. Stretching out Obama’s name absurdly, he managed to sound like a cross between Elmer Gantry and a carnival barker. But the crowd was not there to see Kennedy; they came to get a glimpse of the new Democrat phenom.

The reaction to Obama, both among those who are inclined to vote for him and liberal commentators in the media, continues to be one of swooning adulation, as if Obama were a rock star rather than a politician.

Kennedy himself drew parallels between Obama and his two brothers, asking the crowd whether they would do for the politician he had introduced – OOOBAMMAAAAAAAAA -- what an early generation, taken with presidential candidate John Kennedy, had in the glory days of Camelot done for his brother.

“Will you DOOOOOOO it?”

The whipped up crown indicated they would.

Media reaction to Obama was equally enthusiastic. One Hartford Courant columnist “taken up” at the political revival meeting wrote, “The ‘unlikely journey’ of Barack Obama swirled into the city, and for a few transcendent hours, I was somewhere else, more perfect.”

It’s all getting a little overbearing. Do we really want to be swept up by political rhetoric? Do we want to retreat to the so called glory days of JFK, pull the downy myth of Camelot over our heads and fall to dreaming, when the world before us is bristling with dangers, bursting with nightmares?

Comments

Anonymous said…
The thing about Camelot is that it just does not correlate with reality.

JFK was a Cold War Warrior, he sponsored coups and invasions, faced down the Soviets during the Cuban Missile crisis, cut taxes. His signature line, "...what you can do for your country". Is literally 180 degrees from what the Kennedys have become.

Teddy's battle cry could be, "...hold tight the government is coming to help you...demand what your country can do for you."

Sad what the Kennedys have become.

Listening to Colin on the radio live at the Obama rally, was shall we say, unseemingly for someone of reputed intelligence? Never mind the clear channel station that Bob Steele built.
Don Pesci said…
Right, and there are those of us who remember JFK's first campaign; that was the one in which he accused Eisenhower of being soft on Communism. I was a student in college when he was murdered. Three of us, none ardently political at the time, hitch-hiked to Washington to be there at his funeral.

Edward Kennedy pretty much gave up on everything after his brother was killed. Freud -- or, better still, Jung -- probably could figure out the nature of his reversal. But there's something twisted there, some soul sickness.

Colin is best when he is being frivolous -- which is prety much all the time. No one expects serious thought from him.

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