Some experiences occur in each generation.
My, father, who was a federal government worker, came home for dinner one evening in 1963 and told my mother and me, he had walked out from work at lunch and saw a big crowd on the Mall and went over to hear what all the fuss was about, and he heard some guy who was quite a speaker.
"Man, I haven't heard oratory like that since...I don't know. Roosevelt. Maybe even better than Roosevelt."
Of course, what he had heard, WHO he had heard, was Martin Luther King giving his famous "I have a dream" speech. Just kind of wandered into it, like Mr. Magoo.
When I turned on the evening news, there was MLK and Pop came into the room and pointed at the screen and said, "Yeah! That's him! That's the guy."
So in one fell swoop, my father confirmed my teen age perception that he was totally out of it, but at the same time, he knew a good thing when he heard it.
I felt the same way when I listened to Michelle Obama this morning on CNN, as she gave her address at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester.
Of course, they were playing clips of her address on all the different morning programs (except Fox News) but none of them could convey the power of her delivery; if anything, they diminished it.
There were so many parts of this powerful oratory which hit home, but none more than her description of what it means, or should mean, in America to be a man, a potent man. Real men do no denigrate women, or think of them as simply bodies which roam the earth to give pleasure to men. She described a real man as someone who has the self confidence to deal with an woman of intellect, a man who treats women with respect. Of course, in one description she was describing her own husband and denigrating Donald Trump.
Martin Luther King never ran for office. I hope Michelle Obama some day will.
No comments:
Post a Comment