By Stephanie Holmes
BBC News

US President-elect Barack Obama’s rhetorical skill, his ability to captivate and inspire audiences with his powerful speeches, has led some writers to describe him as the greatest orator of his generation.

What is the secret of his success – the words themselves, the way he delivers them, or the historical change he represents?
“I believe Barack Obama embodies, more than any other politician, the ideals of American eloquence,” says Ekaterina Haskins, professor of rhetoric at the University of Iowa.

His speeches, she argues, are shaded with subtle echoes of great speeches past, consciously creating a sense of history, purpose and continuity.

Past ghosts

“He has certainly studied all of his predecessors, he is quite aware of the rhetorical heritage that he draws on,” Ms Haskins explains. “He clearly sees himself as a descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.”

“He is summoning the ghosts of previous leaders and presidents who Americans have learnt to revere.”

On winning the election, his Chicago address echoed two of the most famous speeches in US history – Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg address and the words spoken by assassinated civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King the day before his death.

Philip Collins, a speech-writer for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is in no doubt that Mr Obama owes his success to his oratorical gifts.

“He has shown the power of brilliant rhetorical force,” says Mr Collins, a leader writer for the UK’s Times newspaper.

Initially, Mr Obama’s speeches, peppered with references to lofty ideals like “change”, “promise” and “belief” prompted criticism that they were devoid of content and policy.

He began to add policy detail as the campaign progressed but his speech at the Democratic Convention was regarded as less engaging by some observers, precisely because of the number of concrete proposals it contained.

Peopled by personalities

Ms Haskins argues that Mr Obama has other techniques for avoiding the charge of pure rhetoric, adding weight and depth to the abstract with solid illustrations.

Barack Obama tells supporters ‘This is our moment‘ “Rhetoric always has the connotations of being about appearances rather than reality but he doesn’t sound false. He plays with the patriotic abstractions that allow for a certain kind of rhetorical manoeuvring and fills them with specific concrete examples,” she says.

His victory speech, delivered in Chicago, channelled broad ideas of the struggle of a generation through the eyes of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, who has become a celebrity in her own right.

But does the poetry of his campaign risk stumbling when it faces the more prosaic role of holding office?

“A MORE PERFECT UNION” — OBAMA’S RACE SPEECH IN FULL (Video & Text) | PDF Version

Many commentators pinpoint the “A More Perfect Union” speech, made in March 2008 in the aftermath of a scandal about his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as one of Mr Obama’s finest.

Evidence of Rev Wright’s inflammatory sermons risked irrevocably damaging Mr Obama’s candidacy but his response managed to tackle the question of race in US society with delicacy.

It was a speech which wrapped the experience of different races together, expressing understanding for the deep-seated, lingering resentments of each and presenting himself as the embodiment of unity.

His style of delivery is basically churchy, it’s religious: the way he slides down some words and hits others — Philip Collins, Journalist and speech-writer.

For Mr Collins, it remains the only speech, so far, that will not fade. Rousing campaigning speeches, however perfectly pitched and presented, he says, do not test the true mettle of a politician. What does is a speech that attempts to change the opinions of those who disagree with you.

“The weakness of Obama’s rhetoric so far is that it is so agreeable. There is almost nothing he says with which you can disagree. We need to wait for the big moments, the foreign policy challenges, for the great Obama speeches.”

‘It’s about the tune’

Yet print out and read a transcript of a speech by Mr Obama and you may be disappointed. Virginia Sapiro, professor of political science at Boston University, suggests this is because the way Mr Obama delivers his speeches is as important as his words.

“He looks at all times in possession of himself – he is very calm, with an inner peace in his delivery which, in a time of crisis, is very important.”

Ms Haskins agrees: “I’ve been going through his speeches textually. The text alone cannot tell us why they are so powerful, it is about delivery.”

He may have calmness, notes Mr Collins, but the range of his delivery – the way he alters his pace, tone and rhythm – is closer to song.

“His style of delivery is basically churchy, it’s religious: the way he slides down some words and hits others – the intonation, the emphasis, the pauses and the silences,” he explains.

“He is close to singing, just as preaching is close to singing. All writing is a rhythm of kinds and he brings it out, hits the tune. It’s about the tune, not the lyrics, with Obama.”

Story from BBC NEWS

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The “Honorable” James David Manning speaks to the media about Bristol Palin. This message was preached on 2 September 2008.

The NUT-Bag — Black ReTHUGliTOM is back!

This is a serious case of NegroPhobia and Psychoneurosis — NegroMORONphobia

Manning makes Pastor Jeremiah Wright look like a “disciplined Carthusian Monk!”

Even far right-wing “Num-Nut” Rush Limbaugh calls Pastor Manning’s sermons: “ROUGH STUFF!” ….[Read More Here]

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“Kenyan Village of Africa” — LOL!
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[ VIDEO BELOW ] — The Reverend being USED by Fox “Noise’s” Neo-Nazi Goon — Sean Hannity, To Smear Obama. READ THIS: How the Right Uses People of Color to Foster Racism.

Bristol Palin is pregnant – what if Obama’s daughter got pregnant instead?

UPDATE — 11/22/2009

Looks like YouTube Banned Pastor David Manning — Here are some of his rants:

In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying

On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor’s house, at his son’s auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate’s background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s like you’re hearing about two different men with nothing in common,” Peterman said. “It makes it impossible to figure out what’s true, or what you can believe.”

“I think Obama would be a disaster, and there’s a lot of reasons,” said Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. “I understand he’s from Africa, and that the first thing he’s going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He’s got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there’s the Muslim thing. He’s just not presidential!” …..[MORE >>]

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly: Feagin’s voluminous, relentless book testifies to both the strengths and the flaws of applying a sociological approach to the intricate issues of racism in America. Most social scientists, according to this sociologist at the University of Florida (White Racism, etc.) and president of the American Sociological Association, see racism “as something tacked on to an otherwise healthy American society.”

But Feagin contends that the system embeds racism at the core, from the Constitution to the legacy of slavery and segregation in retarding black economic advancement. He argues aptly that color-blind ideology “provides a veneer of liberality” for those unwilling to recognize how race has shaped America, while those who lump blacks with white immigrant groups ignore the effects of racial discrimination. But Feagin’s approach surely sacrifices complexity.

Are “racist pressures against interracial marriage” solely the product of white racism? If achievement tests are so biased toward the white middle class, then why do some Asian immigrants do well on them? Feagin calls for a large-scale educational campaign to move whites to confront “the reality of the pain that their system of racism has caused” and a new constitutional convention to incorporate “the group interests and rights of all Americans of color.”

He also calls for individual and group reparations for blacks. (But how exactly would a “black community” be determined?) Feagin doesn’t engage those who argue that class-based remedies may be better than race-based onesAanother flaw in a book full of strong yet poorly articulated arguments.

From Kirkus Reviews: A sometimes searing indictment of American racial practices.

Sociologist Feagin (White Racism, not reviewed) traces the development of American racism to its roots in Europe.

Ideologically, race was not a major consideration in human endeavors until the beginning of the European slave trade in the 1400s, Feagin tells us. But some 300 years later, it had grown full-blown and become a major cornerstone of intellectual thought–dominated by such thinkers as Locke, Kant, and Hegel, and by the Frenchman Joseph Arthur de Gobineau. All of these harbored anti-black views to varying degrees, including the curious natural-law notion that blacks somehow were born to be slaves.

Much of this 18th-century twaddle was absorbed by our Founding Fathers, especially by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison. Feagin also examines Reconstruction, the lynchings of the late–19th and early–20th centuries, the Civil Rights era, and the post–Civil Rights period.

As we enter a point in the new millennium where the white population is beginning to shrink, Feagin points out that less than half the population of America’s four largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago) is white.

This and other factors lead Feagin to call for an international view of civil rights (i.e., one in which all are entitled to equal concern because all are human beings and not members of this or that state or tribe). Feagin, who is avowedly influenced by Franz Fanon and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), is at his overwrought best when he is in historical pursuit of the roots of racism.

Perhaps because it is something not readily fresh on the mind, it is a matter of more than idle curiosity what Benjamin Franklin and James Madison thought about whiteness.

On the other hand, matters such as affirmative action and reparations are too widely discussed and familiar to make Feagin’s discussion of them very interesting or fresh.

A useful study, even for those who are not guilt-ridden.

Writes: Frank Rich

Well, Mr. Obama isn’t going to win every white vote. But two big national polls late last week, both conducted since he addressed the Wright controversy, found scant change in Mr. Obama’s support. Read the full story