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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Damn He's Good
I have to admit that I was a little worried about the reception President Obama would recieve today from the crowd and Notre Dame's commencement. However I will also admit that I thought he would go the "safe" route and avoid talking about abortion in little more than a passing fashion so as to not give his critics a target. Boy was I wrong. Boy am I GLAD I was wrong. There have been quite a few issues that President Obama has dealt with lately that I felt he didn't handle in a satisfactory fashion. But today what he showed me,once again, is that he isn't afraid. He isn't scared to confront controversies that come up about him. And he isn't afraid of taking the debate public and keeping it real with his audience. Even when they may not agree with him. As I watched the speech I kept noticing the people in the crowd behind him nodding their heads. Then I noticed that I too was subtly nodding my head along to his words. When we can get to a point in this country where we don't demogogue people just because they don't agree with us we will all be better off. And his message today, highlighting how the Civil Rights Act was hammered out, showed how far we can go when we adopt that stance.
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No body's talking about what's really happening at Notre Dame.
ReplyDeleteI thought the speech was one of this best. And the way he and the graduates handled the heckler was very reasonable and direct.
ReplyDeleteI've read elsewhere that the some culture conservatives wanted to use this speech as a "jump off" to start another "culture war" around the divisive issue of abortion. But I think they may have over-estimated the public current sentiments about the pro-life/pro-choice movements. As the President said, no one is pro-abortion, some of us just want to make sure that the right to have an abortion is in the hands of the woman &/or her partner, not the gov't, or their priest, or their neighbors, or anyone else.
Anyway, I think this was another case where the media were looking for a more sensational story, and the culture warriors were looking for more exposure. Funny enough, neither got what they wanted this time.