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There's a lot to say about Obama's astounding speech last night, with perhaps the most prescient analyses so far here, here, here, here and here (that's a lot of links, but the issue is very important) but I'm writing now about more mundane things like a snippet on Obama's "telling moments" and Michelle's fashion.
First Obama. Several minutes into his speech, Obama came up with this line:
"I am the President."And here is the expression he held for several seconds after he made that declaration:
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Right after that declaration, he bounces into an exaggerated humility by evoking President Lincoln and directly quoting him:
"I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go."
Why couldn't he come up with a memorable phrase of his own? Why did he need to quote another man's anguish and transfer it into his speech? It rang false, strained and disingenuous. Lincoln was trying to connect to a higher calling for his actions. Obama is borrowing those famous words to convince people that he does have a higher calling for all these "actions" he's proposing.
Perhaps what sealed that impression for me was his lapses into a hardened expression as he looks into the crowd trying to gauge their reactions, convinced of his rightness, and with no humility to search further.
He presented a jumble of words, with little coherence, except for his ultimate point that:
everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules – from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, DC.He was still within the narrative of slavery, of the evilness of America, and unable to see clearly, and go "forward" as his socialist slogan tells us.
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And Michelle Obama was once again wearing a casual dress, hardly worthy of such an important political event (even Joe Biden's wife, Jill Biden came out as though she took this role seriously).
But, Michelle is promoting another "black" designer. Which in the end was what Obama's quote was all about - slavery, blacks, "inequality," spreading the wealth. Her dress was the perfect compliment to Obama's speech.
The patterns are hard to define, in this "pattern" dress, but there are shapes of aggressive clarity, such as the pineapple which dominates a badly drawn fleur-de-lys. Blackness (or Africanness) rules over classic western design, and even the dress designer is another one of those unimpressive "black" designers that Michelle has been promoting throughout her time in the white house, simply because she is black.
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with a yellow belt for a color accent.
Malia opts for a super-short dull purple dress,
which looks too small on her.
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which even the original design doesn't
call for. But this young girl knew better.
(By the way, Sasha's flats are gold,
not yellow, like her sister's.)
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compete with coarse but
easily decipherable
exotic pineapples
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broach on Michelle Obama's
dress. Sasha had no say?
Also, muscular neck
and shoulders
will always be her
fashion statement.
Once again, as much as I dislike writing about their two daughters, Sasha, the younger one, is the one who is more alive, more interesting than her sullen sister. This came out in their behavior during Obama's speech, as well in the dresses they chose to wear.