So there you have it.
I know they were pulling out all the stops to make this a moving piece for Obama. The music, the snippets of his speeches (and dang it, if you aren't moved when that man makes a speech you have a heart of stone in my book), and the tales from "real" people did it. I don't know if I think that it will change any one's mind, but maybe the point was to bring it home to those who are undecided (although who these people are and why they can't make up their mind, for the life of me I can not comprehend). I can see where this infomercial might pull that off.
Because Obama is right, everyone does have a story. And within our own stories, we carry the stories of our parents and grandparents. From my paternal grandparents who didn't finish high school and worked in factories their entire lives, never seeming to realize that there could be more or perhaps never even wanting more, to my maternal grandparents who adhered to a traditional middle class 50's idyllic life on the service, but in retrospect perhaps had darker undercurrents; to my mother whose inability to accomplish her dreams and her frustrations with that were placed on my shoulders to achieve and my father, who with his simple expectations and firmly rooted opinions, perhaps influenced me most of all. Those are the parameters of my story and without them I would not be who I am, I would not be the American I am and I would not vote the way I do. We are all the culmination of our stories and I feel that the time has come to write a new chapter.
What do you think, gentle reader?
1 comment:
I find Barack Obama's own story very moving, especially when he shares it himself as he did in this film. It's an unusual story, growing up essentially without a father, whose absence has clearly affected him deeply - and with a mother whose intellectual curiosity and desire to make a positive mark on the world led her across the planet, molding her child Barack with a pretty informed and sophisticated world view at an early age. And then to the balance of his upbringing by his white midwestern grandparents, on a South Pacific island, of all places. This is a story of a pretty special man, with a strong sense of duty to his country and to the world, in spite of a seemingly almost reticent personality. So yeah, I got misty, too. Probably when I learned that he read every Harry Potter book aloud to one of his daughters. That was my first breaking point. The music was a big factor…
Gotta run -- I'm getting misty again…
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