Just watched Obama give the eulogy for Pinckney, and I ended up crying when he started to sing Amazing Grace. Perhaps one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen a President do (if you are phobic about singing in public, as I am, doubly so), and I just welled up. He’s such a good person. We’re just so lucky he put up with all our bullshit for the last couple of years because we really don’t deserve a President like him. I doubt we ever have a leader like this again in my lifetime.
As a side note, I was thinking to myself today that with 100% sincerity I wish Andrew Sullivan was blogging today. Lo and behold, he did.
Mandalay
I second that.
the Conster
I cried for marriage equality (and I’m straight), but I cried like a baby in gratitude for this president, the best of my lifetime. He is just so solid, such a stable calm presence. Good grief, what a fucking day and week. I’m exhausted, and I’ve spent the week on vacation.
rikyrah
ICYMI:
POTUS singing Amazing Grace
https://youtu.be/WmRAxJIa0u8
dogwood
I said in an earlier thread that I expected to see Sullivan today.
bluehill
As Sullivan would say “meep, meep.”
Poopyman
@Mandalay: I hope you’re both wrong, because we’re gonna need more like him in the years ahead.
Well I can hope, but we know how that hopey-changey thing worked out.:)
kc
That was incredible.
the Conster
Obama is the kwisatz haderach. There, I said it.
Hoodie
His entire presidency has been an exercise in bravery, like inviting a disturbed kid into your prayer meeting. Like the man said, grace is a gift, neither earned nor deserved. I wonder when some of the knuckleheads in this crazy country will ever get that.
Hill Dweller
I hope people also watch the eulogy, instead of just watching PBO sing Amazing Grace. The eulogy makes the song so much more powerful.
WereBear
@Poopyman: Yep. I’m very happy with the hopey changey things we got.
kc
@Hill Dweller:
The whole thing was amazing, many jaw-dropping moments. In a good way.
Trentrunner
Even without reading it in print, I can tell you that eulogy was beautifully, carefully structured around the words and meanings of Amazing Grace.
So his singing it loses a LOT of its power if you haven’t heard what came before it.
NotMax
He had me until the song. Would have been more effective with “We Shall Overcome.”
IMHO.
dogwood
What the President did today was spectacular. I hope it gets noticed and not completely lost in the coverage of the most significant civil rights decision in my adult life. But I’m not gonna whine. Because as sad as last week was, this week has been “amazing”.
currants
@rikyrah: THANK YOU. As a non-tv person, I was hoping someone would post a link at least to that if not to the whole eulogy.
raven
@NotMax: Come on man.
Elizabelle
@WereBear: Didn’t someone get canned very recently? Who was it (dare not say the name) ….
currants
@Hill Dweller: Got a link? I am hoping to.
NotMax
@NotMax
Should append that I simply loathe hearing “Amazing Grace” anytime, any place, with or without lyrics.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Dude! Amazing Grace was the topic of the eulogy.
Only thing I missed was the Reverend Al Green stepping out to duet.
Although PBO did just fine on his own.
Valdivia
Truly, most significant & deep President of my lifetime. Also, who knew he could sing?
The Sully piece was really good and I am glad he broke his silence. But. The Arendt quote from it bothered me somehow. I am sure it was written because of the Loving decision and in that setting it works as it is seen in the context of all the things Civil Rights were achieving at the same time, as it reads applied to this case and in this week, it sounds like we need to make a choice between certain rights (gay marriage) and others (voting rights) when fighting for them. I think that is wrong. They all matter. It’s the same fight.
Patrick
@Mandalay:
He is easily the best President of my lifetime.
Linda
An old friend who is very Republican (gets all her news from Fox), who has posted some pretty nasty things about this President just posted this on FB:
“Getting chills of the best kind hearing and seeing the President start singing Amazing Grace. Great eulogy!”
I can’t tell you how gobsmacked I was reading that from her. Reverend President has seriously done DONE something today.
NotMax
To people asking for a link, someone posted one in the thread below this one (comment #77 there)
Elie
I was so proud of him — even as I was humbled by the deeper message of our obligations to the grace we have been given. We have work to do — but the power of grace can help us..
I cried yesterday with learning about ACA and today about the ruling on the right of gays to marry everywhere in our country — by God’s grace these things happened. We are beginning to at least address the Confederate flag issue with sincerity – I laughed so hard when the President spoke of Roof not knowing that he was used by God as a vehicle towards his grace….
Listening to O sing was great… He has a great voice. Flubbed a couple of the lyrics, but no biggie — it was grand. I loved how he got everyone wound up during his eulogy/sermon — even got the organist doing a few riffs . I loved it…
Praise God for this man… we will need a lot more leaders that have some of his attributes. We may not see the whole package again in my lifetime, but we can all break off a little piece of his energy and his soul to use for our work ahead….
dedc79
@the Conster:
Republicans do call him The Tyrant, just like Leto.
Mandalay
@NotMax:
Is this a snark that is whooshing over my head?
dogwood
@currants:
The entire service is on CSPAN. Don’t think you need a link to find it.
Elizabelle
NYTimes link to President Obama leading the singing of Amazing Grace.
What’s doubly nice is the White House tweet attached. Said house in rainbow colors.
David Hunt
To
stealadapt a line from Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing, when I looked at the presidential candadates who were running back in 2007, Obama was not my first choice, but he was my last choice and the right choice.skerry
The entire service is on the front page of whitehouse.gov
Betty Cracker
It really was an extraordinary eulogy — and an amazing call to action for an entire nation. President Obama is a remarkable man, and we are indeed lucky to have him. His words about grace and being blind and then seeing were just incredibly powerful; I almost felt like a Christian again, and I’ve been a non-believer for decades.
One of the most amazing parts of the speech was when he was talking about what the killer was trying to achieve and then said, “But God works in mysterious ways.” You don’t have to believe in God to be encouraged and astonished by how spectacularly the vile murderer’s plans backfired.
NotMax
@Mandalay
Nope. Just have a deep and abiding aversion to that song.
dogwood
@Mandalay:
No it’s not snark. Its just what some people have to do.
MomSense
Not only was I crying, but I had my own little amen corner going. My dog has no idea what is going on with me today.
Mike J
@NotMax: Not everything is about you. Perfect choice for a minister’s funeral.
Elie
@MomSense:
LOL — I can relate. I was watching on the tevee and kept jumping up clapping and laughing. My cat was spooked and ran off…
Botsplainer
@the Conster:
My secretary chewed my ass out when I was whooping it up over all the gay divorces I’ll be doing that are sitting on hold in my drawer. Her line was “something something every lawyer stereotype, always focusing on making money of of misery instead of being happy for the good thing.”
My succinct response was “it is the absolute right of gay people to be as miserable, anxious and stressed out about their financial future as straight people.”
Mandalay
@Poopyman:
We surely will, but he has set the bar so darn high I can’t imagine anyone else coming close to him while we are alive (though I’ll be happy to be wrong about that). He’s just an incredible human being.
TaMara (BHF)
@rikyrah: I am undone.
dogwood
I’m always surprized that very few people watch this stuff on CSPAN. You get events in their entirety, no roving cameras zeroing in on celebrities, and no inane commentary.
NotMax
The reason “We Shall Overcome” would have been so much more effective is because they were murdered for the color of their skin, not the choice or depth of their faith.
But shall leave it there and not press what is a strictly personal opinion further.
hells littlest angel
Twenty years from now we’ll have a Democratic president, and right-wingers will whine that he or she lacks the leadership and comity and bipartisanship of bygone Democrats like Obama (who gave us national Romneycare).
FlipYrWhig
@NotMax: You do know that Amazing Grace was written by a guy who had captained a slave ship and then regretted it, right?
Bex
@rikyrah: Just put him on Mt. Rushmore now.
Elizabelle
@dogwood: I love C-Span for just that reason. Switched to MSNBC during the President’s eulogy, though, because they were not yapping and had up photos of the dead. Also audience reaction, which was heartening.
But C-Span staying with the event, and no talking heads, rules.
the Conster
@Bex:
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he’ll be there. Mark my words. Stranger things have already happened.
Elizabelle
I think remembering Senator Pinckney, gone way too early (not yet 42), is going to put steel in some spines.
From the eulogy:
West of the Cascades
@FlipYrWhig: John Newton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton.
“was blind but now I see” is a pretty good synthesis of a lot of what’s going on w/r/t the Confederate flag this week … and not a bad exhortation by the President to some other Christians who are still blind on many, many things when it comes to racial injustice.
Archon
Wow! At this point Obama’s the Presidential equivalent of the Dark Knight in Batman. “We don’t deserve this but we need it”.
Litlebritdifrnt
@NotMax:
I thought Mike Oldfield’s version was particularly beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLOnkbfgUMU
trollhattan
@MomSense:
I’m envisioning its little, tilted head. I puzzle my dog sometimes, myself.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Wow, I didn’t know that. But even absent that fact, the entire speech was built around the concept of grace, and the way PBO wove the theme of being blind and then seeing (D’oh! Maybe the rebel flag is offensive to our fellow citizens, etc.) was absolutely masterful. No other hymn would have worked, IMO.
shawn
this has been am amazing week for the President. He really is head and shoulders above the rest – to include all Bushs and Clintons.
Elie
@FlipYrWhig:
No, I did not know that… how very fitting then…
I also think that the President was also making reference somehow to his own journey — he has had such a road in the last 6 years. I am sure he felt as though he was in some sort of darkness. This week, even with the horror and pain of last week, there was God’s grace in all its glory manifested in the Supreme Court’s decisions — opening our eyes (and his as well, I am sure) to the wonders of grace…
Cervantes
@Bex:
No, find a better place.
And take “Mount Rushmore” down.
NCSteve
It has been, and continues to be,incredibly frustrating to have one of the rare great presidents in office in our times and see him be so continually excoriated and denigrated and generally shat upon by the left, the right and the Villager Gang of 500 Human Centipede alike. And it’s been particularly galling to know that great presidents are rarely acknowledged during their presidencies but often acknowledged in their lifetimes, and I’m certain it will happen here. The unending torrent of abuse Lincoln was exposed to is the only thing that comes close. It took his own cabinet members weeks or months to stop denigrating and underestimating him and grasp how much better than they were he was. (Chase, being Chase never did and never could).
It does matter who’s running thing but it matters more who succeeds the good ones. Rome got a lucky streak and got five good ones in a row who took the Empire through what would otherwise have been tumultuous times and turned it into Rome’s peak era, right up until the last one, who was otherwise one of the greatest leaders in history, let his paternal blind spot lead him to a catastrophic succession decision.
And so with us. We had a similar run of luck and got our Five Good Presidents from FDR to Johnson. Each of them excoriated or denigrated in their time, each of them making colossal mistakes but on balance giving us the best governance we ever got, the most broad-based prosperity, each seeing us safely through truly existential threats. And then, just as Rome got a succession of lunatics, dimwits and fucksticks interspersed with a lone good emperor here and there who was rarely if ever succeeded by another.
The only way we salvage this country is to get another lucky streak. All the good Clinton did came to naught at the hands of the Imbecile. There’s no single person in the GOP Klown Kar who wouldnt make us look back on W’s years as golden age of peace, prosperity, harmony and good government. We are going to have to have at least three good ones in row to keep from going to shit. Five would be better.
Hoodie
@FlipYrWhig: He obviously doesn’t. A brilliant use of that theme regarding the shooter and, by implication, those who might have marginally sympathized with his twisted views. Obama was not just preaching to a black audience. “We shall overcome” would be preaching to the choir. He was saying that those folks that died in Charleston were giving the rest of us a gift, and we shouldn’t fuck it up.. Obama is our most poetic president since Lincoln.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Nothing wrong with not knowing that, obviously — but somehow it reminded me that I owed you a response elsewhere.
Iowa Old Lady
Both Pinckney and Obama are better people than I am. They give me something to aspire to.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
But his entire speech was about grace. No other song would have made sense in the context of the previous 40 minutes. IMHO.
(BTW, NotMax, wanted to thank you for finding the first episode of “Mother Love” on YouTube for me last night. Between you and Steeplejack, I’m going to have me a nice scary marathon viewing.)
MazeDancer
Historic. Riveting. Transporting. Uplifting.
Eulogy one of the most stunning speeches ever delivered by this great President. Not the delivery, he can do plenty of that stir your heart stuff. And grateful for it. But this eulogy is so full of surprises and courage and moral clarity.
All those who have said he’s not a real Christian, and he’s not Black enough, and he’s not doing enough about this and that and whatever, really, stand back, watch a real man in action.
Do not setting for just the singing.
What a day.
Vid is having a bit of demand meltdown at http://www.WhiteHouse.gov But secret is to NOT click the play arrow, just click on 1:00 on the timeline, and POTUS will start.
MomSense
@trollhattan:
She couldn’t tell if I was sad or happy or upset. After lots of head tilting she cuddled me and kept giving me kisses.
chopper
so did i. i dunno what it was, i just lost it.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@NotMax: This. The most overdone piece of schmaltz ever. And bagpipes make it suck harder.
trollhattan
@NCSteve:
Great summary (am in balance okay with leaving Ike in as a member of the good run). And if the fraud hadn’t unseated Carter, imagine what he might have accomplished? For one, we’d be vastly further along the path to renewable energy independence.
SFAW
@dedc79:
You mean Paul? Or was that some two-levels obscure ref that I missed? Since Leto wasn’t around for a whole lot. (Or is Leto one of Paul’s offspring? I didn’t read any of the “God King of Dune,” “Sanitation Engineer of Dune,” “Investment Banker of Dune” follow-ons.)
Janet in Virginia
Best president ever. With a bright future as a preacher when his presidentin’ days are over.
NotMax
@FlipYrWhig
Yes, already knew that. Just goes to show that anyone can pen a crappy song.
bystander
Richard Matt has been shot.
Only Bunuel or Almodovar could have scripted the past week.
Obama was fantastic again. I can’t think of him not being POTUS nor what could have been accomplished had he not faced the load of idiotic bricks inflicted on him.
Elizabelle
OT: since nothing else happened in the news today, sounds like NY prison escapee Richard Matt might have been killed by police.
chopper
@Elizabelle:
back when O first started talking about merely ‘evolving’ on gay marriage etc i was actually pretty pissed. i expected better and more.
now it’s clear that he didn’t merely ‘evolve’. he went all-in. and he’s done more for LGBTetc rights than every president in history added together.
there aren’t enough words to describe how proud i am of this president right now on this issue.
Elizabelle
@Janet in Virginia: I hope President Obama has as long and effective a post-presidency as Jimmy Carter, still going at 90.
chopper
@Elie:
i’m so white i’m clear and was calling out amens during that.
dedc79
@SFAW: I meant Leto the offspring. And by the way, that wasn’t a bad decision to stop reading. They went downhill and fast.
Elie
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Of course you are free to like or dislike as whatever but the reason it is so over-used is because of the words — which if you have ever been through any kind of spiritual hardship, followed by emergence from it “by God’s grace”, or luck, or whatever you would call it — THAT gratitude for having been delivered and for seeing the light again… is what makes it ..
TaMara (BHF)
Here’s is the entire eulogy on youtube, It plays pretty smoothly.
Elizabelle
Can you imagine what a thoughtful ride it is going to be, on AF One, back to Washington? Time to celebrate and grieve and reflect on all that’s happened in about 8 days time.
ruemara
You know, when personal tastes come up in a general matter of pain or joy, it is often my policy to suck up my distaste and focus on graceful participation with the community. Just a random thought.
MazeDancer
@Elie:
When POTUS was talking about Pinckney’s history was thinking how Mr. Obama must identify with so much about the younger man. Including the two beautiful daughters.
Valdivia
I loved that Gov Haley had to sit there and hear what a real speech about the flag sounds like, that it represented the wrongness of slavery.
batgirl
I’m looking forward to his post-presidential career when he isn’t hemmed in by the “office of president.”
Archon
@NCSteve:
America, like Rome in it’s hayday has been blessed with good leadership, particularly in troubling times. According to Machiavelli, leaders genuinely interested in civic virtue is one of the principle benefits of a Republican style of government. That’s why even though the GOP has completely lost it’s way as a party I give the Republicans seriously trying to be President the benefit of the doubt that they are actually interested in at least their version of the common good.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I am not a fan of AG myself (although it’s a lot of fun to sing its lyrics to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song). It got to the point that it was just sickeningly overdone, starting in the ’70s, and I have told my family that if anyone so much as mentions having a bagpiper play it at my funeral, I will come back and haunt them for the rest of their natural lives :-)
That said, if you know anything of the hymn’s history, you know what a central place it has in the African American consciousness. Written by a slave trader who saw the light. How could it not be appropriate at a service for the leader of, arguably, the most significant AME Church in the country?
dogwood
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think you have to be a believer to be moved by the powerful language of faith. I have a close friend who, like me, is in her 60’s. She grew up in the Lutheran church and married into a large Catholic family. Yet, she is an unashamed atheist who gets up every morning and reads The Sermon on the Mount.
David Koch
There’s a really touching photo of Joe Biden and President Obama embracing on the front page of the NYTimes.
bemused
@Mandalay:
And it drives the rightwing even more insane.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Not really a good choice for a funeral/eulogy. A rally, perhaps.
I was always partial to “People Get Ready,” but “Amazing Grace” was probably more fitting.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elie:
And, of course, as others have mentioned, a big theme in the song is that grace opened your eyes to the evil you were doing and made you realize you needed to change your ways, which is what I’m pretty sure the president’s message was in using it.
I understand that it’s become kind of a cliche at funerals so some people have an automatic dislike for it, but it was so perfectly tied into the whole theme of his eulogy that I don’t think a substitute hymn would have worked.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Never so much as once intimated it was not appropriate, rather that there were better, also appropriate, choices available.
Mandalay
@chopper:
Just my opinion, and only President Obama knows the absolute truth, but I don’t believe that he “evolved” on gay marriage. I think he was in favor of it long before he publicly gave his support, but had to keep his powder dry and his position measured for political reasons. If so he can be accused of hypocrisy, but with hindsight the ends justified the means – he picked his moment to “come out”. And regardless, as you point out, he has truly delivered.
Elizabelle
@Mandalay: My thought too.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Okay.
dogwood
@ruemara:
Thank you very much for that.
TaMara (BHF)
@ruemara: Troll will be a troll. He can’t help it.
Mandalay
@SFAW:
This. I can’t think of any song with stronger political connotations. It is a tremendously powerful song, but it is completely inappropriate for a president giving a eulogy.
The right’s seething outrage over “Obama playing politics” at a funeral would have gone on for months.
MomSense
@NCSteve:
Well said.
NotMax
@TaMara (BHF)
Ah, so anyone whose outlook might deviate in the slightest from your own is a troll.
Okay, got it.
raven
OK, I’ve tried to stay out of it . Fuck you critics. It’s a goddamn song.
Cervantes
@dogwood:
Marx read it, too.
Karl, I mean.
Cervantes
@NotMax:
Smile and nod, just smile and nod.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@NotMax:
No, it’s that you’re being kind of a dick about a funeral.
pseudonymous in nc
Quite a week for the president: from Marc Maron’s basement to this. Maron asked about the duty and responsibility of such public occasions — how do you do it? how do you show up? — and today he showed up. And then some.
SFAW
@Mandalay:
I wish you hadn’t said that. Now I’m torn – the desire to reverse-Cleek those motherfuckers is strong with me.
You’re right of course, and it would be a major shiny-object-thing for the MSM and VSP for awhile, which would detract and distract from the important stuff.
SFAW
@pseudonymous in nc:
If this were On The Waterfront, you could do a whole ascent to Heaven riff
MomSense
Let’s just skip getting hung op on the song just this one time. The most important part is the message.
Sometimes we experience profound changes as human beings on the spiritual, existential level and it literally opens our eyes, hearts, and consciences. We are not always open to this profound change but once we finally see we have a responsibility to act. And that is where we are now. We have all been moved and changed by something profound in our nation’s history and in our understanding of each other and now we have to figure out what to do about it.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Well, staying on topic, anyway.
:)
Off to da laundromat and shopping expedition. Enjoy the rest of the day.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: A FB friend’s mother just posted to her wall a complaint that Obama used the occasion for playing politics. So it’s being said by some number of people anyway.
gogol's wife
@rikyrah:
Thank you. That is just devastating. What a fantastic man.
gogol's wife
My God. It’s a Christian church. Christians tend to sing that song a lot. It means a lot to us. It means even more in the black church. It was written by a slave trader who became an abolitionist. It’s based on musical scales associated with African-American music. Did you happen to notice how the people around him reacted when he started singing it? He’s a Christian. Deal with it.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
So much goodness in that video but what gets me is the look on the faces of the pastors when he started singing, especially the first one who stood up.
Gemina13
I haven’t watched this yet. All I have to say is, I have and will continue to disagree on things like TPP and sequestration, but I am proud that I voted for Barack Obama twice. And I a proud of the fact that he has shown himself to be a decent, humane man.
There will be good leaders in our future, but Obama will occupy his own place in history. He’s inspired many. He’s infuriated many. And as a black man of biracial heritage, he’s led us to take a good look at racism and, hopefully, gather the courage to strangle it.
Elie
@MomSense:
beautifully said, Mom…
Lets hug it out, y’all
geg6
@the Conster:
I feel exactly the same way. But thankfully, I’m on vacation next week, so I’ll use it to recover. Emotionally exhausted, but glad of it.
johnnybuck
@SiubhanDuinne: I always recited the lyrics of AG to “ghost riders in the sky”
Patrick
@FlipYrWhig:
It truly wouldn’t matter what heck Obama had said. Haters are going to hate regardless. Most of us rational people can see his speech and him singing Amazing Grace for what it was. He is a once in a life time President and leader.
dogwood
@gogol’s wife:
The best way to deal with it is not to respond to it.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Bex: Nah. Have Preznit Hillary nominate him to the Supreme Court when Scalia finally blows that last gasket.
That will be entertaining beyond all measure.
policomic
Just want to pile on with all of you agreeing with Cole. Easily the best president of my lifetime (like Obama, I was born in 1961), and this week has offered a lot of reinforcement for that assessment.
Kerry Reid
I think the great and emotional significance behind “Amazing Grace” in these circumstances in particular is that it was written by a clergyman who had been a slave trader.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Thanks, but after reading that, I think I’m just going to have to accept being deeply misunderstood and call it a day. I left a shitload of comments in that thread, and if that’s your takeaway, I can only conclude we’re talking past each other somehow. No worries. It happens.
NCSteve
@Archon: I’ll tell you something. The more I learn about Eisenhower, the more deeply impressed I am with him personally and his presidency generally. He was, quite simply, one of the most brilliant men ever to hold that office. The fact that he actively cultivated an image as an amiable plodder bordering on a dunce, all the while never giving a single straight answer in a news conference and getting no blame, because what do you expect?
Eisenhower immediately grasped–well ahead of any of his military or national security advisors–that nuclear weapons weren’t weapons in any meaningful sense of the world. He was more than willing to bluff with them, but he understood immediately that they weren’t just really big bombs but, rather, world-ending contrivances that could never be used for anything but deterrence. In a real sense, our entire understanding of what nuclear weapons were and were not, their control, and how they changed the world for the rest of the Cold War was the one he created in the first weeks of his presidency, and it’s only by the grace of God that the understanding that shaped that system was his and not Curtis Lemay’s–which almost certainly would have been the case with a president without Eisenhower’s will, brilliance, and military knowledge and cred.
kc
@Cervantes:
ETA: Nvr mind, Betty’s better than I am.
Linnaeus
@NCSteve:
I wouldn’t give Eisenhower that much credit, but that’s probably a discussion for another thread.
kc
@MomSense:
It was a beautiful thing.
The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion
This President has made me cry more than any politician of my lifetime. I’ve been left sobbing TWICE today on listening to him. I’ve been so mad at this man more times than I could count, but there is no doubt in my mind that he is THE greatest president of my lifetime, and one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known. God bless you, Barack Obama. No-one has ever done more to give me hope for our democracy and our future as a nation. Thank you, sir.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not worried. I find our conversations a useful part of this experiment. You’re wise in ways I no longer have time left to become. I appreciate it.
And now here we are, after another long, exhilarating week, capped by this long, exhilarating day.
You have a great week-end now, you hear?
Cervantes
@The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion:
I second that — all of it.
Enough said.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
I wish I were surprised.
What you might consider doing as a response: suggesting that the mother go get gay-married, that’ll show that Mooslim Usurper what’s what. (Yes, I realize that it’s borderline cognitively-dissonant, but she sounds as if she’s not smart enough to figure that out.)
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: There was a pretty good movie released in 2007 about the end of slavery in England, and about the author of the lyrics, the ex-slaver named John Newton, and about William Wilberforce, the clergyman who led the movement to outlaw slavery. The following Sunday was Amazing Grace Sunday in churches across the country in honor of the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in England. I was no longer a church-goer at that point but I was a bit sorry I didn’t attend on that day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace_(2006_film)
SFAW
@The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Interestingly, John Boehner, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and most of Wingnuttia feel the same way.
Fortunately, the reason(s) for your tears are much more uplifting.
opiejeanne
@johnnybuck: I can’t even imagine that.
SFAW
@opiejeanne:
Was that before or after he saved the British Navee from Bonaparte? (Sorry, semi-obscure TV series in-joke.)
Brachiator
On the YouTubes, re Amazing Grace:
opiejeanne
@SFAW: Which tv series?
It’s interesting that this Wilberforce tried to influence Napoleon to end France’s involvement in the slave trade, but failed.
John Cole
@NotMax:
You gotta be shitting me. Amazing Grace is to gospel as the 9th’s Ode to Joy is to classical. Let me explain this in the highest praise possible. It’s gospel’s Paul’s Boutique, you monster.
blueskies
@NCSteve: Steve, the great ones are always shit on by their contemporaneous opposition — all the way back to Jefferson (not that he was shit on for what he SHOULD have been shit on — slave-owning asshole), who was shit on for being the very first anti-corporatist.
Lincoln – shit on. Then killed.
FDR – shit on.
JFK – shit on. Then killed.
LBJ – shit on.
Clinton (ok, not great, but very good) – shit on.
The ONLY great president I can think of who WASN’T shit on was Washington. And that’s just because we were so goddammed grateful to be done with the war.
Suzanne
Oh fuck, I am crying.
EthylEster
@NotMax: Sad but true on the intertubes.
Emma
In spite of all my disagreements with the man, I often wonder how the hell we got so lucky to get him. He is class personified.
SFAW
@opiejeanne:
Horatio Hornblower
Turgidson
@Emma:
It really feels like a huge fluke sometimes that he rose even to Senator, much less won two presidential elections. Our political system sometimes seems hopelessly tilted in favor of the amoral, sociopathic, and narcissistic. It’s often hard for me to believe that a fundamentally decent, graceful human being like Obama was able to climb to the top of that wretched, treacherous mountain (and stay there).
Ryan
Upvote. This is the only time Andrew Sullivan has ever reached me. Thanks for letting us know.
TaMara (BHF)
@NotMax: No, a troll is someone who comes to every thread to express something contrary just to get attention by being contrary.
@EthylEster: See above
Woodrow/asim
@Turgidson:
I love saying that Obama’s rise to national politics is due to STAR TREK (even though it vastly discounts his own amazing talents and the hard work of a lot of folks).
If I can be “funny” for a moment — his GOP opponent, Jack Ryan, had divorced Jeri Ryan, who played Seven of Nine on STAR TREK: VOYAGER. And if it hadn’t been for the court releasing the details of how Andrew had been a complete ass to Jeri, who was well-known because of TREK, it would have been a much closer race.
Instead, Obama got “carpetbagger” Keyes, and a smooth path to Senator. And honestly, I couldn’t think of a better real-life example of The STAR TREK Candidate than Obama, flaws and all.
All joking aside — he’s brilliant at this. Obama has only lost one election since he started running.
cokane
well said Cole. Obama is a better president than the US deserves, even though he is flawed. I’ve said that same phrase for awhile about him.
NCSteve
@blueskies: Even Washington got a lot of abuse in the last year or two. But the hagiography started up again with a vengeance before his horse was outside city limits.
NotMax
@John Cole
Monster? Heh. High praise indeed.
Sorry, but he’s the president, not the preacher-in-chief.
NotMax
@John Cole Also too,
Have to take your word for that. Never read the thing. Prefer fantasy books with more elves and wizards.
NotMax
@TaMara (BHF)
As it is apparently beyond your powers of cognizance to entertain the concept that someone might be being open and honest, not contrary for its own sake nor seeking attention, there’s little point in responding further.
qwerty42
@David Hunt: …a line from Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing, when I looked at the presidential candadates who were running back in 2007, Obama was not my first choice, but he was my last choice and the right choice.
Just watched the Eulogy and not agree more (and that would describe me back then too)
Louise
@Hill Dweller: Amen. He called everyone out. So proud and glad he did it.
mclaren
Particularly when Obama is choosing which children and women to blow apart into bloody hamburger with drone strikes, and then ordering the drones back again to murder the young aid workers who venture out to try to save any of the mutilated screaming victims.
Obama is also “such a good person” when he rams through atrocities like the Trans Pacific Pucker-up-your-asses-workers. The companies that start suing in federal courts to remove inconveniences like the federal minimum wage and worker health and safety laws will show us intimately what a “good person” Obama is.
Fuckin’ A, Cole, Obama is just another pol. Stop all the romanticizing bullshit. Obama came out for gay marriage because it’s politically safe for him to do so and because his corporate masters don’t stand to lose any money because of it.
kindness
I say take bigot Andy Jackson off the $20 and put Obama on it now. Michelle gets the back.