The NYT gives us a glowing endorsement of Barack Obama’s speech on race of yesterday morning. This is a fairly good summary of a speech that we’ll be talking about for a while. Obama is also set to give another speech tomorrow on Iraq and another one on the economy. I’m not sure thats all that good of an idea, since this one was so good. P.T. Barnum always said, “leave ’em wanting more.”
But despite many in the media who keep asking over and over again, “is this dumb enough for the American people to handle?” this speech is getting lots of air time, and I think it will prove that we don’t need the distillation that the media insists on: the need for brevity is a byproduct of television news, not a necessity of the public:
Obama Chooses Reconciliation Over Rancor – New York Times
He faced a choice: Having already denounced Mr. Wright’s ferocious charges about white America, he could try to distance himself from the man who drew him to Christianity, married him and baptized his two children. Or he could try to explain what appeared to many to be the contradiction between Mr. Wright’s world view and the one Mr. Obama had professed as his own.
To some extent, he did both.