Daydream Believer: Obama, King and Oprah
On Meet the Press yesterday, the show ran a retrospective clip on Dr. King’s last appearance on the show, 40 years ago.
I can’t think of any better testament to the progress made in the social revolution that King, Parks, W.E.B DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Charles Houston, James Farmer and others began so many decades ago than the fact that a young, vibrant African-American candidate has a decent shot at both the Democratic nomination and the White House.
In other Obama news, both Political Wire and Daily Kos are reporting that an announcement may come this Wednesday, on January 17th, on the Oprah Winfrey show.
I’m not sure if I linked this here, yet, however this was one of the better academic papers that cracked the mainstream media recently. Entitled The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently, it addresses how inattentive voters can gain a general portrait of a candidate simply from brief appearances on non-news or soft-news shows like “Today” or “Oprah.” With this in mind, Obama’s strategy is deliberate and conscious – millions of Americans (many of them women, a key cornerstone in any Democratic coalition) will form an opinion of the still-relatively unknown outside of political circles Obama from his dual Winfrey appearances.
Interviewer: Dr. King, do you believe the American racial problem can be solved?
MLK: Yes I do. I refuse to give up, I refuse to disband in this moment, I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism because I think, in any social revolution, the one thing that keeps it going is hope, and when hope dies, somehow the revolution degenerates into a kind of nihilistic philosophy which says you must engage in disruption for disruption’s sake. I refuse to believe that. However difficult it is, I believe that the forces of goodwill, white and black in this country can work together to bring about a revolution of this problem.”
I can’t think of any better testament to the progress made in the social revolution that King, Parks, W.E.B DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Charles Houston, James Farmer and others began so many decades ago than the fact that a young, vibrant African-American candidate has a decent shot at both the Democratic nomination and the White House.
In other Obama news, both Political Wire and Daily Kos are reporting that an announcement may come this Wednesday, on January 17th, on the Oprah Winfrey show.
I’m not sure if I linked this here, yet, however this was one of the better academic papers that cracked the mainstream media recently. Entitled The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently, it addresses how inattentive voters can gain a general portrait of a candidate simply from brief appearances on non-news or soft-news shows like “Today” or “Oprah.” With this in mind, Obama’s strategy is deliberate and conscious – millions of Americans (many of them women, a key cornerstone in any Democratic coalition) will form an opinion of the still-relatively unknown outside of political circles Obama from his dual Winfrey appearances.
