In a piece about the travesty of Altgeld Gardens in Chicago, Michelle Malkin quotes Obama quoting an elementary school principal:
Twenty miles from the glittering center of Chicago, at the farthest edge of the South Side, dozens of two-story brick buildings stretch for block after weary block. It was here where America provided public housing for African-American veterans of World War II and it was here, in the 1980s, that Barack Obama became a community organizer. Working with a band of outspoken mothers, Obama first auditioned his oratory and gained public notice. The despair evidenced by the many dilapidated buildings, and the seeming mockery of the project’s flowery name, Altgeld Gardens, prompted Obama to recount years later how an elementary school principal believed the children here no longer laughed like children. “Their throats can still make the sound, but if you look at their eyes, you can see they’ve shut off something inside,†Obama quoted the principal as saying.
[emphasis mine]
In point of fact, the source for this observation is here, in the opening pages of James Baldwin’s great short story, “Sonny’s Blues”:
When the last bell rang, the last class ended, I let out my breath. It seemed I’d been holding it for all that time. My clothes were wet–I may have looked as though I’d been sitting in a steam bath, all dressed up, all afternoon. I sat alone in the classroom a long time. I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and laughing. Their laughter struck me for perhaps the first time. It was not the joyous laughter which–God knows why–one associates with children. It was mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate. It was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself.
And later:
A terrible, closed look came over his face, as though he were keeping the number on the bill a secret from him and me. “Thanks,” he said, and now he was dying to see me go. “Don’t worry about Sonny. Maybe I’ll write him or something.”
And:
His face closed as though I’d struck him. “No. I’m not talking about none of that old-time, down home crap.”
There is no source that Barack Obama won’t pilfer and arrogate to himself to usurp the authority that Baldwin writes about. And keep in mind that Baldwin was targeted by other black writers and critics for being inauthentically black by virtue of the purity of his prose, even though, in this story for example, he could make it an analogue of jazz improvisation.
Baldwin earned his blues mastery, just as Sonny, in the story, earned his. Neither used a teleprompter.
It’s also about the discipline of listening, which Barack has never learned.
While Jesse Jackson, Arnie Duncan and Eric Holder make excuses and throw money at Chicago’s school violence problem,……… Stopthpresses searches school records to identify the real problem.
http://stopthepresses2.blogspot.com/search/label/Father
Jesse Jackson speaks about Obama’s Nobel Prize
Some say with surprise
Obama how’d he
get a Peace Prize?
They say how could he have won?
With all his accomplishments
he aint done
Some say the Nobel committee gave him a present
For voting in the U.S. Senate
130 times present
But just in case you missed it
All his accomplishments
I will now list it
How about that bling,
He got that
from a Saudi King
.
Often he would score
In a basketball game
15 points or more
Or what about all the Community organizing he has done
Teaching inner city kids being chased by gangs
how to run
The Nobel committee Obama they did choose
Look at Bush
all he ever got was a pair of shoes
Those passages don’t are related by what, school children?
But thanks Dan, because posting these passages is vital and necessary for, it seems to me, your audience is of the thundering dumb-struck variety that I’d assume they’ve never read Baldwin and certainly wouldn’t know that he was a black man, from Harvard I believe, like Obama.
Black men can’t write books! They needs ‘em a whitey to do that! Ayers, Obama, yep’ums, all the proof you need!
don’tApologies, I ain’t no Obama or Baldwin! I’m white!
Fascinating comparison Dan. Have you run this by SEK? That way thor could go there and comment about the know-nothing hicktards in the POWIP audience. If you’re lucky, he’ll make up a quirky name for it like “ghoster” or something; maybe “laugher”, who knows!
But seriously, I’ve never read Baldwin. Being a philistine, I stick to math books, fatual tome’s, and historical fiction…
In short, I’m a geek; but what rocket scientist isn’t at heart…
Andre Sakharov, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Descartes, etc.., seemed fairly well-read, Rocket Bob. Maybe set that bar of yours a little higher and read Dostoevsky until you get him.
“Historical fiction,” that’s a funny one.
Did you know Celine was a medical doctor? Yes, a human-rocket fixer he was, yet he found the time to, you know, read and write some of savage stuff.
ofI know you’ve been away for a while, but you don’t have to work all of your insults into one night…
In my defense I’ll just say that I spent many years engaged in other pursuits, and am not ashamed of my reading choices. Also, all those men are brilliant, accomplished scientists, but none racked up the flight hours, the carrier landings, nor the other experiences I enjoyed working on strategic systems; and would’ve enjoyed the some of the experiences I’ve had.
One plays the hand one is dealt; I’ve made mistakes but played a good hand pretty well.
Am I crackin’ you too hard? All apologies, but those men were sort’a busy racking up hours in the lab, Bob, and Descartes, like Celine, even made time to enlist in the army, as I recall. They even express their views on things that go boom and war so you might enjoy ‘em.
I bet you read Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin and think they’ve the final word in literary genius. Please, dude, you didn’t die for your country, but Jose Marti did. Get real.
I read Sakharov’s memoir many, many years ago. I think you’ll be surprised at how life under Stalin viewed through his eyes will change your impression of teh evil be teh simple and teh good be teh simpler.
All I’ve read are some of Descartes’ natural philosophy and mathematical stuff.
No W.E.B. Griffin, and only “Debt of Honor” by Clancy; both were not bad. Oh, and I have read some Forster, Jane Austen, Melville, some Kundera, Michener, Coleen McCulloughand other college level literature course works. I know it sounds boring to an MFA like you…
Don’t make so many assumptions about me though, you’d be surprised…
Bob, I can see you coming a country mile away.
The great thinkers were complicated men, Bob, and that’s because man is a complicated creature, which complicates the world, no?
Read why after Descartes realized that much of what he was taught as a child were mostly lies that he set out to re-learn everything, or truths, anyway. It’s very interesting. Descartes, I believe, would have summoned up enough skepticism to have a good laugh at Reaganism.