voce d’obama o d’angelo
“Obama, tall and handsome and blessed with a weighty baritone…” Newsweek
Salon, always on the lookout for a story with a hook, posits that “there is something in the very essence of Obama’s voice — its tone, its timbre, its resonance” that inspires trust.
Author Frank Browning delves into what one might call “Le Mystère des Voix Baracks” with the James Carville of vocal coaches, Lotfi Mansouri, who sternly admonishes “you cannot manufacture timbre artificially.”
Browning further links Obama’s velvety Fach with everyone from Frank Sinatra (“the story he was telling in his songs [was] the elemental, physical story of his own life”) to Freudian psychoanalyist Theodor Reik (“…the true baritone is an evocation of the ancient shofar, the ram’s horn that came from Abraham‘s sacrificial sheep but was also the instrument Moses used to call the wandering tribes together at Sinai to hear the thundering words of God”.)
Hillary Clinton‘s speaking voice, it seems, is not, perhaps, so soaring and pesante an instrument as her opponent’s. Says political consulatant Lynn Meyer, “That’s the voice who told you to eat your spinach, take your elbows off the table, asked you where’s your homework.”
Regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton, I think F. Scott Fitzgerald put it best in ‘The Great Gatsby’ when he wrote, ‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’ The same could be said of Bill and Hillary.
Obama 08!
what are you smoking there Great gatsby…?
Please.
They smashed up?
A trillion dollar surplus……smash some mroe there hill and bill. better than the smashing Jim JOnes Obama will do.
A balanced budget……yeah smash like that HIll and Bill, we would love it….Obama says, “say what?”
and finally, we were well liked and supported all over the world, can you remember back that far? Most cannot, so they are buying this drek about a novice.
HIllary O8 only reason to celebrate.
OK, so ignore me
Hey Miss Ping =)
The only way to really answer your question about why our elections are so LONG, is to answer by saying that we aren’t really a democracy -- we are a democratic REPUBLIC. And as such, our elections are held at ever higher levels -- when voters cast their ballots in the primaries, their votes aren’t legally binding -- delegates get together at the local, county, state, and then national elections to cast THEIR votes, and nominate delegates to the next-up level. When I say that the votes aren’t legally binding, each party has it’s own rules, that it basically always follows, and the likelihood that a delegate would cast their ballot against what their constituency has voted for is, for all practical purposes, ZERO. BUT, there are no laws that prevent them from casting their vote for whoever they want. So the local delegates get together at the county level, cast their votes, and elect delegates to go to the state level, then THEY cast their votes at the state level and elect delegates to go to the national level… you see the point.
Even in the national general election, each state is doled out a certain number of “electoral” votes, based primarily on population. When a candidate “wins” a state, the people in that state who are “electors” then cast their vote for that candidate, and THOSE votes are the votes that determine the winner. You might remember the brouhaha after the 2000 election when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George Bush was elected president, because he had more electoral votes. I don’t know that anyone has ever cast their vote against the majority of voters in their state, but LEGALLY they can cast their vote for whoever they want -- they are not required to give their vote to the candidate that the voters in their state voted for. It makes sense if you look at the nature of life 150 or 200 years ago, but it seems like a cumbersome and problematic system with the technology we have available today, and people don’t really understand how it works.
Anyway, it’s actually EVEN MORE complicated than that, and I’m sure I don’t know the half of it, but it is a long process because of the many steps that need to be taken along the way. In terms of the $$$$$$$, it’s just a question of constant air travel to get from place to place, overwhelming the airwaves with ads, and setting up rallies to get people to hear what you have to say, and that takes lots of money. The American people seem to not be very interested in government and politics, and they don’t really know a lot about issues, and don’t take the time to educate themselves (hmmmm, a lot like opera…) so if a candidate wants to build up momentum and a following, they really need to inundate people with a massive PR campaign, so that they become famous, so that people will think of them and vote for them, which is WHY they start so early -so that they are well known and have been on people’s minds for a long time by the time the election happens. It’s really ridiculous actually.
And Mark -- you must have missed my point, which is that McCain doesn’t seem to flip-flop on (most) issues. He stays WRONG for the long haul. I don’t know why you would want to cast your vote for someone regardless of their stance on issues just because they are consistent. You can criticize Obama all you want for abstaining from votes -- that doesn’t mean there is no record of his position on every issue -- positions that have remained constant towards many ideals that I share, which is why I am voting for him. If you want to vote for someone who wants to build a wall around our borders, cut taxes for the very rich, and stay in Iraq for another hundred years, spending hundreds of billions of dollars along the way while our schools and infrastructure are falling apart around us, go ahead and vote for John McCain. At least you will know that when he’s made a mistake, he will stick with it and keep on making the same mistakes, because he doesn’t “flip-flop”.
Mark is too dull of wit (even after being told last time he blundered drunkenly onto some thread) that my name is NOT “*Herva* Nelli”.
And as Sugermezzo said:
THE WAR, GAY RIGHTS, A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE, GEORGE BUSH’S TAX CUTS…
Not enough of a list for McCain to have caved on for you? These are all issues on which he has flip flopped, along with making up with the Swift Boat Christian Right which pilloried him in the South Carolina primary last time around…
sugarmezzo, I thank you. So, very little to do with politics and a lot to do with brouhaha.