PrintMarch 20, 2008
What is Obama's Authentic Voice?
Barack Obama adjusts his vocal intonations to fit his audience. It makes us wonder, "what does his authentic voice sound like?" Like all of us, he only gets one true voice.
Hillary Clinton was justly ridiculed when she tried to talk black before a black church audience. You can watch her "I don't feel no ways tired" clumsy affectation here. Chalk it up to temporary insanity that offered us comic relief.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made verbal affectation a political art form. He has more than one natural sounding voice. Question is - Which is authentic?
On June 5, 2007, he delivered a speech (introducing "Quiet Riot" concept) to an audience heavy in black preachers at Hampton University. Actually, it was more a sermon than a speech, punctuated with transitional "Our God is big enough for that" praise statements. You can watch the 36 minute sermon here.
Throughout that sermon, Obama lapses into a verbal affectation conveyed with slurred words and tonal punctuation made to sound like black preaching. At least one person in the audience noted the affectation.
"The Rev. Robert Abbott, pastor of the Holy Trinity Baptist Church in Amityville, N.Y., said Obama connects with black audiences because of the preacher's style he uses when addressing them."
So was that his real voice and the one he used to deliver his "A More Perfect Union" speech this week his eclectic voice for the general public?
This Hampton University sermon is the clearest expression, so far, of his neoliberal theocracy. It offers a spellbinding litany of federal programmatic initiatives tailored to the black community.
