Blatant Reality

By Jonathan Williams

Yesterday I attended the “NAACP King Day at the Dome” rally where the top three democratic presidential candidates spoke (Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton if you didn’t know). Let me start off by saying that it was freezing (20 degrees F) yesterday when I went to the rally. It was sunny though, so the crowd at the event was fairly large. One of the first things I noticed when I went there was that there were an abnormally large proportion of Hillary signs with almost no Obama or Edwards signs. The notion that this was going to be a mostly pro-Hillary crowd was shattered when I overheard a man talking about how he could never vote for Hillary because she is so “dishonest.” That is probably one of the only things that I could have agreed with him on.

 

 

After playing several speeches of Dr. King, a “Unitarian Universalist minister” got up and said an invocation. Now, it started off as most invocation would, being very vague about who he might or might not be praying to, but it ended up being a Bush bashing speech. It almost sounded like a little kid’s prayer where he started off thanking God then ended with something like “and please make little Betty not have any friends because she was mean to me today.” I really wish I would have recorded it, you would have laughed.

 

Dr. Lonnie Randolph, Jr. was up next and is the president of the NAACP S.C. State Conference. His speech was another funny speech and was way to long. He covered items from stating that the capitol building was a “shrine of bigotry” and if we took all the bad monuments down, there wouldn’t be very many monuments left on the premises. At one point in his speech, he mentioned vice presidents but then couldn’t remember who our current vice president was and had to ask the crowd. I literally was sitting there hoping that he was joking but from the look on his face, I really believe he didn’t know who the vice president was. This is another thing I wished I had taped.

 

 

Oh, another thing to mention. Obama and Edwards showed up on time but Hillary was late in her arrival, getting there after Dr. Randolph’s speech. Since we are on the topic of who showed up at the rally on time, one group that didn’t show up at all yesterday was the man made global warming advocates and its a good thing too. If they would have showed up, I know for a fact they would have been laughed at because it was so bitter cold there. Anyways, we’re moving on.

 

 

One more notable person to point out before I talk about the candidates themselves is Reverend Nelson B. Rivers, III. He is the NAACP Chief of Field Operations and is from Baltimore, Maryland. He basically went on a rant about how the NAACP has been responsible for every advancement African Americans have experienced. He likened the NAACP to a dog that protects your house. If you haven’t fed your dog recently (aka given money to the NAACP) how can you expect it to protect you. He then went on to say things that the NAACP is the only reason African Americans were let into the statehouse and that South Carolina has never done anything right on its own (it has needed prodding from the NAACP). Since I’m not originally from South Carolina and don’t know the state’s history too well, I will let other judge on how right these ideas are but I have a feeling they are not entirely true.

 

 

After a couple more people whose speeches I didn’t find too remarkable, the candidates were finally up and given 10 minutes of speaking time each. Barack Obama was first up (they randomly drew names for the order) and talked about how Dr. King described the need for unity back then and how the same is needed now to overcome the essential deficit of this country. Now, you may be wondering why I emphasize the word deficit. I do it because in each of the three candidates’ speeches, one word is focused on and Obama’s word is deficit. If you were wondering what deficit he was talking about, its a moral deficit. He basically just talked about how we now see that there is a deficit in our country and that we need to fix it. The implication is that Barack Obama is the only one that can fix this deficit because he can unify the country.

 

Next up was John Edwards. He started off by reminding everyone that he was born in South Carolina and was very proud to be a South Carolinian. After stating this, Edwards used both the race and gender cards to gain him popularity by stating that he was very proud to be on the stage with an African American and a women who are both running for president. The way I took this part of his speech was “Hey, its cool to see how far we’ve come in equality, but come on, I’m the tried and true so you should vote for me.” One ironic thing he stated was that he was with the African American people in their march for equality in the United States even though he didn’t attend the actual march after the rally. Obama was the only one out of the three to actually march.

 

 

The majority of Edwards’ speech focused on poverty. He talked about his poverty tour and that he felt the federal minimum wage should be at least $9.50 and hour which should be “indexed to go up on its own.” Oh, Edwards’ word is silence. He basically used it by saying that silence is what is keeping us from ending poverty and stuff like that.

 

And last, but surely not the least, Hillary Clinton gave her speech. As with everyone before her, Hillary thanked everyone for coming and those who organized the event. Hillary also did what Edwards did by pointing out that yes, Barack Obama is an African American and yes, John Edwards is a South Carolina native but she even went as far as referring to herself in third person. What I mean is after stating the obvious about the previous two, she said “and a woman, all of us running for President.” Couldn’t help but point that out, could you Hillary? As if John Edwards hadn’t said the exact same thing right before you and the crowd couldn’t see for itself that you are a woman.

 

Also, at one point in her speech, she paraphrases James 2:20. This verse says: “You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?” The funny thing is that in the verse before this, it describes faith a little by saying: “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-and shudder.” (James 2:19) I’m no Bible scholar but the implication of this is that even if you believe there is one God, that doesn’t make you saved. So be wary of politicians who say they believe there is one God and rely solely on good deeds to prove it. (Now, don’t think that I’m implying that Hillary is a demon, I’m just saying that true faith is more than just good deeds and belief that there is one God.)

 

 

The rest of her speech sounded much like Obama’s and Edwards’ and doesn’t include too much interesting things. I’ve decided that Hillary’s word is actually a phrase and its “git it done.” Now she only says this one time in her whole speech but its funny enough that I think it should be her phrase.

 

Now before you watch the videos, keep that in mind that they are inevitably very shaky due to me shivering. The audio is pretty good so please cut me some slack. Also, because I know all of you probably don’t want to watch the videos that much, I have a little game you can play. For each video, count how many times each candidate says their “word” in their speeches. This should add just a little bit of enjoyment to watching them. Here are the speeches:

 

Barack Obama’s Speech on MLK Day

 

John Edwards’ Speech on MLK Day

 

Hillary Clinton’s Speech on MLK Day (Part 1)

 

Hillary Clinton’s Speech on MLK Day (Part 2)

 

Sorry about having to break up the Hillary video into two sections. They guy waving the Hillary signs got in my way and was messing with the auto focus on my camera. That brings me to two of my pet peeves about going to these events. The two things I strongly dislike at these events are overzealous fans who think they can do what they want and news people who act like the candidate came just for them. So remember everyone, if you’re in front and waving a banner, consider their are people behind you wanting to see too. Also, if you see an amazing photo in a newspaper, remember that it was most likely taken at the expense of the crowd and citizen journalists like me. I know my blogs are highly opinionated, but at least when I attend these events, I try to include video of the whole speech so you can come up with your own opinions. In order to try to get the best video possible, I try to attend these events early and don’t appreciate people blocking my view.

 

Hope everyone had a great Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and this concludes my second day of coverage of the democrat’s primary race in South Carolina.