Obama’s Grace
Here is another reason to watch rather than just read about the presentation. It reinforces the fact that this was a major national ceremony, involving fundamental discussion of national issues and prospects, in which all the major participants were black: president, preachers, mourners, congregation. I can’t think of a comparable previous event. Someone writing about our time will, I think, note it as an important step that this was treated not as a “minority” commemoration but as a central American discussion.
.. I have my complaints about and disappointments with Obama. But I hate the conventional D.C.-media disdain for him as a guy too cool, too aloof, and too generally above-it-all to be interested in the grimy work of public affairs. Think of the columns that begin, “Barry is bored …” We can’t yet fully reckon the ways his era has changed our country, from the long aftermath of the 2008 recession to the consequential court decisions good and bad.