I wasn’t surprised to hear a talented, engaging speaker. I admit to having avoided the notorious youtube clips whose out-of-context media saturation goaded the Clintons and the media corps into a feeding frenzy, but I was (and remain) pretty sure the whole thing was an example of white people wanting another chance to play victim.

Yesterday’s speech was given to a general (not exclusively religious) audience, and so I wasn’t dreading the eventual onset of offensiveness that inevitably spills from the mouths of most other famous preachers. In fact, I quite enjoyed the romp. It was funny (check out the part beginning @ 3:05 in the above clip).

What got me most, though, was the music lesson (beginning @ 5:40). Sure, a musicologist would want to nuance Wright’s words a bit more, in an effort to be critical of the race-based generalities he discusses as if they were absolute truths. Still, it’s not often we get the chance to hear (ethno)musicology mentioned in the mainstream media, let alone the chance to hear time signatures discussed and solfege performed as if both were shared components of American cultural practices.

Wright’s pretty much right on this one, doncha think? I know James Brown liked to think he shifted the beat of his band to “the one,” but that doesn’t jive with where we clap, does it?

But yeah, there was this interview. I realize most of you weren’t sitting around like I was, waiting for this interview to be published. I certainly wasn’t alone in my anticipation, though. The Advocate‘s opening question asked Obama to address what had become a growing criticism of his making us wait so long for an interview with what many consider to be the flagship news magazine of the LGBT press.

The Advocate: Let’s start with what’s hot — why the silence on gay issues? You’ve done only one other interview with the LGBT press. I know people wish they were hearing more from you.

Senator Obama: I don’t think it’s fair to say “silence” on gay issues. The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times. Obviously, when you’ve got a limited amount of time, you’ve got so many outlets. We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership.

But I haven’t been silent on gay issues. What’s happened is, I speak oftentimes to gay issues to a public general audience. When I spoke at Ebenezer Church for King Day, I talked about the need to get over the homophobia in the African-American community; when I deliver my stump speeches routinely I talk about the way that antigay sentiment is used to divide the country and distract us from issues that we need to be working on, and I include gay constituencies as people that should be treated with full honor and respect as part of the American family.

So I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history. What I probably haven’t done as much as the press would like is to put out as many specialized interviews. But that has more to do with our focus on general press than it does on… I promise you, the African-American press says the same thing.

I can’t help but think of my previous post on tags and labels, as well as this Slog post from Christopher Frizzelle. How many different magazines would he have to grant interviews to for everyone to feel equal? I understand there’s a desire in the LGBT community for a fair-minded president, but guess what: there are other communities who share the same desire. Isn’t Obama doing all of us a service when he directs his comments on LGBT issues (whatever those might be) to a Baptist Church, or to national audiences at a Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire and the 2004 DNC, rather than limiting himself to Hillary-style preaching to the choir while hoping no one else hears about it?

The three-page interview ends on the same theme. Has this guy been reading my mail, or what? It’s weird, really, and certainly unexpected to have a presidential candidate reaching out to me this way, as a member of that slowly but steadily growing constituency group comprised of people who will no longer think a certain way simply because of who we are (nor decide who we “are” based on somebody else’s checklist).

Do you have any regrets about the South Carolina tour? People there are still sort of mystified that you gave Donnie McClurkin the chance to get up onstage and do this, and he did go on sort of an antigay rant there.

I tell you what — my campaign is premised on trying to reach as many constituencies as possible and to go into as many places as possible, and sometimes that creates discomfort or turbulence. This goes back to your first question. If you’re segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually — so I keep the African-Americans neatly over here and the church folks neatly over there and the LGBT community neatly over there — then these kinds of issues don’t arise.

The flip side of it is, you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them, and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama’s campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks. That’s not unique to this issue. I mean, ironically, my biggest … the biggest political news surrounding me over the last three weeks has been Reverend Wright, who offended a whole huge constituency with some of his statements but has been very good on gay and lesbian issues. I mean he’s one of the leaders in the African-American community of embracing, speaking out against homophobia, and talking about the importance of AIDS.

And so nobody is going to be perfectly aligned with my views. So what I hope is that people take me for who I am, for what I’ve said, and for what I’ve displayed in terms of my commitment to these issues, but understanding that there’s going to be a range of constituencies that I’m reaching out to and working on issues that we have in common, even though I may differ with them on other issues. And that’s true, also, by the way … well, I think that’s going to be true so long as I’m reaching out beyond the traditional Democratic base.

Remember (he seems to say), there are other people in this country, and they don’t always agree with you. Why don’t you invite each other over for a conversation instead of yelling unintelligibly from your sound-proof boxes? It might not be as bad as you think. Moreover, you might quickly learn that your neatly compartmentalized community isn’t as heterogeneous as you once thought.

It sure doesn’t hurt that he stays calm when talking about the attacks levied at him. I’ll admit to usually arguing this point a little less eloquently in debates with my more stubbornly issue-based-voter friends, perhaps a bit like Claire on “Six Feet Under” when she calmly explained to her brothers in this brief (NSFW) clip, “Newsflash! Other people exist!”

Obama teaches us to speak to each other in a way that makes it no longer necessary to make that first look around the room to see who’s listening. The respect that Obama has learned to show people who disagree with him on an issue has the welcome affect of lowering the temperature in our political debates, which is why Obama draws the support of many reasonable people who don’t agree with him on every issue.

There will undoubtedly be more occasions when we wish he would’ve phrased the truth a little differently. I hope by then we’ll have learned to get his back when he stumbles. If we don’t, we’ll lose yet another election, plain and simple, if not fair and square. Saying different things to different groups is easy, and they’ll all love you for it. But for how long? What happens when word gets out you’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth? Do you brazenly laugh in the faces of the special interests who support you? I choose respect over condescension any day.

I know I’m not alone in wanting to help fundamentally change the political culture in this country. We’re tired of having to choose between two carefully crafted (and supposedly oppositional) ideologies. We crave meaningful dialogue. Hillary, on the other hand, has regretfully shown she wants no more than the proof she can win the game she’s spent her life playing. I know it doesn’t seem possible they could pull it off (after 2000, all bets are off), but were she to win, the status quo would prevail. Those with power would get to keep it, precisely by reaping the rewards of perpetuating the illusion of the polarization of American politics. It’s not surprising, then, that Bill Kristol compared Obama to Marx in the New York Times. Nor was I shocked when the “liberal” newspaper hired this “conservative” in the first place. Bill Kristol was Chief of Staff to William Bennett during the Reagan administration, and his brand of divisive politics would become irrelevant were we to succeed at fundamentally rethinking traditional ideological battles. Kristol needs Hillary to win. He’s not the only one who recognizes what they have to gain from another Clinton presidency. Ask another recent Clinton surrogate who’s been rather cozy in the current White House.

I don’t mean to suggest Obama’s words couldn’t have been better chosen. George Packer, for one, has offered a substantive critique, which Obama (and all of us pulling for him) would be wise to digest before moving on to the general election. But let’s get over this distraction, already! Don’t we want a president who talks to us like we’re adults? Don’t we want a president who talks about our real shared values — like equality? Don’t we desire a president who will not allow the political establishment to keep us divided? I think we do, but this week has shown us once again how hard they’ll work to keep us pitted against each other, and how much they have to gain from doing so.

Speak the truth and you risk offending someone. Then again, what’s the alternative? Senator Clinton, your pandering is duly noted. Until you stop fighting for the status quo, we have every right to be bitter.

Update: 4/16/08. The hypocrisy made clearer.

Update: 4/17/08. I added this link on the word “conservative” above. I used to think McCain the more respectable type of “conservative,” largely due to his work with Feingold on campaign finance reform, and to his noble weathering of attacks from the religious right in 2000. Like Hillary, however, he’s now proven he’ll say anything to win. I hope that, with the Bushes and the Clintons exiting the national political stage, McCain feels safer returning to his maverick roots, and we can embark on the real debate this country so obviously needs.

Oh, Hillary. It didn’t have to end this way.

I can’t mention enough that I’m not a Hillary Hater. If she had won the primary fair-and-square, I would’ve spent the next seven months explaining out of one side of my mouth to my Madison friends how Hillary’s not Joe Lieberman in drag, and how while comparing her to Lieberman might in some ways be appropriate, calling her a man in drag is something that should only be laughed at privately, in pro-drag, pro-fem circles. Meanwhile, out of the other side of my mouth, I’d have to make the argument to friends back in Ohio that she’s not not the liberal demon their hate-spam makes her out to be. My profound respect for Hillary Clinton only began to erode during her race-based campaign leading up to the South Carolina primary, and with subsequent reminders of her campaign’s continuing acceptance of that sort of thinking.I’m with Althouse on this one. Although where she seems to say “fair is fair” –

Yes, of course, some of that stuff is awful, but political fighting is harsh, and if women are going to be in it — really in it, as Hillary is — they’ll have to get knocked around. I’m not going to wring my hands over this. It’s part of progress. Males are savaged too. It means they’re taken seriously.

– I’m inclined to say “unfair is unfair.” In the Hillary video, the editors intersperse “MSM” clips with reactionary, redneck, and indisputably misogynistic non-mainstream propaganda that’s much more offensive than anything from the mainstream media. I’m thinking, for example, about 3:15-3:25 in the Youtube clip, which includes the very non-mainstream dropping of the “c-bomb.” MSM? I don’t think so. (Well, maybe there was this one time.)

No one can argue Barack hasn’t been effectively slandered by the ignorant, hateful, racist, bigoted, intolerant non-MSM, and to a similarly chilling extent. Hasn’t just about everyone been subjected to this email?

It’s clear to me we need to start pulling together. If, as seems likely, our pro-Clinton friends want to drag this out longer, I hope we can all remember that most haters out there aren’t fans of Hillary or Barack. In fact, they’re counting on us to win the election for McCain.Obama is wise, I think, to always try to be “very cautious about getting into comparisons of victimology.”