Faulkner and Obama

I missed Obama's speech yesterday, but I was reading it this morning and was surprised that he quoted Faulkner. From the transcript:

"Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, 'The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.' We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."

It's an incredible soundbite (of course, isn't everything he says compulsively quotable?), but here's my problem: he misquoted Faulkner. It comes from Requiem for a Nun, a play Faulkner wrote very late in his career as a sequel to Sanctuary; it's a seldom-read book, but the quotation is the most frequently repeated line from all of Faulkner's works. It comes from the following exchange between Gavin Stevens and Temple Drake:

STEVENS

Yet you invented the coincidence.

TEMPLE

Mrs Gowan Stevens did.

STEVENS

Temple Drake did. Mrs Gowan Stevens is not even fighting in this class. This is Temple Drake’s.

TEMPLE

Temple Drake is dead.

STEVENS

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

I get that Obama is paraphrasing in his speech, and that doesn't belittle the meaning of what he was trying to say, but it still bugs me. It kind of reminds me of this girl I went to high school with who graduated the year before me. She was co-valedictorian basically because she managed to take the easiest classes for four years and get straight As, but was honestly as dumb as a brick. (This was before AP classes were offered, so those weighted grades didn't place the people who actually put forth more effort higher in the class rankings than those who took Home Ec.) In her graduation speech, she quoted Charles Dickens as writing, "It was the worst of times, it was the best of times." Sure, that fit in perfectly with the way she spoke about high school ("You guys, ninth grade English was so scary with Ms. Wagstaff, but we learned a lot, didn't we?!?!"), but that's NOT what Charles Dickens wrote.

Related:
Transcript of Obama Speech [Politico]
Requiem for a Nun [WFotW]

"I need you not only to vote, but I need you to get cousin Pookie to vote," Obama said. "I need Ray-Ray to vote."

[Source (via Gawker)]

The reaction to the Iowa caucus you've all been waiting for!

Last night I watched some of the CNN coverage of the Iowa caucus (which, by the way, is my new favorite word. Caucus caucus caucus!), and, despite yesterday's post, I could not help but get a little bit excited for Obama. I prefer Hillary Clinton, just because of the experience she has, but it was still nice to have this sense of victory for the Democrats. I was self-aware enough last night to think, "Well, I was not excited about this all day because I'm not in Iowa and there's nothing I can do about it. But now that the results are here, it's different."

This morning, however, I'm back to my cynical, "apathetic" self. Talking heads across the country have lauded this as a "historic" day because Iowa is ninety-eight percent white and Obama had such a strong showing regardless. It's like, "Hooray! White people are not racist anymore! Finally, the last fifty years of hard work has come to fruition!" Of course, only Democrats voted in that primary (as well as a few Independents), and generally, they're not racist. So yes, the liberal whites in Iowa like the black guy slightly more than John Edwards, who looks and sounds like every other Southern liberal politician (only this time with a dying wife), and the wife of a former president. We've really come a long way, baby.

I was talking to Adam this morning online, and trying to explain to him my thought process here, which also allowed me to figure it out for myself, as well. I've said this before, but basically, I'm just not as politically motivated as I was four years ago. I mean, yeah, I have a few beliefs that I think are important. I think everyone should be allowed to get married, have equal rights, etc. I think abortion should be legal (despite my general dislike for the practice - which is not my decision, ultimately, anyway). I think the death penalty should not be legal, not because I'm not for capital punishment, but because I think it's a flawed system with too many mixups and until we know with absolute certainty that everyone who has been put to death is guilty, we shouldn't be killing anyone.

But if we have an extreme regime change, will anything be different? There's a checks and balances system in place: as long as there are conservative voters, there will be conservatives in power. And likewise for the liberals. It's very rare that, as fickle the average American is, anyone's mindset is going to change in the next four years. So, am I excited that Obama is the front-runner for the election? Sure, because it's becoming more likely that he could be electable. But do I think he's better or any different than Clinton and Edwards? Not really - I think he can has a younger demographic, which is just as important because if he can get a twenty-something asshole pothead to add a vote for the Democrats, I'm all for it. But do I think that, if he's elected, America will be different in 2012? The answer is nope.

But seriously, let's do all we can to keep this out of the White House: