Comments vary from “I watched this speech in tears,” his 'strongest remarks on race ever" to observations on his unexpected rendition of 'Amazing Grace." Not meaning to belittle the momentousness of the day and/or of the occasion, how did you find him as a singer? What was the most moving, musically powerful part of the song as he sang it?
This thread doesn’t belong in Thread Games. It could probably go a few places, but we’ll try IMHO since you’re asking for opinions on both the speech and the singing.
Thread relocated.
It was a moving and appropriate eulogy. It’s way past time that our president be saying these things.
I didn’t think his singing was all that great, but in the moment, I think it was better for it. It’s easy for that moment to seem narcissistic or self-aggrandizing. Less so if you’re obviously not in it to look good.
I hope people watch the whole thing.
As a singer, he’s bad. Very bad.
His singing wasn’t the best but, since we’ve heard him sound much better (see his snippets of “Let’s Stay Together”), I chalk it up to the sheer emotion of the circumstance. When I’ve heard him sing little snippets before, it was on joyous, more relaxed occasions, or at least as relaxed as a speaker can be when speaking to millions of people.
Compare those types of occasions with today’s eulogy, during which his emotional state seemed to range from anger to sorrow to pride to tiny glimmers of humor and back again. I’ve seen professional singers crack under less pressure! So all in all I think he sounded pretty good, if a little wobbly on a few notes.
I saw the whole service, not just his entire eulogy, and was profoundly moved. It’s hard to pick a most moving or musically powerful part of the song as he sang it, as you request in the OP, and I suspect anyone inclined to be moved by it will bring their own “stuff” to how they hear and receive it.
I was very moved by the whole thing. His singing was fine, given the context. We’re finally seeing the Obama we voted for, now that he’s a lame duck and by his own admission “fearless.” I wish he hadn’t been keeping this guy in check and under wraps these past seven years.
It may not have been note-perfect singing, but it was honest (and brave) and very moving.
I’m not one to ooh and ahh over celebrities, but I would do a lot to be able to meet him.
It was very moving. He was a little pitchy, but that’s easy to understand given the emotions he must have been feeling.
I hope people will take his words to heart. It’s way past time for change. We can and must do better.
Why are you even talking about the singing? If that’s the first (or only) thing you comment on then I wonder if you even listened to what he said, or have any sense of language, writing or oration. It was extremely well-crafted speech.
It was very moving. It was the community leader/organizer I voted for. It was the black guy I voted for. It was a speech by a person who understood not just what the country is going through but what a whole cultural group is going through, and what a community is going through.
He showed up. Big time.
It was a great, and very moving speech. He’s a really bad singer, but that didn’t really matter.
(Why even talk about his ability as a singer? It matters not a whit. No one cares how well anyone singing along a church sings!)
This was an incredible moment. Very gripping and poignant. It’s hard to believe that even his detractors weren’t at least somewhat moved by this. Then again, it’s difficult to underestimate some people; to be surprised by their craven hostility.
I’ve watched the video numerous times. Mostly because I love watching the reactions of the people on stage as he starts to sing. The minister seated to Obama’s immediate right let’s out a joyful burst of merriment as the president sings the first word and then shows happy surprise as Obama actually keeps singing!
I most enjoy the man sitting a row or two back on the left of the screen, appearing between the minister mentioned above and the woman seated in the first row all the way left-screen.
He is wearing sunglasses before Obama starts singing but quickly stands up and removes them. The look on his face is priceless. Respect, awe, surprise, happiness, love and who knows what other emotions beam from him.
Unprecedented.
ETA: yes, I know the OP asked about the singing ability, but still.
I did not see the speech however I heard it was an elegant and moving eulogy and I will accept that. Another poster said about time for that and on that I can agree.
I will no longer watch Obama. If I see or hear him on the tube, or radio, I immediately turn the channel. The boy who called wolf problem he has with me.
Perhaps a few more of these and I can tune in, but i doubt that shall happen.
Your loss.
I’d like to know what was going through John Boehner’s mind as he sat there watching the 2008 Obama.
As for why even talk about the singing-- it took tremendous self-confidence and at the same time, humility, to stand up there and sing, knowing that video was going to be seen millions of times all over the world and praised, as well as bitterly criticized, for every stupid reason under the sun. That happens whenever he opens his mouth anyway, but singing makes him personally vulnerable…public speaking is the thing most people fear, but public singing?? (If you’re not a singer.) It took balls.
<nitpick>
Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but I was a bit disturbed by the implication that Dylann Roof was carrying out God’s plan. This carries the further implication that rather than allowing violence (free will and all that), God causes it —a concept that contradicts what I was taught from my earliest days*, and one which reinforces the suspicion that God is not Someone with whom I’d really want to spend eternity.
God took a brutal act and transformed it into something that helped further His plan for human betterment? That’s an idea I can get behind.
</nitpick>
A beautiful and moving tribute, but I just have one question: Mr President, where the perdition have you been the past 6.5 years?
*Yes, I know about the OT. Who says religion has to make any sense?
Not an Obama fan, but he did his best. Really, what can you say about a senseless act of violence? All you can do is offer some kind of explanation-whether that resonates with the audience is something only doing it can reveal.
This is indeed a nitpick, but it also touches on the perpetual and unanswerable question that you allude to, namely does God *permit *evil or *cause *it. Did I mention that this question is unanswerable?
What is clear, however, that our response to evil is up to us. We can respond with hatred, more violence, bitterness, and continue the cycle. Or we can let grace touch us, as the President noted"that the 21-year-old white man charged in the killings had failed to achieve his stated goal of inciting racial conflagration. Rather, he said, the killings had the opposite effect, generating an unprecedented show of racial unity…"
Rather than being overcome by evil, we can use the evil as a fulcrum to leverage good. In that sense, everything can become part of “God’s plan,” if you believe there is a God or, indeed, a plan.
I watched the eulogy and also loved it. Obama is often a powerful speaker and he was again on this occasion.
I especially liked the part about the history of black churches; the “hush house” part. I had not heard that term before.
I also like the part where he said that the historically black church teaches children that that are beautiful, smart and that they matter.
He also talked a little bit about guns, racism, the confederate flag. I feel he is very in-tune with the relationship between these issues, and he was familiar with his audience, their style and their need in this eulogy.
A quote:
"To the families of the fallen, the nation shares in your grief. Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church.
The church is and always has been the center of African American life…
… a place to call our own in a too-often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships.
Over the course of centuries, black churches served as hush harbors, where slaves could worship in safety, praise houses, where their free descendants could gather and shout “Hallelujah…”
… rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad, bunkers for the foot soldiers of the civil-rights movement.
They have been and continue to community centers, where we organize for jobs and justice, places of scholarship and network, places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harms way and told that they are beautiful and smart and taught that they matter."