Going viral

YouTube is almost undoubtedly distributed across a number of servers. My guess about the disparity in counts is that it comes from some nodes not having checked and added the most recent numbers from its peers or a master server.

On the YouTube stats: there are several different uploads of the video; one has over 150,000 views, one has over 80,000, one has over 25,000, and there are probably another 30,000 or so views spread out among the other instances of it.

I watched it here, realized I don’t know anyone whose vote would swing on a spoken word performance from Scarlett Johansen or the sleazy boyfriend from “Six Feet Under”, and will promptly forget about it.

Somewhere, Bob the Builder is beaming.

Not being that fond of celebrities, and finding the overlay of the speech and the celebrities talking/singing to be hard to understand, I like this version better, which is just a singer/guitarist (Michael Campion) playing the song unaccompanied.

Politics in a democracy more than any other form of government is a popularity contest. There are advantages and disadvantages to that, but it’s not a good idea to generalize based on your own biases; better to understand yours and others’ both.

The video is a signal of the new biracial hip. Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison’s “first black president” may have helped pave he way for Barack Obama: the second first black president, and the first real one. That’s nice to know.
That Bill Clinton is now playing to the politics of white trash Bubba to further his wife’s cause is interesting as a matter of psychology. It’s nice to know it backfired. Not so nice to know that “O-bomba” is a Clintonite neoliberal.

I saw it on DailyKos at around 9 AM and then read up on it on the ABC News site and blogged it myself (and my blog entry has been blogged at least once since then). The video has been posted at least twice on YouTube by different users, so I’m guessing the numbers will be a little confusing.

There is an interesting “response” that must have been produced at around the same time but also emphasizes the gospel-inflected style of many of Obama’s speeches.

Wolfgang, my own feeling – and I’ve heard the same from several friends – is that the schmaltz is very much part of its appeal. Look at most political advertising the last few campaigns. Much of it is dour fear- and hate-mongering. Most of the rest is very jingoistic patriotism. Very little of it is really personal. Here we’ve got people looking both serious and happy on individual, human scale. Sure, these are professionals who’ve practiced their looks, but even so, here’s a kind of motley group of folks talking about very individual reactions. It feels a lot more…I don’t want to say “real”, but I will perhaps settle on “relevant” to anything in my own experience. It’s not authentic in the sense of lacking craft or artifice, but it is aiming for parts of life that have been pretty well excluded from political presentations in the US for a while now.

It would be relatively hard to segue from this to “…and that’s why we need to slaughter hundreds of thousands more Arabs” or something else popular in the commentariat’s chattering, and I like that. It sets some expectations that if roused could lead to very constructive pressures on politics the next term.

FWIW, Moveon.org sent out a mass e-mail today at around 4:30 CST–so my guess is that by tomorrow millions will have seen it.

But then: Obama was the only major political figure to buy big space for the Super Bowl… surprising that he would go unchallenged there with such a big audience at stake, but we’ll see how it does for him on Tuesday.

He is not a descendant of American slaves, it’s just that his father happened to be from Kenya; what’s the significance of that?

It has at least the same significance as a Chinese or Arab or otherwise non-European-American president, and it is probably more significant. Perhaps not as much as a slave descendant, but a long way towards it.

I got it off a Twitter friend, which makes it a Web 2.0 grand slam: A tweet that links to a YouTube video which links to a netroots campaign, and which I am now commenting about on a blog.

For those of us who are not up on what today’s kids are listening to… can someone tell me who all appears in the video? So the first guy is from the Black Eyed Peas and then there is Scarlett Johansen, but who are the rest?

I like the video. It’s a little cheesy, but it makes me happy.

Jon (21),

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/clinton/morrison.html
African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and–who knows?–maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.”

That’s what this is all about, not the skin color.

The video shows that there is music in Obama’s words. I doubt you could do anything similarly compelling with a speech from any other candidate. The understated, (ostensibly) underproduced quality of the music and the video also highlight what’s new (rhetorically) about him –> hitting the gospel notes, without shouting them.

Those aren’t reasons to vote for him, of course (although I will). It’s why I have been humming “Yes, we can” all morning.

You’re right, Jon: being a descendant of slaves isn’t exactly the point. But neither is having dark skin and curly hair, it seems even more superficial.

Abb sometimes I’m reminded how clueless you are about this country you don’t live in. It’s the mirror image of American ignorance of life outside the border.

“Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

But Obama is electable. More so, I’m willing to bet than HRC. Amusing that no one has brought up the subject the Vice Presidency. With Bill as the other man? There are whole levels of conflict , even only of image, that no one’s discussed. Obama can pick Edwards for example (and he should)
Also it’s annoying that even the smart liberal white pundit class seem so oblivious to the implications of Obama’s rise. Obama is seen and respected as a player. HRC and Bubba are seen as cynical and defensive, even using racial rhetoric and to willing to play dirty to get what they want. “Serious” political intellectuals are always harping on MoDo for her cheap psychologizing. I’d be more impressed by their criticisms if I didn’t already know that it’s not the cheapness that offends them as much as much as the arguments from psychology itself instead of “reason.”

I’ll vote for Obama because it’s time for a black president. Considering how close Obama and HRC on policy, the issues themselves are secondary. I’m voting for the black man on principle alone. I’m also voting against this:

“It’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know… I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.

Watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmyrGBw5jFg
Hillary wasn’t crying out of exhaustion, she was crying for us. It was one of the most offensive political displays I’ve seen in my lifetime. And no one caught it.
Bizarre.

“Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

But Obama is electable.

What are you talking about, Seth? Read Morrison’s phrase in quotation marks again. Yes, Bubba was a ‘black’ president (and yes, I suppose this includes his cynicism) and a dark-skin guy elected might very well turn out to be ‘white’ president. That is what Morrison is saying. Is this so complicated?

Is this really “viral”? It mostly seems to be getting passed between already-pro-Obama folks. I’d describe it more as echo chamber, almost the opposite of viral.

You got me on that one Abb. Better a black white man than an oreo. Still, that was in the past. Toni Morrison has endorsed Obama and the black pols who are endorsing HRC are tied to the old machine. Times have changed.
And Clinton’s playing to white insecurities is disgusting.

What about Chris Rock? This appears to be before the 1996 election:
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96emono.phtml

I like Clinton. You know why I like Clinton? Because he’s got real problems. No, he don’t got President problems, he’s got real problems, like you and me: he’s running out of money, his wife’s a pain in the ass, all his friends are gonig to jail.. I know Bill Clinton. I am Bill Clinton! And they’re always trying to get Clinton. It’s almost as if we have a black President! They second-guess everything he does. Really, you would think he’s black!

Who said anything about HRC here? Fine, whatever.

Sensible statement:

in america, for well-known historical reasons, there is a long-standing and significant correlation between economic class and skin colour.

Mostly-sensible statement:

in post-1960s america, economic class is probably more significant than skin colour itself

Not-so-sensible statement:

in america, you can usefully use the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ to refer to economic classes, and people won’t get that confused with the skin colours of the same name.

Was anybody else reminded of Willie Nelson and chorus doing “We Guard the American Border” in Mamet’s brilliant Wag the Dog?

What, you mean “I like Ike” wasn’t a policy paper?

I saw this Saturday afternoon. By this afternoon, I’d gotten 25 different emails/Ims/texts about it. Then again, my circle is densely populated by the sort of people who go to Small East Coast Liberal Arts College.

I love the video–not because I love the celebrities, as I find them annoying–but because, as said above, it makes me feel proud and hopeful in a way that most of my political life has lacked. It might be cheap and easy uplift, but it’s better than being conned into a war, or getting a union buster to try and game a good temp answer why you helped arrange the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.

As a Communications wonk, I’m fascinated by two things. First, that the part that traces the historic arc of ‘Yes We Can,’ though semi-chronological, skips the Civil War (unless we count abolitionists and slaves as an acceptable stand-in) and it lacks that other great touchstone of modern American liberalism, FDR. Of course, I can’t find a sexy way to encapsulate either the Great Depression at the right number of syllables. Meh. Second, I get the Greek chorus bit, but given what Obama’s trying to be, wouldn’t the celebs have been better off going to random Obama office and picking up, say, 50 people represent the sheer diversity that’s rallied to his banner?

Part of me looks at the whole thing and sort of jeers ‘It’s not exactly “Do They Know it’s Christmas?'” and yet…it pushes my buttons like a Hallmark Card or a Ron Howard movie…

Oh, and It’s Hebrew at 1:09 and 1:44, as well as Spanish. For the glory of globalization, I’d have gone ahead and tapped Tony Shalub or Shohreh Aghdashloo to round out the token slots.

@ 37 – I think you may want to concentrate more on powerless people of all different races, including, say, Eastern Europeans. Middle class blacks can probably take care of themselves.

Yes, abb, because of course worrying about racial discrimination means entirely ignoring other discriminated against groups. Sigh.

Anyway, what the hell has that got to do with whether Obama is black or not? Clearly he is – what with, y’know, actually being black. I was merely pointing out that being a descendent of slaves is not a prerequisite for being subject to racial discrimination.

I think I have a basic problem with this “real black” versus, what “fake black” dichotomy. I understand that issue of being descending from slaves is of particular importance in the US, but from the outside it seems odd that Obama is being somehow criticised for not being black enough to be counted as authentically black. It’s as if he is being held responsible for the fact that his father’s father’s father wasn’t abused enough, which is preposterous.

It seems like a very odd thing for the Democrats to be doing, or allowing to happen – a realistic possibility for a President being told he hasn’t suffered enough. Apart from anything else, as someone else said above, does anyone really think that racists stop and take a family history before they discriminate?

It’s up to 2,497,197 aggregate views, across the eight YouTube uploads!

B

I see Obama trying to move into that territory – very slowly and carefully and ready to retreat at any moment. His “we can all get along” mantra doesn’t even impress me – hey, it doesn’t even impress Paul Krugman! – let alone people in the Bronx. So, you’ve been captivated by the fad, so, fine, enjoy it while it lasts.

“I used to work with dark-skinned recent immigrants from India, and they were nothing like dark-skinned Americans, nothing in common whatsoever. So what?”

Uh, it’s culture.

Obama grew up as a black kid in America. Not in India. You’re talking like Obama is himself from Kenya, grew up out of the country, and has no experience of what it means to be black in the US. Which is not the case.

“So, you’ve been captivated by the fad, so, fine, enjoy it while it lasts”

I’m not captivated by anything about the politics of this country Abb [Obama on Israeli expansionism? At least as bad as everyone else and probably worse] I’m making an observation about the current response to Obama in the black community, and the divisions between the old school leadership and the younger generation. I could be wrong, who knows? But you’re spouting ideas based on old reports and preconceptions, and arguing for the sake of defending those, and what else, your own honor?
It’s not about where Obama went to school it’s about how he’s perceived. I don’t have to like the man much to pay attention.

I saw it as a post from one of my Facebook contacts. The video is feed from YouTube, but embedded in the Facebook interface.

“The man is inspiring”
Oh jezuz…
He’s auditioning for a job as our employee idiot, not our savior.

Seth, I got the impression that he only won the black vote in deep south – Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas. That’s a very specific and very different variety of black culture, church-going, god-fearing, authority-respecting, bowtie-wearing folks. It’s not very significant, I don’t think.

Otherwise – Idaho??? Alaska??? Friggin Kansas??? It is incredible. I dunno, maybe Clinton-hatred out there is much stronger than we realize.

“Seth, I got the impression”

from where?

I can picture Joseph Goebbels watching and smiling and saying, “Very interesting … where is Leni? She must see this!”