Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech eerily similar to my yet-to-be-delivered "Kodak Moment" speech.
I tivo’d Obama’s speech the other day, the one about his church preacher’s remarks, and couldn’t believe my ears when I got around to watch it. It was eerily similar to a speech I was planning to make titled, “Kodak Moment.” I called Laura in to check it out, but since she didn’t know anything about my upcoming speech, she couldn't figure what I was all upset about.
In Obama's speech, the passage, “Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black,” was something I was going to say about the days of black & white film and how we lived with the black & white for so long until, "one day we moved as a nation to color film, and out of that, people. Your family and friends, in color."
His use of the words, “Fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance,” was the part where I compared the old Kodak Instamatic cameras to today’s digital cameras, some with more brain power to guarantee a good exposure than many people I know, and sometimes once used to party with.
I noticed at one point Obama credited William Faulkner, and even said, “William Faulkner once wrote, ‘The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’” I’m pretty sure that’s from the movie Scarface, the scene where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is looking at a pile of coke on his desk and discovers that both his sister Gina and right-hand man Manny have disappeared. That’s a pivotal scene in the movie and also in Obama’s speech. Laura and I watched Scarface just last week.
Also in there is his, “my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.” My Speech has that exact same sentence, but instead of ending with, “continue on the path of a more perfect union,” my speech ends with, “we are to continue on the path of a Kodak Moment.”
Finally there’s his, “Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” I had all that too, but ended with, “and let our politics reflect that spirit as well as capture it as only Kodachrome can do.”
W
In Obama's speech, the passage, “Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black,” was something I was going to say about the days of black & white film and how we lived with the black & white for so long until, "one day we moved as a nation to color film, and out of that, people. Your family and friends, in color."
His use of the words, “Fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance,” was the part where I compared the old Kodak Instamatic cameras to today’s digital cameras, some with more brain power to guarantee a good exposure than many people I know, and sometimes once used to party with.
I noticed at one point Obama credited William Faulkner, and even said, “William Faulkner once wrote, ‘The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’” I’m pretty sure that’s from the movie Scarface, the scene where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is looking at a pile of coke on his desk and discovers that both his sister Gina and right-hand man Manny have disappeared. That’s a pivotal scene in the movie and also in Obama’s speech. Laura and I watched Scarface just last week.
Also in there is his, “my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.” My Speech has that exact same sentence, but instead of ending with, “continue on the path of a more perfect union,” my speech ends with, “we are to continue on the path of a Kodak Moment.”
Finally there’s his, “Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” I had all that too, but ended with, “and let our politics reflect that spirit as well as capture it as only Kodachrome can do.”
W

