REMEMBERING REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

This morning on the television news (a must see for those of us who commute the 50 miles from Fredericksburg, Virginia into the District for work 5 days per week – the weather and the traffic reports are crucial) there was a great deal of (justified) attention being paid to this, the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sadly, no attention was paid to another anniversary today, the death 5 years ago of the superlative journalist Michael Kelly who was embedded with a combat unit in Iraq when he died. So to correct the oversight, Michael Kelly you are still greatly missed for your intelligence, kindness and great humor.

But I digress (as usual).

During our commute this morning, we listened while one of the radio stations played the “I have a dream” speech and it dawned on me that Barack Hussein Obama is not attempting to channel the exceptional oratorical style of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but rather the style of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Regardless of whose oratory Senator Obama is attempting to mimic, the sad (for Obama) truth is that he is not succeeding.

The difference between the locutions of Senator Barack Hussein Obama and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is that their brilliant speeches actually said something, while Senator Obama’s speeches say absolutely nothing! And no matter how well you may deliver your non-message, that’s all it remains: non-sense!

To speechify in an exceptional manner takes nothing more nor less than rudimentary training over a reasonable amount of time, much as one would train a dog to say “mama” on demand or to train a parrot to say “There’s no there there”.

To make a speech that is actually meaningful and worth the listener’s time, whether or not one agrees with the content of the speech, requires the speaker to have actual thought processes. And this is where Senator Obama fails each and every time. To paraphrase another politician’s rather snarky remark: “Senator, I knew fill in the blank and you aren’t him!”

For me, someone who came to adulthood before the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and thus was able to put those legendary public figures into perspective, I cannot condemn the effort of Senator Obama to raise the level of public oration in this time when the lowest common denominator is all too often the standard (for some reason the rantings of Randi Rhodes come to mind), but I can point out that while he talks real pretty, his content is nil and thus is a waste of breath.