Clintons, Obama unite in gratitude for civil rights movement, march arm in arm over Selma bridge

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Clinton and Obama Unite in Pleas to Blacks
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
Published: March 5, 2007

SELMA, Ala., March 4 — Evoking the passions and rivalries of the civil rights era, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton made deeply personal appeals to voters in the sanctuaries of black churches here on Sunday, and then joined former President Bill Clinton for a march across a bridge where white police officers beat protesters, most of them black, nearly 42 years ago.

It was an extraordinary sight: the Clintons and Mr. Obama, two of them competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination, walking — with two black congressman, and sometimes others, in between them — down Martin Luther King Jr. Street to commemorate the footsteps of black demonstrators who were met with violence as they tried to march to Montgomery to demand civil rights in 1965....

***

At different points, both Clintons said that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had paved the way for Mr. Obama to run for president.

“Today it is giving Senator Obama the chance to run for president,” Mrs. Clinton told worshipers at the First Baptist Church, to enthusiastic applause. “And by its logic and spirit, it is giving the same chance to Gov. Bill Richardson to run as a Hispanic. And, yes, it is giving me that chance.”

Mr. Obama, before the commemoration march, praised both Clintons and said of the political campaign under way, “We don’t have time for other folks to divide us.”

Mr. Clinton, arguably the most cadence-blessed speaker of the three, half-joked Sunday afternoon that he had been bested by the other two. “All the good speaking has been done by Hillary and Senator Obama already — I’m just sort of bringing up the rear,” he said.

If Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had one overarching theme in their remarks, it was the honoring of the civil rights movement that had contributed to their own rise in politics and quests for the nomination....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/us/politics/05selma.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[librechik]

1. I like this

more like this (although the stuff I heard/read about Clinton this weekend made me want to run away to the subsistence commune.)

One question: am I being railroaded into a Clinton/Obama ticket? Not that there's anything wrong with that (I hope)

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I liked this, too. Very much. My personal opinion --

While I think the press didn't like Gore or Kerry personally, and set out to destroy them with their coverage, I don't think there is a conspiracy among the press to promote Clinton and Obama. They lead in polls for the Dem nomination, and they both are people who generate great stories, for lots of different reasons.

[blm]

3. Depends on your definition of what is a 'great' story. With a truly ethical media

the great stories would have centered on Gore's prescience re global warming and environmental devastation, or Kerry's respect for open government and his prescience of the growing terror networks and their links to official governments.

Two TRULY great leaders are undermined constantly because of WHY they ARE great and the owners of the media will not allow the truly great to emerge to threaten their lock on power.

So, media will concentrate positivity on faces and personalities and exalt crafted candidate 'images' and vicious campaign operatives as the height of great leadership, while the ugly powerstructure remains the same.

I hope Obama surrounds himself with those APART from the DC powerstucture instead of embracing them in any show of 'unity' that the media will push him towards.