The Atlantic - Latest Comments in More thought on the value of crazy

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

PatricktheRogue — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:59:18 -0000

I say with certainty that we will heretofore (in say 6 or 12 years) compare others to him. He is a presence all his own, while giving a nod to those who went before.

OK, off subject briefly. I heard the most exquisite mix of "Change gonna come" with bits of Obama's victory speech, Mandela, King, Kennedy (I think), and it was played on NPR in Hawaii a couple days after the election. I can't find it on youtube or anywhere else. There are several versions of clips with some snippets mixed over the song, but this one was very very well done. Anyone? T-N?

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

rikyrah — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:21:25 -0000

This was wonderful, Coates.

Were you the one who commented that Obama was a combo of JFK and Malcolm X? (his sense of calm and his discipline)

Someone did.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

The Cat — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:25:51 -0000

Incertus, the most stringent test an incoming president faced upon assuming office was almost certainly the one that confronted Harry Truman.

In his Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the 33rd president, David McCullough writes of the evening of April 12, 1945, when, having been summoned from House Speaker Rayburn's private office to the White House, Truman met with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt stepped forward and gently put her arm on Truman's shoulder.
"Harry, the President is dead."
Truman was unable to speak.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" he said at last.
"Is there anything we can do for you," she said. "For you are the one in trouble now."

The next afternoon, speaking to reporters at the Capitol, President Truman said, "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

It wasn't until almost two weeks later, on April 25, 1945, that Truman learned the details of the Manhattan Project and its work to develop the atomic bomb.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

lebecka — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:32:54 -0000

Incertus-- your first comment @10:58 speaks directly for me as well. I grew up with a cynical eye on both the government and the baby boomers, and I am only now finding the good, wise parts of each. This could be a function of age and experience in life, but some of it was definitely triggered by the Obama movement.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Asher — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:19:29 -0000

Well, we'll have to disagree. It seems to me that he's saying that foreign powers will be particularly tempted to test Obama because of his age (this in fact was the case with Khrushchev and JFK). I do want to say, though, that I don't agree with Biden on this point, but I do think it was a remarkable gaffe that actually got underplayed. It really just shows you how little chance McCain ever had that nobody cared about this; in an election that was actually up for grabs, this would've been huge.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Incertus — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:14:43 -0000

The JFK reference isn't exactly a new one, Asher. People have been comparing Obama to JFK practically since he started talking about running for the Presidency--young, yes, but also a Senator from a blue state, a dynamic speaker who talks about lofty ideals and the need to look beyond one's personal goals for the common good, and an inspirational figure to a new generation of young voters. And remember, 47 is only young in the very limited universe of Presidents--it's middle age for everyone else.

If it were only youth, Biden could have compared Obama to Bill Clinton and referenced the Oklahoma City bombing or Somalia. That was also a situation where you had a young Democratic president tested early in his presidency, but Clinton, for all his many gifts, didn't inspire the nation the way JFK did or the way Obama is currently doing.

As far as Presidents being tested early in their careers, you've got LBJ coming to power under the most trying of circumstances, Nixon coming in during the Vietnam War and with tons of civil unrest (which was partly his own fault), Carter had an economy in the crapper thanks to the previous three administrations and OPEC flexing on him, et cetera. Every president gets popped with something, and it usually happens early. How they react often determines if they get a second term.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Asher — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:53:04 -0000

Then incertus, why the reference to his age and comparison to JFK, another young President? Certainly all new Presidents haven't been tested by international crises in their first few months of office.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

The Cat — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:50:51 -0000

Yes, hope is the right word, but it was Rev. Lowery who originally spoke of the "good crazy." I thought it was an apt synonym for the kind of audacious hope that Barack, the self-described improbable candidate, has been talking about these past few years. After all, if somebody had told you back in 2002 that we would elect, "a skinny black guy with big ears and a funny name," as president, wouldn't the word crazy have crossed your mind?

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Incertus — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:24:42 -0000

I don't know, Asher. Assuming the bracketed parts are your interpretations of Biden's words, I don't agree with your assessment of what he said. For example, I don't get "they're going to test him because he's young," from Biden's remarks. I get "they're going to test him because he's new," which isn't the same thing. And your last interpretation I took as "people aren't going to understand the long term implications of these decisions and will question them," which is normal, I think.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Asher — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:46:38 -0000

Great sentiments, but I've gotta disagree with the guy on Biden. Look at what he actually said.

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. [Implicit comparison to the Cuban Missle Crisis. Promise this crisis will come sooner than Kennedy's did.] The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." [They're going to test him because he's young.]

...we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. [It'll look initially like they don't know what they're doing.]

he's gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?' [Obama will be an unpopular President at first.] We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us."

"There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, 'Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision'," Biden continued. "Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound." [If everybody thinks what they'll be doing is stupid, it'll probably be smart.]

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Sporcupine — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:37:58 -0000

So, I'm reading TNC's blog about a YouTube clip, using FireFox on my MacBook, with the desktop showing a cartoon drawing my daughter did in college and posted to DeviantArt so her friends could enjoy it.

Surely the people inventing and naming all this techno-magic have a version of the good crazy going, and surely they're contributing to the global contagion.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

ADLEED — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:32:00 -0000

Participating in civic life does happen! Just don't tell the current crop of departing political types; they do not understand the common good.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Incertus — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:58:56 -0000

I don't know that you've really lost that shocking faith in humanity -- the good crazy -- because I'm not sure you've really had the chance to experience that much of it in the first place, at least when it comes to politics in this country; you've mostly read about it in history books or heard about it when older folks prattled on about life back in the day.

I think this really nails it. I just turned 40, and my adult political life has pretty much consisted of Reagan (coming of age), Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush the Lesser as President, with some pretty tightly contested Congresses thrown in there for good measure. It also coincided with the rise of talk radio led by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the myth of the liberal media. So to say that the good crazy has been in short supply is to be kind about it.

And the worldwide examples of the good crazy have often been undercut by the trauma that followed them--the Soviet Union's collapse and the breaking down of the Berlin Wall was tempered by the revival of a democratic-in-name-only government based on corporate rule. The ending of apartheid in South Africa was undercut by the onerous economic demands made on the new country by their former rulers and the people they owed money to. And so on.

So yeah, we were starved for some good crazy, even when we didn't know what it was, and we have a taste for it now. We just need to make sure we keep coming back for more.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

kelly — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:44:18 -0000

Amen to that. Crazy ain't the word. How about hope, strange, wonderful....overdue.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Tony Comstock — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:30:50 -0000

The word is "hope", a more nuanced word that many people realize.

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

Ragamuffin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:04:27 -0000

Is crazy really the right word?

Re: More thought on the value of crazy

KevDog — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:36:49 -0000

What an excellent way to start the day.