Father Raymond J. de Souza: Barack Obama, the candidate from Oprah
There was moment during Barack Obama’s speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver when he waxed rhetorical about his place in the cosmos and his future, his present and his past.
“Life is huge, more expansive than we can feel or imagine,” he said. “Even in my deepest meditation or moments of profound awareness, I can only connect with a fraction of all that is alive. Whenever I find myself in a difficult situation, I’m reminded of a line from a Maya Angelou poem called Our Grandmothers: “I go forth / alone, and stand as ten thousand.” I think of all who’ve come before me and had to endure trials that would level most of us in our urban comfort zones, and I realize I’m not the first person to face big challenges. This has been done before. I can do it again, maybe even better.”
That’s Senator Obama isn’t it, at once self-referential, sympathetic, determined, optimistic and vaguely spiritual? Except that he did not say that in Denver. That’s Oprah Winfrey writing in her self-named, self-celebratory O magazine, back in May 2004. But could not those lines, masterfully delivered, come from the Illinois senator himself? Oprah, Obama. Obama, Oprah.
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