The Real Meaning And Real Talk of a Real Life 08 Bonnie And Clyde

by Barry Michael Cooper

That Woosh! in your ears is the sound of Sen. John McCain's old man dreams and Bush-league (Cheney, too) New World Order wishes being flushed down the G.O.P.'s toilet of dirty politics. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Monday night in Denver, Colorado was at least the first 15 minutes in 2008's extended hour of profound human change.

On August 25th, Michelle Obama, the wife of Sen. Barack Obama--the man who will most likely become, GOD Willing, the next President of the United Stated--gave a powerfully sobering speech rooted in historical significance and present-day relevance. It was a speech that spoke to the futuristic hopes of a nation looking for the true meaning of an increasingly deferred American Dream, a nation teetering on the brink of collapse.



Actions that may have ripped their clothes and broken their skin, but not their spirit.

Michelle Obama's eloquent speech to the Democratic National Convention was the beatific resolution of Fannie Lou Hamer's brutally beautiful struggle.


There were also tears of joy and happiness when the precocious Sasha--the younger sister of Malia--asked her dad, who was on the huge screen in a live feed from a family's house in Missouri, "What city are you in, Daddy?" That off-the-book moment, not guided by the campaign's media coaches or communication directors, crossed lines of race, status, and demographic, and softened the hardest of hearts: "That sounds like my daughter".





So maybe in retrospect, trying to comport a Hip Hop tableau to the multi-layered narrative of Barack and Michelle Obama doesn't track. But as I watched Michelle hold it down for her husband, her man, her partner, her other half, I too, wondered, like Jay-Z and possibly Barack (on the plane, on the way home, eyes closed, seat reclined, iPod on):

how they gon' stop/both us?