Imagine for a second that you had mastered the impersonation of some forgotten 1960s cartoon character - let’s say, for argument’s sake, it’s Elmer Fudd.
You try it out on your girlfriend, and she cracks up. She begs you to talk to her with your new voice all the time, even during the most intimate moments. For some reason, this seems to make her love you more.
After a few days of this, she cajoles you into ordering a meal at a restaurant using your cartoon voice, so you order the “woast wamb” for yourself and the “wemon chicken wiv wentiws” for her.
The waiter thinks it’s hilarious. You spend the rest of the evening receiving special treatment and leave without having to pay the bill.
At work, your colleagues stop by your desk just to hear you say, “my secwetawy is witing a wetter”.
Even a cop lets you off a speeding fine when you tell him, “But officer, I was wacing to catch a wascawy wabbit!”
Eventually you talk like Fudd all day.
To your initial delight, doors open. You get a promotion, you’re the most popular dude in any bar you drink at and television networks bid for you to commentate the shooting events at the London Olympics.
But it’s not long before you tire of it all, and wonder when the world will realise that not only are you not Fudd, but that Fudd is an anachronism anyway, from an era when the violent pursuit of animals was still considered mainstream sport.
This wreaks havoc with your sense of self, till you start to forget who you are, and even what you stand for.
A terrible but unlikely scenario, no? Not at all. Swap Elmer Fudd for Martin Luther King, and you will get an idea of what is going on in US President Barack Obama’s head these days.
You might have noticed the similarities between the way Obama talks on solemn occasions and King at his oratorial best .
You may also have noticed that the extent to which Obama emulates King varies according to his audience , that Obama slips in and out of the Kingian delivery when the mood changes, or that he has in the past spoken without evoking King at all, such as when he recorded the audiobook edition of Dreams From my Father in 2005, extracts of which you can hear here (notice in that recording that Obama didn’t end every sentence by rapidly mumbling the last two words of each sentence with a dramatically lowering inflection).
After all that, one must acknowledge that, at the very least, Obama’s oratorical style is a deliberate and strategic affectation.
At times he has used it with inspiring results, such as when he accepted the Democratic nomination and on election night , but it gets pretty difficult to maintain once you’ve ascended to office and are now telling a press conference that unemployment’s going nowhere but up or trying to rustle helpers for a tedious health care reform campaign.
It’s a challenge to make the minutiae of policy detail sound like “I have a dream”, but Barry keeps trying.
It’s a radical change from George Bush, who made everything from self-deprecating banter to “today our very freedom came under attack” sound like he was ordering a steak burger with a side order of beef jerky, but sadly it can’t go on forever.
The US public will eventually click that Obama ain’t talkin’ ‘bout the civil rights struggle, which ended the day this brother won the presidency, if not before; instead, he’s tellin’ folks stuff they sometimes don’t want to hear because it’s either unpleasant or, worse, boring as batshit.
At this point Obama might be forced to revert to a more natural style. Or, who knows, maybe he’ll start recording his speeches in a studio with Jay-Z or Quincy Jones, set to a hip-hop beat, and released on iTunes.
It’d certainly make more sense than imitating King.
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marley says:
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