Here's Barack Obama's big speech on race, boiled down by TagCrowd.com to its 50 most frequently used words:

Here's the editorial responses of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, mashed together and boiled down:

It would be cool if someone felt moved to do the same with, say, the top 20 blogs commenting on the speech (drawn from Memeorandum?).

At a first glance, it seems as if our editorial guides can't help but view the speech as a political ploy, first and foremost. Considering how rarely politicians choose to grapple in depth with hard and divisive issues like race, it's hard to see how that is the best frame through which to view it. But that is the frame our media system uses to evaluate political speeches, no?

Personally, I think Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the "truth" of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet--and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the "politics" of a speech, but its actual content?

In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?

Barack Obama | broadcast politics | sound-blast | soundbite politics | Youtubification
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