I think you should listen to him:
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About as good a tack as he could do at a place like Liberty University. “My view…” was an excellent rhetorical pivot.
First of all, this is a captive audience in an institution that uses peer pressure to the extreme to enforce conformity. Second, the reality of the student body is not all of them are goody-goody-two-shoes that the university pretends they are. The reality, according to some alumni, is sort of fraternity/sorority-like in tone and conformity. If you looked at the bulk of the audience, that is what you saw. Lots of folded arms, side conversations, glances around checking out who might be getting a little too enthusiastic. To say is was a tough audience gets part way to the heart of the problem. But it does go out to the Lynchburg-Roanoke VA TV market. That includes the central Sheanandoah Valley and a fair bit of Piedmont Virginia down to the NC line.
The loudness of the applause was interesting. (1) There were enough student rebels in the audience who disagreed with the folded arms response and didn’t care who knew it. (2) Sanders brought enough supporters to ring the acoustics in the venue. (3) The applause is post-production. My preference for the reality is in the order presented because (3) would be a really stupid tactic.
If you can find the video of the Q&A, put it up. The liveblogging showed some interesting twists in the way Sanders answered what the questioner thought would be dealbreakers.
For all the talk (Bernie too) about how Liberty University was concerned with morality, anyone who knows its origin understands that its true purpose was to be a firewall against the civil right movement by having a school to which bigots could send their children for a relgious-moral veneer like that applied at Bob Jones University, which is the model for all of the later entrepreneurial universities in this region.
The president of the university is Jerry Falwell’s son (I don’t think they’ve gotten to the grandchildren yet). It is the family business. And as the Bob Joneses and Pat Robertson have shown, it can be very lucrative. Probably 1%-level lucrative at least.
Raw Story has the video of the abortion question and commented that BS dropped a truth bomb on them. He certainly did. Check it out. Smug bastards never saw it coming.
The guy has some serious balls to go into Liberty and speak his truth. I’ve long thought Obama might have benefited from going over the heads of Republican elected officials to the people they represent.
Preventing that was what birtherism was about, in retrospect.
I recall watching Dennis Kucinich’s speech at the DNC convention in 2008 on CSPAN, and while I’d never supported the guy, I was just happy someone was saying it out load to a TV camera somewhere in America. I felt the same way about Al Sharpton that year (the greens could never really even get that accomplished after Nader).
The unbridled joy I get watching Bernie deliver this message, and to know that unlike Kucinich and Sharpton, Bernie is capable of delivering policy, not just populist progressive speeches, is simply endless. The knowledge that the powers that be are going to be stuck letting this man go on national television weekly for the next six months without mockery makes my heart full with happiness, even if he cannot win in the end.
To my mind, Obama was the flood, and the hateful did not heed, and would not accept. Bernie is the fire next time.
“Without mockery”? Really? Okay, I don’t watch TV, but I can’t believe the TV coverage of him is that different from written coverage. It’s usually relatively subtle mockery so far, but it’s there.
Granted, they haven’t pumped up a “Dean scream” moment for him yet, but I assume that’s because they’re still getting mileage out of the horse race.
I can only shake my head when I see some in the media trying to sell him as simply “the Democratic version of Donald Trump.
Is it any wonder this country is in such deep shit?
Yes, the MSM and opponents will attempt to work their magic again. The problem for them is that Sanders doesn’t offer them their preferred material of sex, drugs, and theft.
His campaign hasn’t been floundering from day one as Gore’s and Kerry’s were. He will win his home state in the primary and a general election. He doesn’t have a media stylist telling him to wear “earth tone” clothes. He doesn’t have to say, “I was for it before I was against it.”
Clinton supporters have pointed to Cornel West as if he’s Sanders’ version of the very scary Rev. Wright. That will be milked to keep AAs in the Clinton fold. Will also get Sander’s “Bill Ayres.” The birther nonsense will be replaced will — he’s so old. That’s at least legitimate, but Trump and Clinton aren’t spring chickens and neither has demonstrated Sanders’ vigor on the campaign trail.
So, they’ll be reduced to “OMG, he’s a socialist.”
On NPR this morning they, once again, lazily trotted out the “socialist” label in a story about Sanders, without giving a hint of exactly what that label means in the context of Sanders views. It is such a demonstrably lazy way to report on him. Yet this is what we hear on a daily basis. It really must be too much to expect professional media outlets to try and inform people about what Sanders means when he applies that label to himself. I am already so weary of the dependency they have on this very misunderstood term.
Well that didn’t take long. This is as bad as what any Republicans pull but what do you expect from a former Goldwater Girl?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-jeremy-corbyn_55f73339e4b00e2cd5e
79e11
If they want to pull out some implied guilt by association to discredit Sanders, they might want to be careful. Sanders won’t stoop to that level, but authentically independent supporters of his (unlike the actual zero degrees of separation between Brock and Clinton) will have no trouble circulating pictures of Hillary and/or Bill hanging with disreputable folks.
At one point during the speech, I became teary eyed. There was a young woman in the audience that seemed to be taking in his words against her will to reject everything he said.
Have to wonder if people that hang here aren’t interested in watching/listening the recording of this speech (although IMHO the one that includes the Q&A after the speech adds more to his appearance) or just aren’t interested in commenting on it. Suspect that many don’t bother to form their own first hand opinions and just grab whatever someone they like says.
What Sanders’ appearance demonstrated for me is that he welcomes any opportunity to share his views with others. Doesn’t need an adoring audience and doesn’t change his core messages to fit with whatever people want to hear. He wasn’t, as HuffPo charged, courting evangelicals. Few won’t trot down to the polling station to cast their votes for anyone other than whoever best claims they will protect the unborn. But maybe some will begin to consider that morality is far larger and more complex than the narrowness of what they’ve been taught to believe in.
He didn’t ask for their votes. Or to change their minds about what they hold dear and on which he and they will continue to disagree. Only that there are some issues on which the divide isn’t an unbridgeable chasm and maybe, someday, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to work together on solving those problems.
The truth is a wonderful thing. The truth is always there, a constant, so you don’t have to remember what you said the last time because you can just say it again. The truth is magical because life is a complex pattern where the truth always fits from any angle. Once you hear the truth it’s like letting a genie out of the bottle that won’t go back in. What you see in this speech is Bernie telling the truth, the truth told to a group of people who didn’t want to hear it but they did hear it. Because that genie won’t go back in the bottle is why Bernie chose to speak there. I think he has stimulated a lot of conversation and maybe even get some votes out of that crowd.
I was starting to worry that Bernie saying the same things, as good as they are, in every speech would never get him covered in what we call the media. For the first time in weeks I saw several articles about Bernie and none about Trump, even here.
Strong speech, particularly the end quoting Pope Francis. Come to think of it, too bad the Pope can’t run for the nomination.
Thanks Steven for putting this up, it’s not like I can hear a 28 minute sppech by a presidential candidate on “the news”. Hope you are having a great day.