The Semiotics of Obama Oratory

Sometimes Obama scares me. This article is required reading for Obama supporters. Anyone who can so powerfully command the pulpit can be more than a little dangerous. I want to like this guy, I really do. Certainly he is not the first and won't be the last to co-opt Christian rhetoric with such eloquence and power - it shouldn't make me so uncomfortable. The punditry loves to draw parallels between William Jennings Bryan and Mike Huckabee, but that is a pedestrian comparison. Bryan's ideas were revolutionary at the time - he was an original. But his ideas are dead, and Huckabee's revival of them displays a bit of naivete and ignorance. Obama is a revolutionary, and shares a kinship with Bryan because his command of Christ, cloaked and updated as it is for today's secular atmosphere, echoes Bryan's revolution in method if not entirely in substance. Obama's ability to inspire emotional responses as opposed to intellectual, while sexy as a campaign tool, can be dangerous in a president. But his liberation theology is attractive, no doubt.