Obamania with Meat
The political fall-out post Barack’s Berlin speech has been interesting to watch. Almost as equally interesting, though, was the opportunity to watch the speech in perfect sound and comfort of my favorite chair on You Tube. I believe that the couch potato Obama experience was even more thrilling than actually having been there. This does mean, yes, that I am a boring sod.
The throngs (glancing back to be sure that I got an “r” there for the more persnickety among us) were mostly made up of energetic Berliners younger than myself. The sun beat down on us as we moved closer to the Siegesäule where Obama was to speak. I arrived later than I had planned, as I went with my friend Becca, who also has a fine blog (everydayberlin.blogspot.com) and her posse of German civil servants. The somewhat leisurely meanders having passed through the Brandenburg Gate and headed to the Säule, converged, slowly, then more slowly, the at a snail’s pace until we were so tightly squeezed together I almost expected a small Japanese guard to come and push all the air out of us so the doors of the Fujimoto Express could close and we could be on our way. That actually would have been preferable in some ways, in that Japanese trains, presumably, have air-conditioning as opposed to those steroidal Mississippi-size sunrays that beat down on my library tan for hours on end on Thursday. I was actually surprised that the throngs, young and German as they were, did not smell worse. I guess I can thank the Higher Power that I wasn’t coming to see Obama speak at the Champs-Elysées. ‘Stinky’ says my imagination.
Party-pooper as I am, although I was excited that we did actually get close enough to see the One, I just had to complain my ass off about the lack of technological foresight of those who put together the sound system. You could almost hear the speech one-mile behind you better than the speakers that were a few feet away. This caused the strangest echo-effect that made me think I was a fetus hearing our next president for the first time, but from the womb. I had serious trouble understanding the man because of this, and I am relatively sure that the majority of those around me, most of whom are not native speakers, understood little to nothing. Well, thanks technical crew; that certainly made the hours-long wait in the sweltering heat well worth it. Dumb asses.
Those of you who know me will not be surprised that the event that stuck in my mind was not the words of the Redeemer, but, rather, the event that followed--getting the chance to eat at the Döner (Gyro) stand that is rated in Lonely Planet as Berlin’s best. It was gooooooooood. My black friends would describe it as being “so good, it’ll make you slap your momma’”. That’s good all right. The Döner is the Berliner’s preferred fast-food. It is said that Germany has more Döner stands than McDondalds. I believe this is true. Normally, one only gets one good element of the three necessary for a Döner: the pita, the meat or the sauce (the vegetables are all about the same.) Usually it’s a good pita, but the meat sucks, or the meat and pita are good, but the sauce was made by someone without taste buds. Rarely, you get the chance to have a Döner that has all 3 elements in harmony with one another. This was one of those times, and I mark it as THE BEST DÖNER YET CONSUMED.
Today, Chris took us to a little art fair where there is a man who makes business cards as you wait. We need them especially fast as we are going to a social event tomorrow and want to make some “connections” if we can. This guy was so cool. He had a little printing press there and did all the typesetting himself. The cards look really embossed, like they were made earlier in the twentieth century. That may be because all of his materials were actually from that time period. ☺ A bit disconcerting was that the typeface was made out of lead. I asked him if this presented any health problems or risks. ‘Not if I wash my hands regularly and don’t smoke while printing.’ Well, that’s certainly comforting, considering he had just put out a cig before saying that. It’s just cool having something that was made right in front of you, by hand. Don’t ask me why. It just is.
posted by He sings @ 7:12 PM
2 Comments:
I'm interested in getting your views on how Obama's message/speech played to the German audience in Berlin. I've watched the CNN tape of the speech several times now, and could not help but sense the crowd response seemed rather subdued and restrained - except when Iraq, global warming/the environment, and "peace" where part of the speech. I think the speech clearly showed Obama is an affirmative internationalist who sees significant value in a robust and engaged role for NATO in the world. Does this frighten Germans in general, just the young Germans that dominated the crowd, or do I have this all wrong? Your thoughts?
This is an interesting question. To be honest with you, I think that the lack of public response can be tied somewhat to the tremendously bad acoustic arrangement of the speech. The Siegsäule is a tower around which a four lane turnabout goes. One one side of the Säule was where the podium stood. A very small percentage of the crowd was around this area as there was a blockade separating the crowd and Obama by some distance. The remaining crowd (I would estimate at least 80% of it), was situated then down the Strasse des 17.Juni, all the way down to the Brandenburg Gate. About half way down this enormous street were video screens for the people that were so far away they would not see the speaker.
As I said in the article, I stood just outside of the inner circle, just outside of the roundabout. Even there, the speech was almost completely incomprehensible. Therefore, I would guess that the lack of audience response can be attributed to 1: the distance from the microphones that recorded the crisp message you have seen on CNN (i.e., you could not hear the real effect of 200,000 cheering) 2: many of the crowd did not know when to cheer as they could not understand the speech. 3: the speech itself, even if acoustically understood was a rather complex one, I find, with very long sentences and complex sentence structures. As well, the very ideas that Obama expressed were wrapped in his typical poetic style. Yes, Germans speak English, but not well enough, I believe, to have understood the intricacies of this speech. He should have dumbed it down a bit.
Outside of these physical phenomena, there was a secret desire by Germans that the speech itself would contain new information, or, at least, some kind of catchphrase that would really stick and for which the crowds would go wild, just like the Reagan or JFK speech. There was none. It was pretty much a vanilla speech from a presidential candidate that wants nothing more than to not fuck up before the election. It was a beautiful speech, don't get me wrong. And, Obama is a mesmerizing orator. But, it lacked teeth of any kind and I think the people who could hear noticed that. They wanted more.
As to NATO, I would have to agree with most commentators that the Germans are very afraid at this point of being committed to using their army against of their will. This will continue to be a theme, and one which I will address in my next entry.
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