Worthy of his words

W hat do prize-winning writers Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon, Jane Smiley, Rick Moody, etc. have in common? An ode to Obama, that’s what they might as well have written.

Writers welcome a literary U.S. president-elect, affirms an Associated Press article. “A peer, a thinker, a man of words--his own words,” thus they agree about the author of two best-selling books, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope.

About the forthcoming White House ruler, the AP story also reveals that Obama used to write poetry in his college days and even caught the attention of critic Harold Bloom who thought Obama had the spark of a Langston Hughes.

“I was astonished by his ability to write, to think, to reflect, to learn and turn a good phrase. I was very impressed,” lauds Morrison, Nobel laureate for literature and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, about Obama’s Dreams from My Father. “This was not a normal political biography.”

Chabon and Smiley, also Pulitzer awardees both, agree. Chabon confesses he admires Obama because of “his writing, the quality of his prose.” Such is the source of his charisma, attests Smiley who appraises an Obama speech as “more convincing in a politician than the usual thing of speaking the words of a raft of hack speechwriters.”

So much has been said about how the Obama candidacy took the upper hand by tapping the tools of modern communication for whiz-bang organization and cohesion of campaign strategy. But without the instinctive undercurrent of character, something that Obama oozes enough for such abstractions as hope and redemption to hold water, his message would have left his listeners high but dry. The sheer force of sincerity beyond the electric gift of gab. That’s what drive his messages home, finally. That’s what surges through his unprecedented and almost improbable rise to power.

Small wonder he looms over the podium with an aplomb above the usual political lip service, as when he dares to be self-deprecating during a dinner talk, tongue-in-cheek candor matched only with a burp-worthy wit: "I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse."

At last here comes a talking head who can literally steer clear from the bumbling and rambling woes, the foot-in-the-mouth affliction, of a George Bush.

Regarding possibilities despite the daunting tasks ahead, it’s easy to see why an Obama speech is enough for writer Rick Moody to be teary-eyed.

“I think the larger issue is cultural,” he explains. “There's a trickle down from the top in the way art exists inside and outside of the culture as a whole. Here in the USA, you could feel in the Bush years how little regard there was for it. People who disliked art, literature, dance, fine arts, they had a lot of cover for this antipathy.”With a president who seem to carry the torch for writers, that rag-and-boneshop-of-the-heart tribe, Moody thinks, “There's reason to believe that we are in for a much better period.” You bet, so far so good.

Attuned to the swathe of sweetness and light in the wake of Obama's election, here's a new stomp-the-feet-at-the-rooftop song and video just launched by Will.I.Am (the genius reponsible for the stirring "Yes, We Can" MTV, which proved popular among YouTube viewers, and cued in Oprah Winfrey to believe the rap song is partly responsible for this watershed moment in world history.) Sway, all together now, and sing: It's a new day!