The DNC Convention: Supporting My Future Employment!

Michelle Obama is amazing.  I admire her so much for her ability to be (among other things) warm and direct, fierce and totally charming!  Her speech tonight was really inspiring and helped me to feel more confident about this year's election than I was earlier in the day.

I watched the speech through PBS' online stream, in particular, because I think Gwen Ifill is one of the best commentators.  David Brooks was commenting on how the brilliance of the First Lady's speech was really the narrative.  That is the magic word, and that is what the title of this post refers to.  Political narratives like the one tonight are at the core of what I'm interested in studying, and I love examining what elements of these narratives really move people, not only to tears like we saw in the audience, but to ACTION!  

Of course, the democratic party is also currently supporting my future employment through their social policies like the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  I'm intrigued with the affect involved in a convention like we saw last week with the RNC and that we will see more of this week with the DNC.  There is undoubtedly a shared emotion that floods arenas when powerful speakers champion causes and rally us to support a candidate.  Part of that atmosphere tonight was created by Michelle Obama's ability to connect her story, which is so extraordinary, with the very specific details of our comparatively ordinary lives.

One of my favorite moments of the speech was when she mentioned the little rust hole that she could see in the door of Barack's car when they were first dating.  I too had a rust hole in the floorboard of my first car, a 1973 VW Beetle.  Her memory connected directly with my memory and showed that we shared a material experience of something. That something, that rust hole, created a connection between us, just like her experience as a mother connects her with mothers and her fight for workers connects her with workers, etc.  She doesn't just try to connect by condescension of "I know what life is like" or something like that, she shares the details of what make her a modern (or is that postmodern?) American woman and citizen.

Speeches like these and political narratives that express and reveal the seemingly insignificant details of American citizenship are what I will be studying intensively as a student and hopefully far beyond that into a long future of research and teaching.  This was an inspiring speech for me in more ways than one.