{"id":93,"date":"2009-07-17T09:48:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T09:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/obama-at-naacp-preachy-or-pitch-perfect.html"},"modified":"2009-07-17T09:48:53","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T09:48:53","slug":"obama-at-naacp-preachy-or-pitch-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/obama-at-naacp-preachy-or-pitch-perfect.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Speech to the NAACP: Preachy or Pitch-Perfect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama spoke at the NAACP last night, thanking them for the work the organization has done that broke barriers and helped get him elected. He also urged African Americans to take responsibility for their own future success, saying, “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that… no excuses.” (Watch video here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Now, teaching the next generation responsibility<\/a> is something we take seriously at Beliefnet, but I wondered if some might have found his remarks, like Bill Cosby’s<\/a> some year’s back, a bit patronizing.<\/p>\n

Does the president have an ethical obligation to press the African American community to succeed, or should politicians skip the morality lectures? (We’ve seen what some, like Sanford<\/a>, Ensign <\/a>and Craig <\/a>do for the cause of family values<\/a>, after all…)<\/p>\n

Is it Obama’s duty to share a positive example by exhortation, or is it an imposition? I think the former, particularly since in this case he was the organization’s invited speaker, and, as with a college commencement, he was expected to give inspiring – even pointed – remarks.<\/p>\n

What’s your take?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama spoke at the NAACP last night, thanking them for the work the organization has done that broke barriers and helped get him elected. He also urged African Americans to take responsibility for their own future success, saying, “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that… no excuses.” (Watch video here.)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,25,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-ethics-responsibility","category-political-ethics","category-responsibility-project"],"yoast_head":"\nObama's Speech to the NAACP: Preachy or Pitch-Perfect? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/obama-at-naacp-preachy-or-pitch-perfect.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama's Speech to the NAACP: Preachy or Pitch-Perfect? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Obama spoke at the NAACP last night, thanking them for the work the organization has done that broke barriers and helped get him elected. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}