I hope everyone knows changing comments to Tomments is completely meant to be a stupid joke. I wonder if anyone thinks I’m super into changing words into being my name? It’s actually the opposite, hence the joke. Anyway…
Today it’s time to finally get to some listener comments on the last few episodes. I always pledge to and then never do it. No more! Some interesting issues discussed include gun control, whether or not humans have rights, and oh yeah I do more Obama mind reading, but I promise no more on that issue since I think I have covered it…
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My prior assumption is that Obama has thought about sandy hook et al. before. He would have gotten the tears out of his system. I find it hard to imagine that Obama couldn’t make that speech, and avoid crying. I would say he either intentionally cried, or at minimum made no effort to avoid it, which essentially amounts to the same thing, that the crying was calculated.
I for one did disagree as to rights and who grants them in a comment at the time. Pointing out that we grant them to ourselves. Obviously from a practical standpoint anyone can take them using force, but that’s true even when they are granted by society. You’re right to life for example is meaningless if I have a gun, and want to take it. So whether you grant them to yourselves, and defend them yourself, or you grant them to yourself, and society agrees you have them, and assists you in defending them, they still come from us as individuals.
My browser renders the title of your last episode in a font that makes it look like “Listener Torments.” It wasn’t that bad, honest it wasn’t.
Obama Cry’s – One thing you may not have considered is maturity. I am more mature than you – that’s a fact. I must have at least 60 years on you. My maturity comes with a lot of baggage and those bags, sometimes, are spilled out in tears that a less mature person, like yourself, would not understand given the circumstances of the moment.
For example: My father died many years ago, and frankly I was never very close to him but then came the time when I had to say the eulogy for my mother. After carefully crafting the speech I was to give for my mother I felt I was ready for the task.
During the speech while I was relating my early life with my mother my father flashed into my conciseness and I cried – not for the loss of my mother but for the loss of my father nearly a quarter of a century earlier.
I think, with no possible way to prove it, that Obama had that sort of experience during his speech. It may have been a very close few moments when one his children were in first grade that caused it or It may have been the memory of talking to the parents of Sandy Hook children or something else completely unrelated.
My point is that it is a very human emotion, and a beautiful emotion, when your maturity makes it self known in this way.
P.S. I am finally caught up with Thomas and the Bible (listened to almost all of your casts) and love this cast as well.
Thank you Thomas.
Ok dude the gauntlet is thrown. Next podcast I want YOU to cry, on cue. Unless you believe Obama has the acting chops of Olivier, Brando, or Fassbender the idea that he planned to cry on purpose is obsurd.
Wow, it is so funny how often I agree with you. I have actually never listened to someone who seems to think as similarly to me as you. Although, I was recently told by a friend that he never met someone who thinks like Spock as much as I do, so that may not be a compliment.
I had one thought when I saw Obama was crying; I wondered how difficult it was to make himself cry. This, in NO way changed my opinion of him or his speech, nor did I think it was in any way dishonest. I thought it made him a great speaker. I am fascinated that it could bother people that you brought it up, and how they can hear criticism in your comment.
I, like you, tend to turn an idea around so many times that people can get annoyed, and I did no less with this issue. So here is another side. You mention that it would be hard to genuinely come to tears in front of a bunch of cameras, but I did think that perhaps it would be harder to cry on cue than to accidentally fall into tears in that environment. I still think the tears were calculated, but that simply means Obama is good at what he does. Tears were needed in the moment to express the gravity of the issue. Our country, and others, needed to see how important he takes this issue.