As I am watching excerpts from Obama's interview for the Arab world, I find myself proud one more time to have this man as my president. It's pretty sad and telling that the US president taking to the airwaves to speak to this huge audience is "breaking news", but I am glad it is happening in any form.
Even with the constant stream of negative economic news, every day seems to bring something to brighten the horizon a little - I am happy that the Obama team seems to understand symbolism and the power of images and that they deploy him in pretty effective ways.
And of course, every time something happens (like this conversation with Al-Arabiya TV), it just seems like the most commonsensical thing and I find myself wondering: what have we been doing so far ? how could we behave, as a country, in such ridiculously unproductive and sometimes destructive ways ?
I have a lot of hope.
Update:
- links:
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
- excerpts from transcript
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
- CNN played some of it and are supposed to be replaying it soon.