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In a battle of words, it's usually not ideal to argue your point first. That way you get to hear the other person's argument, and you can counter that with your own.
Have y'all seen the movie 8 Mile? I know everyone in Detroit has. Remember that last battle scene, where Eminem - I forget his character's name - had the mic? He got up there and spat his rhymes, then he anticipated his opponent's comeback and tore it to shreds before he laid down the mic. Of course, the other guy now had nothing with which to come back, being that Eminem had already destroyed all his material.
He changed the rules. He threw a sucker punch that prevented the counter punch. He took words that he hadn't even heard yet and picked them apart.
Yep, that's what Barack Obama just did to John McCain. He 8Mile'd him.
If you didn't see Obama's acceptance speech (and I don't blame you if you didn't because I don't usually watch political conventions myself), you missed a brilliant display of gamesmanship. Not only did he make the case for the end of Republican rule by pointing out the obvious blunders of the current administration, but he anticipated every bit of nonsense that the McCain camp and the hit squad at the Republican National Committee might throw at him and made them seem, well, more than a little ridiculous.
For those who haven't seen it, I am not going to try to summarize it here. That would take too long, and I have to get up in the morning. And I can't embed the video because it hasn't shown up on the web just yet, so you'll have to find it for yourself to see what I'm talking about.
Oh, and that shuffling sound you hear is the McCain camp trying to figure out what just happened to all their talking points.
-e
Friday, August 29, 2008
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I just sent out an email to friends with the subject line Barack borrows from 8 Mile.
ReplyDeleteI'm copying it here:
Did anybody else notice that Barack Obama borrowed some of his speech writing skills from Eminem?
I pulled up the plot outline from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Mile_(film)) this morning and the similarities are uncanny (I'm predicting "Lose Yourself" will be played following rousing speeches yet to come):
The climax of the movie takes place at the battle. Rabbit's friends hype him throughout the film as an incredible rapper, but until this point the film only shows snippets of his skills. The tournament has three rounds, and in each of them Rabbit faces a member of the "Leaders of the Free World", a group that feuds with Rabbit and his friends throughout the film. Rabbit wins both of the first two rounds with progressively more impressive freestyle raps.
In the last round, he is paired against Papa Doc, the tournament's most feared battler and Jimmy's main antagonist throughout the storyline. Rabbit is aware that Doc knows all his weak points, so he decides to address them preemptively with his freestyle. Rabbit acknowledges without shame his white trash roots and the various humiliations the Free World clique have inflicted on him. He then uses the difficult life he's had as a springboard to reveal the truth about Papa Doc: despite passing himself off as a thug, he has a privileged background. Doc, whose real name is Clarence, attended Cranbrook, a private school located in upper class Bloomfield Hills. Rabbit makes a reference to Shook Ones Pt. II, the beat that the DJ is spinning, by calling Papa Doc a "halfway crook", which sends the crowd into a frenzy. Doc is left with nothing to say in rebuttal, drops the mic, and Rabbit takes the title.
I guess great minds think alike Daron! I immediately thought of 8 Mile when I heard that speech. It would've been perfect if they had played "Lose Yourself" after the speech.
ReplyDeleteI love the comparison. I have not seen the whole movie 8 Mile. But what I did want Obama to do at the end of his speech was to throw the mic down and walk off the stage with Rakim's I Ain't No Joke playing.
ReplyDeleteI ain't no joke
I use to let the mic smoke
Now I slam it when I'm done
And make sure it's broke