Obama’s Acceptance Speech in Visuals
30 August 2008
One CommentI have a love/hate relationship with American politics and the presidential election in particular. I’ll stay up or set the alarm during the middle of the night to follow it and than wonder why the hell I bother.
On one hand I am extremely fascinated by it all. Everything is orchestrated into the fine details, nothing is left to chance and boy do they know how to get a crowd going. From a marketing perspective there is a lot to be admired.
But on the other hand it annoys me no end. The cheesy campaign spots, the mud slinging and the whole populariy contest element of it. The hollow promises and populist rhetoric. It’s hardly ever about someone’s party program, but more about how the other guy sucks! It pretty much epitomises why marketing has such a bad reputation with a lot of people, and rightly so.
Today I came across a visual representation of the words used most by Obama in his acceptance speech created with social media tool Wordle. Normally reserved for creating word clouts for things such as blogs it has now shown another valuable attribute. It can help analyse more important things, such as political speeches.
And the main thing this word clout has done, is that is has re-enforced my belief that most of American politics is a popularity contest, about having as many digs at your oppopent as possible. My dad’s bigger than your dad, that type of thing.
Anyway, here’s the image. McCain is prominently represented in a speach which was about Obama becoming the Democratic party presidential elect. It was his night, yet McCain was a large part of what he talked about.
What do you make of it?
Via Neil Perkin’s Only Dead Fish blog.
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