Democratic convention: A stage and a performance fit for a president
Forty-five years to the day after Martin Luther King told the world about his dream of black and white living as equals, the first African-American presidential nominee is anointedJonathan Freedland in Denver
The Guardian, Saturday August 30 2008
His enemies had mocked him as a celebrity, a self-styled messiah, a would-be emperor, puffed up on his own rhetoric and grandiosity. But by the time Barack Obama had completed his speech to an ecstatic crowd of 84,000 in Denver's huge Invesco Field football stadium, he looked like something else entirely: a plausible President of the United States.
By relocating the Democratic national convention to an outdoor arena, he had chosen a setting that would have overwhelmed most speakers. But Obama had no such trouble. He emerged soon after sunset, the night sky lit up by floodlights, a thousand popping flashbulbs and that billion-dollar smile projected on the enormous TV screens. For most in the stadium, he was no more than a pencil line on the stage, a slight, skinny man standing alone. Yet when he uttered the words: "I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States," he caused an eruption, a long, sustained roll of human thunder.
He had barely started but, all around, the tears were flowing - whether from Oprah Winfrey in the VIP area or the flag-waving party activists four tiers up in the sky. Many saw fate's hand in anointing the first African-American presidential nominee on the anniversary - to the day - of the moment in 1963 when Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and told the world he had a dream, of an America where black and white would at last live together as equals.
Obama brought them to hush. Behind him a stage set, mocked by the Republicans as looking like a Greek temple suited to Obama's imperial pretensions, glowed with warm amber light. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/30/barackobama.democrats2008 
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