Senator Ted Kennedy delivered a rousing speech endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President.

Ted Kennedy did more than welcome Barack Obama into the warm embrace of his legendary family. He also consigned the Clintons and their brass-knuckle brand of politics to the past.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” the Massachusetts senator said Monday in endorsing Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. “With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.”

In an eloquent speech laced with stinging subtleties, Kennedy called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a friend who “has been in the forefront of issues.” But he might as well have called her a “has-been” — a legacy of 1990s-style politics that rewards distortion, cynicism, self-aggrandizement and even failure.

Because that must be what Kennedy believes; there is no other way to interpret the clues tucked between the lines of his address.

Source: ON DEADLINE: Kennedy dumps on Clintons

As Jeff Zeleny notes.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy implored Americans on Monday “to turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” as he placed the aura of the most prominent Democratic family around Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy.

At a rally here at American University, as two generations of Kennedys surrounded Mr. Obama on stage, and Caroline Kennedy and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, offered their own endorsements, Mr. Kennedy offered a fierce rebuttal to questions that Mr. Obama’s rivals had raised about his experience and readiness for the job.

“He will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past,” Mr. Kennedy said, interrupting his speech more than once to embrace Mr. Obama. “He is a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical. He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in without demonizing those who hold a different view.”

[…]

The political blessing from Mr. Kennedy, though, was far from a routine endorsement. Controversial among Republicans, he is nonetheless influential among many Democrats and could be particularly helpful in courting older voters, union members and Latinos. All candidates, including Mrs. Clinton, vigorously pursued his endorsement because of the symbolism and lore it represents.

Mr. Obama said he was humbled by the comparisons drawn with John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

“I was too young to remember John Kennedy and I was just a child when Robert Kennedy ran for president,” Mr. Obama, 46, said. “But in the stories I heard growing up, I saw how my grandparents and mother spoke about them and about that period in our nation’s life as a time of great hope and achievement.”

In a 20-minute address, Mr. Kennedy hailed Mr. Obama’s ability to transcend racial divisions. Mr. Kennedy, who associates said had become furious by the tone of the Democratic campaign, including the words and actions of former President Bill Clinton, said Mr. Obama would usher in a new era of politics.

“With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign, not just about himself, but about all of us,” Mr. Kennedy said. “A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.”

Source: Kennedy Backs Obama With ‘Old Politics’ Attack

See also:

• Ted Kennedy endorsing Obama
• Sen. Kennedy: Obama Endorsement About ‘The Future’

Video: Ted Kennedy Endorses Barack Obama, “I feel change in the air.”

Celebrated author and Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison, who in a 1998 New Yorker essay called Bill Clinton “the first black President” has endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President:

Dear Senator Obama,

This letter represents a first for me–a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.

May I describe to you my thoughts?

I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or “new-centrist” ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me “proud.”

In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace–that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country’s citizens as “we,” not “they”? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

Good luck to you and to us.

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s observation of Bill Clinton as the “first black president” has entered cultural history. She stated in her 1998 essay:

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and body-searched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear: “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and—who knows?—maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.”

In the recent January 21 Democratic presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Barack Obama was asked if he agreed that Bill Clinton was the “first black president.” Hillary Clinton also offered a comment.

Kirsten Haglund wins.

Growing up in Farmington Hills, Kirsten Haglund dressed up as if she were in the Miss America pageant. On Saturday night, the 19-year-old aspiring Broadway actress won the real thing.

Haglund, a student at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, won the 2008 Miss America pageant in Las Vegas. She beat Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, the first runner-up, and Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto, the second runner-up, for the $50,000 scholarship and year of travel that come with the crown.

Her brother, Lars Haglund, recalled Saturday night in a phone interview, “When we were younger, she’d dress up like she was Miss America in the dress. And we had pictures of my grandma up from when she was Miss Michigan.”

The Haglunds’ grandmother Iora Hunt represented Michigan in the 1944 Miss America pageant.

Kirsten Haglund, who sang “Over the Rainbow” to cinch the crown, was Miss Oakland County. She was crowned Miss Michigan last June in Muskegon. She is a graduate of Western High School in Walled Lake, where school officials recalled her as a good student.

“It’s a testimony to her ability, and she was always a good student and citizen of our building,” said Leit Jones, principal of Western High School. “We’re very proud of her. She’s done well for her school, community and family.”

State pageant representatives were with Haglund and her family in Las Vegas.

“We’re all thrilled beyond words,” said Shelley Taylor, state executive director of Miss Michigan. “There isn’t anyone more deserving.”

As the LA Times notes, the Miss America 2008 pageant strove to reflect the contemporary era.

IF you’re an American over 40 whose mental frequency can still tune in to Bert Parks crooning, “There she is . . . Miss America!,” you may have been dismayed to learn that the organizers this year turned the once-august pageant into a reality TV show, complete with makeover consultants, videotaped “confessionals” and an Italianate mansion as posh backdrop.

At one time, news of this sort might have sparked street riots and food rationing. Prior to, say, the 1980s, the Miss America pageant was an extremely big deal, a bedrock of heartland patriotism, socioeconomic aspiration and gender-role mythology. But its cultural star has dimmed over the years, and officials are struggling to reinvent the pageant for the 21st century.

Viewers can judge the results for themselves tonight, when TLC airs “Miss America Live,” which included as buildup four one-hour episodes of “Miss America: Reality Check,” an unscripted series that borrowed liberally from shows like “What Not to Wear,” “America’s Next Top Model” and “The Bachelor,” while still trying to keep the contestants’ fabled purity intact (read: no VH1-style hookups allowed!).

TLC’s version of the pageant itself will sorely test Miss America traditionalists, provided they still exist. The 36 contestants who don’t make it as finalists, for example, will not be ushered away but will instead watch from the “American Idol”-like stage — with the semifinalists’ parents, no less — as their former rivals jockey for the crown. (Warning: Priceless reaction shots ahead.) And one of the 16 semifinalists will be chosen by viewers of the reality show.

“People used to know who Miss America was,” Haskell, a former top William Morris TV agent and chairman of the Miss America Organization, said in an interview earlier this month. “There are going to be a lot of people who’ll think we’re denigrating the pageant. I don’t think we are. I think we’re making it more relatable. And I pray that I’m right.”

Kirsten Haglund Crowned Miss America 2008



Behind the scenes at the Miss Michigan 2008 pageant.