Obama's Speeches and FDR's Fireside Chats

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Paul Levinson

Location: New York City, New York, USA
Birthday: March 25

Title: Professor
Company: Fordham University

Bio: Paul Levinson's The Silk Code won the 2000 Locus Award for Best First Novel. He has since published Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), and The Plot To Save Socrates (2006). His science fiction and mystery short stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. His eight nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), and Cellphone (2004), have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into ten languages. New New Media, exploring how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogging have changed our lives, was published in September 2009. Paul Levinson appears on "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News," the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS), “Nightline” (ABC), and numerous national and international TV and radio programs. He reviews the best of television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog. Paul Levinson is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City

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AUGUST 31, 2008 4:02PM

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I was quoted as follows in the Baltimore Sun this morning -

"I think what we have been seeing on TV is very similar to what took place on radio during the Depression, in that both are about reassurance," says Paul Levinson, professor of popular culture and media studies at Fordham University. "Just as hearing Roosevelt's words reassured Americans that things were going to get better, so does seeing Barack Obama's nomination this week offer reassurance to many of us that the best hopes and aspirations of the 1960s have not been lost. What we have been seeing the past weeks reassures us that America has not been hopelessly diminished."

Obama's age, young family, and capacity to inspire clearly hit the same powerful chords in our culture as JFK. But if we're talking about galvanizing the nation with speech through the media, Obama may have even more in common with FDR. Kennedy's wonderful inaugural address was delivered on television at a time when the country was already hopeful. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats were delivered on radio with the U.S. in the desperate days of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Which condition more aptly fits the U.S. now?

"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy," Obama said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday. Three orators who spoke to our better angels. Two great Presidents and one, if fortune shines of this country, to becoming one.

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For more on the impact of FDR's fireside chats, see The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution

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obama, fdr, jfk

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Great point and philosophy, I hope that Palin's nomination does not dilute Obama's point too much but I am afraid they will. Maybe we will achieve some balance after the initial hype wears off.