Love him or hate him, his voice rocked your baby ass to sleep …
Whoever becomes president in 2017, whether it’s “the Orange Potato with Butthole Lips” or “the World’s Most Lifelike Animatronic Robot,” you might be happy or bummed — ok, you’re gonna be bummed, you’re gonna be lower than Death Valley — you’re guaranteed to miss one aspect of the Barack Obama presidency: his sexy smooth voice.
Obama has maybe the greatest voice of any politician who was not fictitious. Whether you like Obamacare or hate it, whether you think he was a good president or the worst, no president has been as reassuring, calming and stirring to listen to. It's a reason even his haters sorta love him.
Did you watch the Republican and Democratic conventions? Compared to this year’s nominees’ speeches, whether Trump’s hopeless Hunger Games thundering or Clinton’s Robot-Learns-to-Love teleprompter lectoring, Obama’s speech Wednesday was a Barry White recording, it was smooth slippery jazz, it was chocolate velvet cream cake wrapped in a thick layer of authority.
Wrap yourself in these DNC speech highlights like a warm felt blanket.
From the very beginning, Obama’s has been the voice of Tide detergent commercials and deep black wisdom. Watch him here, from 25 years ago, during law school:
The criticism of Shrillary’s voice has a subtle subtext of sexism; no man’s voice is ever referred to as “shrill.” Still, Obama's voice was one of the reasons Obama beat Hillary in 2008; he has a voice any casting director could love; it’s knowing without being condescending, human while still seeming sagacious; it almost has the same authority as fictitious leaders like Gandalf or Dumbledore or David Attenborough.
Obama is the closest any president has come to having the Voice of God, to reassure us when there’s a school shooting or an Olympic triumph. While other generations shivered to the voices of Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill or even Stalin or Mussolini, Barack is the greatest pure political speaker at least since Kennedy. (Lincoln, our greatest presidential speechwriter, had a thin, reedy, nasally voice.)
Obama earned the voice: he studied black preachers and copied their cadences. He also smoked like the Hayden Pass fire, and smoking cigarettes enriches your vocal cords by thickening them and drying them out. Some singers, like Sinatra, smoked deliberately to stoke their seeping, sexy voices.
Let's appreciate it, huh? The presidency can seem like a joke; the space lizards who actually run the world have their hands up every politician’s cracks; but you have to listen to someone on TV everyday, and Obama was the closest to Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones we’ve ever had, or maybe ever will. So don’t pretend you won’t miss his timbre, whatever you think of the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Enjoy these last six months of aural bliss. When Obama is out of office Jan. 20, and I turn on the TV and hear a speech from the Orange Cotton Candy Hair or the Angry Flying Pantsuit, I’m not going to listen. I’m going to click over to YouTube and listen to an Obama Classic, an Oldie But a Goodie Speech, like … Yes We Can:
Or when we shot that one dude in the head:
Or the White House Correspondents Dinner Roast of Donald Trump:
He can even sing us through heartache:
And he can help you cry:
So find solace, you grieving nation. No matter which troll is president next, you can always re-live Obama's speeches on the Internet, and let his sweet honey tones rock you to sleep, while you pray for 2020 and the Year Kanye Becomes King, to come soon.
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