Obama and the Collapse of Our Common American Language

Before the speeches started in Dallas at yesterday’s memorial service for the five police officers killed last Thursday by a military-trained, ideologically confused sniper, a choir—interfaith, like the rest of the proceedings—sang “Total Praise,” by the popular gospel artist Richard Smallwood. Like many of Smallwood’s compositions, “Total Praise” mixes gospel and classical styles—Smallwood was raised in the black church and studied piano performance at Howard University—ending with a steadily crescendoing, fugally arranged chorus of amens. The soloist, Gaye Arbuckle, a woman with a halo of red hair, had begun with pretty precision, but, at the song’s end, over those final, booming amens, she belted out long, loud, vibrato-shaken notes that brought the audience, and the row of statesmen before her—Presidents and First Ladies Bush and Obama, Vice-President and Dr. Biden—to their feet in grateful applause.