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Image Credit: Screenshot from Youtube

While ostensibly Tuesday’s State of the Union address was President Obama’s most important speech of the week, his performance at an Apollo Theater fundraiser last Thursday stole the spotlight.  The reason for this, of course, was because he sang a few bars from Al Green’s classic song “Let’s Stay Together.”

While Obama’s presidency thus far has not avoided criticism, his singing seems to have garnered him praise from far and wide.  Many individuals—from one linker at BuzzFeed who commented on “Barack’s sick falsetto!” to Reverend Green himself, who thought that Obama “nailed it”—enjoyed seeing their very serious President sound a softer note.  A search on Twitter for “Obama Al Green” pulls up a number of results, including tweets like these:

Image Credit: Screenshot from Twitter

Indeed, if tweets like LeVar Burton’s can be taken as general, Obama’s tune seduced an audience beyond the screaming supporters at the fundraiser.  The choice of song, which Obama chalked up to Rev. Green being in the audience, might have been intention—a parallel can easily be drawn between the song’s narrative and Obama’s situation.  Like the singer of “Let’s Stay Together,” Obama is attempting to retain the affections of a lover ready to leave. If Obama’s popularity decreased over the last few years, he’d like his union with America to last “whether / Times are good or bad, happy or sad.” What might be different between now and 2008—among many things—is that here Obama actually is making his own viral video instead of being the subject of them.  Back in 2008 on this blog Jillian Sayre noted the numerous songs and videos posted online about Obama and concluded that “Obama's participatory rhetoric seems to elicit a creative response that belies an identification (perhaps over-identification) with the candidate.”

The Atlantic writer Ta-Naheisi Coates comes to a similar conclusion in his post on Obama’s relationship with the black community. And while some elements of this moment—like the Apollo Theater, the reference to the Sandman, and the choice of Al Green—might strike African-American voters in a particular way, Coates notes that the desire to turn Obama into a symbol is shared by all:

One way to think about this is remember that black people are people, and that all people turn human beings into symbols, whatever the person's actions. It's worth thinking about why we -- as humans -- do this. What need are we fulfilling? What ache are we ministering to? What is this need -- among us all -- to represent for our team?

Obama’s musical moment is an intentional appeal, but we the people are the audience who makes it viral.  (In fact, audiences read texts looking for Obama, as when Gawker suggested Obama was in the Tag Team's 1993 video for "Whoomp (There It Is)")  What is it about this President Obama that makes us want to vote for him, or put him in musical viral videos?  Is this his equivalent of the prior President’s Bushisms?  One difference between Bush and Obama, however, is that Bush never inspired anything like the Obama Girl or caused anyone to Tweet anything like: "Watched Obama sing Al Green. I'm pregnant now."  Obama, more so than any other modern President (with the possible exception of Bill Clinton) is subject to objectification (like when paparazzi photographed him shirtless in Hawaii).  I'm not sure if this is a result of his participatory rhetoric, which encourages identification, or whether the public is turning Obama into yet another symbol of something we need.  This, at least, seems far more benign than Republicans turning him into a communist Muslim.