Human Rights Campaign hosts Obama as speaker

Saturday, the Star Tribune published a Associated Press piece on Obama's address to the Human Rights Campaign at the organizations annual dinner in Washington D.C. The dinner took place before the campaign's annual march to the nation's capital.

The piece largely focused on Obama's re-pledge of a campaign promise: to repeal the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, but that he failed to address a timetable in the matter.

Sunday, the Star Tribune issued the AP's follow up from the matter, devoting the lead to the reactions of those involved in the campaign to the president's speech; thousands responded to Obama with chants stating, "Hey Obama, Let mama marry mama," and, "We out, we're proud, and we won't back down."

While the first piece focuses largely on Obama's rhetoric and promise to overturn a 1993 law that concerning openly gay members of the military, the second zeroes in a response from Obama's audience. The two pieces act as a sort of conversation with one another. A call and response, if you will.

What works well, is that not only in this series does the president have a voice, but so do the individuals to whom he is speaking; along with this, is the national attention garnered by the annual even in which this conversation is couched.

Speakers and attendants at the rally itself, called not for "waiting" but for "agitating" when it comes to change. Perhaps these speakers from the NAACP and informal sources from the crowd can be viewed as direct response to the president; all parties were encouraging the direct actions of the president toward the advancement of freedom "for all people."

Responses in the second article were taken from straight and gay, known and unkonwn individuals, offering a wide scope of opinion on the matter, whereas the first was largely background on the president's campaign promise and military protocol because the actual news event--the march--hadn't happened yet.