Obama gets personal at Morehouse

I have read or listened to several Obama commencement addresses over the years, and his address at Morehouse College yesterday struck me as something of a departure in several ways. While I may have missed or forgotten prior iterations of the parts that struck me, let me set down what I thought was singular.

First off: Morehouse is a men's school, and so Obama addressed men, which gave the talk a retro feel.  He talked about what it means to be a man, rather than simply a responsible adult, and what it means to be a black man in particular.

Addressing black men meant walking a fine line -- as Obama always does when he addresses African American audiences -- between the particular and the universal (in this case, particulars of gender as well as ethnicity).  Obama acknowledged as much in a rather meta moment: