Marie Antoinette is back in the public eye, thanks to the new film by Sofia Coppola, and the release on DVD of the 1938 classic by Warner Brothers.

It’s interesting that the makers of both films wanted to present a “modern” interpretation of the character of the doomed French queen. Warner Brothers relied on the celebrated 1932 biography by Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. Coppola preferred the 2001 biography by Lady Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey.

But if we’re going to go modern on Marie Antoinette, where are the PR flacks, the spin doctors and the speechwriters? Certainly the ancien regime could have used some expert advice on winning over the public. Can’t you see Marie Antoinette demanding, “Get me the royal speechwriter!”

Well, actually, I can. I suspect that the interview might go something like this:

“Beaumarchais, I’ve called this morning’s press conference because I am not at all pleased with the speech you wrote for the finance minister.”

Sen. John Kerry is busy right now trying to explain what he really meant on Monday when he said that youngsters who don’t apply themselves to their studies are liable to "get stuck in Iraq.”

Kerry said his barb was aimed at President Bush, but he “botched the joke.”

I refer my readers to my posting of October 23.

In that posting, I referred to comedienne Anna Russell’s impersonation of a women’s club president trying to introduce a guest pianist. I said it was a textbook example of how not to make an introduction.

After Sen. Kerry’s gaffe, I realized that I had quoted the wrong excerpt from Miss Russell’s routine. I should have quoted the opening, which goes like this:

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen – and others.”

[LAUGHTER]

“Oh – errr – ha-ha. Of course I know that all our members are ladies and gentlemen. What I mean to say is, some of you may have brought friends.”

The lesson here, I think, is that when you make a mistake, you shouldn’t make it worse by trying to explain it away. Sen. Kerry should apologize to our troops in Iraq and move on.

If there were an award for lame political excuses, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) would be a top contender for it.

Mr. Hayworth is quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal as saying that he doesn’t think the Republicans have lost their philosophical moorings. “But,” he conceded, “always in an imperfect world, there will be missteps.”

That’s an excuse that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow might have offered after kicking over a lantern and starting the Chicago Fire. Accidents will happen and, after all, it was just a little misstep.

But the Republicans in Congress knew perfectly well what they were doing when they voted for reckless federal spending and the biggest expansion in federal entitlements since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. They knew what they were doing when they violated the principle of federalism over the Terri Schiavo case and the constitutional amendment against gay marriage. They knew what they were doing when they chose protectionism over free trade. They knew what they were doing when they gave the executive branch carte blanche to detain and torture suspected terrorists.

Above all, they knew what they were doing when they outdid the Democrats on pork barrel spending by billions of dollars.

Take transportation alone. The Journal article cites a study on the proliferation of “earmarks” (i.e., pork barrel projects) in highway bills. For 30 years after a transportation trust fund was created in 1956, highway bills would specify 14 of these special projects at most – and would let the states decide how to spend the money. Then, in 1987, the Democrats larded the transportation package with 155 earmarks. The next package, passed in 1991, had 538 earmarks – over furious protests by the Republicans.

But the Republicans’ first highway bill, in 1998, more than tripled that number. Last year’s highway bill had 6,371 special projects – worth a total of $23 billion.

And Mr. Hayworth doesn’t think that the Republicans have lost their philosophical moorings!

As British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli remarked on another occasion, “Out of his depth! He’s three miles from the shore.”

I suspect that Tuesday’s elections will recall Mr. Hayworth to reality – along with the other rogue elephants in the GOP.

Thomas Jefferson was the biggest hypocrite among the Founding Fathers, at least where the issue of slavery was concerned. Other Founders owned slaves, but it was Jefferson who penned the Declaration of Independence, with its ringing affirmation that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson was painfully aware of the contradiction between his noble words and his shameful ownership of human beings. At times, he tried to avoid the truth by referring to his slaves as his “servants.” At other times, he engaged in public hand-wringing on the slavery issue, as when he said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

But when it came down to a choice between freeing his slaves and continuing to enjoy the pampered life of a planter-aristocrat, Jefferson chose the latter. He did not even free his slaves in his will, as did George Washington. When Jefferson died, his “servants” were sold to pay his debts, along with his other goods and chattels.

And yet, Jefferson’s words proved too powerful to be discredited, even by his own failure to live up to them. Mike Gerson, former speechwriter to President Bush, put it very well in an interview he gave to the Wall Street Journal last month. He said, "Even though [Jefferson] was inconsistent in his own life, he set out an ideal that improved and motivated and guided American history from that day to this." That, according to Mr. Gerson, "is the best role of political rhetoric."

I don’t know if Mr. Gerson ever read Gordon Wood’s excellent book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, but I suspect he did, since Professor Wood expressed much the same sentiments in slightly different terms. He wrote: “To focus, as we are today apt to do, on what the Revolution did not accomplish – highlighting and lamenting its failure to abolish slavery and change fundamentally the lot of women – is to miss the great significance of what it did accomplish; indeed, the Revolution made possible the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century and in fact all our current egalitarian thinking.”

Professor Wood is right. Even the current demands of gays and lesbians for equal treatment under the marriage laws are rooted in the language of the Declaration of Independence. Either all men (and women) are created equal, and are endowed with the same natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or they are not.

Thomas Jefferson is a rare example of a man whose words spoke far louder than his deeds. The proof is that mighty reverberations of those words are still shaking and shaping our world.

Sen. John Kerry’s unfortunate suggestion that youngsters who don’t apply themselves to their studies were liable to “get stuck in Iraq,” drew an avalanche of criticism – much of which was politically motivated.

But I think the best reply to Sen. Kerry’s gaffe was one that wasn’t even remotely political.

It came from certain members of our armed forces who are actually serving in Iraq. The Drudge Report ran a photo of eight servicepersons in the field, holding up a huge sign that read, “HALP US JON CARY WE R STUK HEAR IN IRAK.”

When I saw the photo, I laughed out loud. But then I was overcome with admiration for the gallant men and women of our armed forces.

They are America’s best. They are “stuck in Iraq” because a bunch of civilians in Washington – a good many of whom never served in the military themselves – blundered them into a war, and then botched the peacekeeping effort.

Our troops are being shot at, bombed and cursed by the people they liberated from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. They have seen politicians try to use them as pawns, and they have seen corporate vultures exploit their sacrifice to enrich themselves. They have every right to be disillusioned, every right to feel that their country let them down and every right to feel that they were suckers for signing up.

Instead, they are able to respond to all of this blood, muck and muddle with courage, humor and unquenchable patriotism. My hat is off to them.

These are the kind of men and women who have kept America safe and strong --from the snows of Valley Forge to the present. They deserve to be remembered every day of the year, but especially on Veterans Day.

I say to the members of our armed forces, past and present: Thank you.

Credit former Republican Congressman Dick Armey for one of the most penetrating comments on Tuesday's elections. In an op/ed for the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Armey declared, “I've always wondered why Republicans insist on acting like Democrats in hopes of retaining political power, while Democrats act like us in order to win.”

Mr. Armey is right on both counts. Consider Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s astonishing declaration that Democrats “love” tax cuts, or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s hawkish poses on Iraq or the sudden concern that other Democrats have expressed over the size of the federal deficit. Democrats do campaign as Republicans in order to win.

But it is equally true that Republicans act like Democrats in the hope of retaining power. The past few Republican Congresses have certainly spent like Democrats, and they’ve displayed a Democrat-like inclination to meddle in people’s lives – at least on issues of concern to the GOP’s evangelical base. Some commentators have called this approach to running the country “big-government conservatism.”

Perhaps now that the elections are over, both Republicans and Democrats will revert to type. If they do, the Republicans will probably pay a higher price for their political cross-dressing than the Democrats. In an exit poll taken in battleground congressional districts, only one in five voters said that Republicans would do a better job to “keep government spending under control.” Almost twice as many voters said that the Democrats would do a better job.

The Republicans have lost all credibility on what used to be one of their defining issues –- fiscal restraint. With the worsening situation in Iraq, they have lost credibility on their other defining issue –- that they at the party to trust on national defense.

Right now, the state of the GOP recalls Ina Claire’s line to Greta Garbo in the 1939 film classic, Ninotchka: “The morning after always does look grim –- if you happen to be wearing last night’s dress.”

According to Jared Sandberg in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, 30 million PowerPoint presentations are given around the world every day, even though most of them bore people senseless.

He asks, why do we put up with it?

As a speechwriter, I think that is a very good question. The answer, according to Mr. Sandburg, appears to be a combination of fear and inertia.

Most people are terrified of public speaking, so PowerPoint serves a kind of teddy bear or security blanket to help nervous speakers through the motions of giving a talk. Unfortunately, such regressive behavior tends to produce infantile presentations as, for example, “This slide shows our corporate headquarters.” Followed by, “This slide shows our corporate headquarters at sunset.”

At the same time, most people seem to think that it’s a waste of energy to buck 30 million PowerPoint presentations a day. So inertia sets in. The members of the mostly captive audiences resign themselves to boredom. Worse, they compliment speakers on their poor PowerPoint presentations, in the hope that those whom they praise will be equally charitable to them when their turn comes.

If there’s no penalty for being boring or banal, why should speakers or their staffs try to improve the quality of their presentations? To be fair, the problem is not PowerPoint per se, but its misuse. Used creatively and with discretion, PowerPoint can be an asset to a well-thought-out presentation. The problem is that it’s too often used as a substitute for the creativity and hard work that are essential to producing a good speech.

A slapdash presentation that merely wastes people’s time is an insult to the audience. But if audiences are going to let themselves be imposed upon without protest, why should the presenters care? Mr. Sandberg quotes one Dave Paradi, co-author of a book on PowerPoint, as saying that many executives “seem to be surprised that they should think about the audience before they think about what their saying.”

This is rank heresy for any professional speechwriter. But professional speechwriters may well be doomed to obsolescence by the electronic presenter.

Then again, maybe not. Mr. Sandberg’s column reports that there are signs of an incipient revolt against the triviality and sheer tedium of PowerPoint. Some companies and conference organizers are banning its use. Other companies are training their employees to make effective presentations without it.

Sometimes, all it takes is a CEO with too much respect for his time to see it wasted by a poor presentation. Jack Welch, who increased GE’s market value by over $400 billion in 20 years, was a CEO of that particular stripe. Confronted with a bumbling speaker who was using PowerPoint as a crutch, Welch cut him short by saying, “Excuse me; I can read the slides as well as you can. Why not just hand them to me?”

Just so. As a speechwriter, I say that if an occasion is worth a speech, the speaker should give a real speech – not read captions off a screen.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story on members of the clergy who buy sermons off the Internet. The Journal listed five web sites that offer sermon ideas, and even entire transcripts, for modest fees. One of these sites, amusingly titled, desperatepreacher.com, offered this comforting quote of the day from Henry David Thoreau: “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life.”

Indeed, the morality of using canned sermons does not seem to weigh heavily on some of those who labor in the Lord’s vineyard. One clergyman quoted in the article, the Rev. Steve Sjogren of Cincinnati, actually advised his fellow preachers to “get over the idea that we have to be completely original with our messages, each and every week.” Instead, they should recycle the best material they can lay their hands on. “Don’t be original,” says the good reverend. “Be effective.”

As a speechwriter, I readily agree that if someone else can get a point across more wittily, more profoundly or more effectively than I can, it makes sense to use that other person’s words. But I also believe that I should attribute those words to their author, and not try to pass them off as the speaker’s.

Yet, astonishingly, some of the ministers quoted in the Journal’s article don’t see anything unethical about quoting without attribution in a sermon. According to Rev. Sjogren, it doesn’t count as plagiarism. “Real” plagiarism, he says, “is taking stuff out of a book and putting it into another book.” But “taking people’s material and putting it into a speaking forum, is not plagiarism.”

Then what is it, pray?

I once worked for the CEO of a major corporation who scrupulously removed quotes from speech drafts, even when they were properly attributed, because, as he put it, “I don’t quote authors whom I haven’t read.” This man –- who graduated “with distinction” from the U.S. Naval Academy -- thought it was dishonest to appear more learned than he actually was. Maybe he should be lecturing divinity students on the ethics of rhetoric.

Fortunately, the Journal article quotes other preachers who are disgusted by the casual attitude toward attribution displayed by Rev. Sjogren and his ilk. They worry, with good reason, that parishioners will feel betrayed if they find out that their pastors have been passing off canned sermons as their own. When this happens, the erring shepard is sometimes driven from his pulpit by his outraged flock.

Thomas G. Long, a preaching professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, suggests that too many preachers have succumbed to the sin of pride. They want to be clerical superstars, like the ones who attract millions of viewers on television. “Our churches have turned into theatres,” sighs Mr. Long, “and our preachers have turned into witty motivational speakers with high entertainment value. “

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that if a preacher can’t find the inspiration he needs to preach the gospel without surreptitiously borrowing from the sermons of others, he ought to find another line of work. As St. Paul –- no slouch as a preacher himself -– once said: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006), who died last Thursday, will be remembered for his contributions to economic science. More than that, he will be remembered as a champion of freedom.

Friedman was no ivory-tower professor. Though a brilliant economic thinker, he was an academic who knew how to appeal to the common sense of the great mass of people. “Free to Choose”, his ten-part PBS television series, which aired early in 1980 and later became a book, did much to popularize free-market economic ideas, and helped pave the way for the election of Ronald Reagan.

A short man, standing only 5’2”, he was a fierce debater, with a way of spitting out his opinions like bullets. Such was the force of his arguments that he usually whittled down his opponent considerably by the time the debate ended.

Off the platform he could be charming, as I discovered in 1980 when I had the unexpected pleasure of sitting next to him and his wife at a luncheon at Stanford University.

Over lunch, Professor Freidman mentioned casually that he was going to mainland China give a series of lectures. I think I dropped my fork in surprise, and then I asked him what his lectures would be about. “Using market mechanisms within a planned economy,” he replied. He then flashed an impish grin, and told me that he was going to give the Chinese the same lectures he had given in Chile a few years before –- Chile then being under the Pinochet dictatorship.

The joke, of course, lay in Friedman’s belief that the introduction of even a little economic freedom was inherently subversive of any form of tyranny –- whether of the right or of the left.

As he wrote in 1962, in his classic book, Capitalism and Freedom: “The fundamental threat to freedom is the power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated – a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates this source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement.”

Elsewhere in the same book he declared: “Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.”

When I picked up Capitalism and Freedom to find these quotations, I had not read it in some years. Turning the pages, I found myself hooked once again by the clarity, the logic and the persuasive power of Friedman’s ideas.

I am still learning from Milton Friedman –- as are we all.

The autumn of 1863 was an unlikely time for a national thanksgiving. The nation was tearing itself asunder in a bloody Civil War that would ultimately cost over 600,000 lives. The outcome was still very much in doubt. Even if the Union were preserved, no one could tell whether we would truly be one nation again.

Nevertheless, President Lincoln chose that time, of all times, to remind Americans that we should count our blessings, repent our transgressions and remember the less fortunate. His Thanksgiving Proclamation is reprinted here in its entirety:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

A. Lincoln

Reading this eloquent and moving document, it occurred to me that Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving for much the same reason that he ordered work to continue on the dome of the U.S. Capitol. He wanted to demonstrate his faith that America would endure.

His faith was justified, giving us another reason to be grateful tomorrow as we gather around our tables with our friends and loved ones.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A few posts back, I said a few words about PowerPoint. Dr. Jerry Tarver, professor of speech communications emeritus at the University of Richmond, said it better, in fewer words and vastly more amusingly in the following limerick:

Learn the fate of a speaker named Clive,
Whose PowerPoint ate him alive.
His face was last seen
Fading into the screen,
Which entombed him in chart ninety-five.

Do you think that this warning will scare speakers away from PowerPoint? I doubt it, but one can always hope.

November 30 is St. Andrew’s Day.

St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, and the day is a national holiday in that country, celebrated by people of Scottish descent the world over –- including me.

As is typical of saints, Andrew keeps very mixed company. In addition to Scotland, he is the patron saint of Russia, Romania and Greece. He is also the patron saint of fishermen, fishmongers, the Spanish armed forces, singers, spinsters and women who wish to become mothers. Along with his other responsibilities, he is the saint reserved for those who suffer from sore throat or gout.

The Gospels tell us very little about Andrew, beyond the fact that he was the younger brother of the apostle Peter. But when he appears in the narrative, he is usually in the act of introducing someone to Jesus. He introduces Peter to Jesus (John 1:41-24), he introduces certain “Greeks” (Gentiles) to Jesus (John 12:20-22) and he introduces the boy to Jesus who had with him the five loaves and two fishes with which Jesus fed five thousand people (John 6:8-9).

Dr. Peter Marshall (1902-49), a Scottish immigrant who became a popular preacher and chaplain of the U.S. Senate, once preached a very moving sermon about Andrew in which he filled in the gaps about this very modest saint with what he liked to call a “sanctified imagination.”

Dr. Marshall suggests that it was Andrew who made the introductions because he cared about people. He theorizes that Andrew knew about the boy with the loaves and the fishes because he had taken an interest in the lad, and cared enough to become friends with him.

Says Dr. Marshall, “Andrew is not one of the greatest disciples, but he is typical of those men of broad sympathy and sound common sense, without whom the success of any great movement cannot be assured.”

As such, Andrew is everywhere: “He is the man who sits beside you on the bus … or drives the street-car, or waits on you in the store … or works at the next desk in your office … or sells you your ticket at the railroad station, or even carries your bags.”

Andrew is one of those average men and women “who are always taken for granted but without whom nothing could ever be accomplished.”

So be alert on November 30. You never know when Andrew might suddenly appear, all unrecognized, at your elbow.

Note: Dr. Marshall’s sermon on Andrew, “The Saint of the Rank and File”, appears in a collection called, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master: Sermons and Prayers of Peter Marshall. It’s currently out of print, but easily available second-hand. The sermons are worth reading for themselves, but they are also worth reading in order to study the ingenious way in which Dr. Marshall arranged sentences, clauses and individual words in patterns that would help him with his delivery in the pulpit. Reading them, you can almost hear him speak. Speechwriters might feel inspired to imitate this technique, if it helps their speakers.