Speechwriter's Slanttag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//32008-04-29T01:55:51ZThe world of corporate and political rhetoric, according to Hal GordonMovable Type 3.33NEW LOCATION FOR “SPEECHWRITER’S SLANT”tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.10222008-04-29T01:54:36Z2008-04-29T01:55:51ZAs I advised readers in an earlier post, “The Speechwriter’s Slant” is moving. After April 30, Ragan Communications will not be hosting further posts from me. The good news is that I plan to continue posting from my own web...
http://web.mac.com/gordon.h. I may not post as much or as often –- since after April 30 I won’t be paid for it –- but I’ve enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you over the past couple of years, and I’ve had enough positive feedback to encourage me to continue. During the last speechwriters conference in Washington back in February, I was particularly pleased to meet some of you in person.
As an added incentive for you to follow me to my new location, I’m offering a bonus feature. Starting in about a week, I’m going to be posting selections from my quote file. If at all possible, I will be posting a new quote every day from Monday to Friday.
What’s so special about Hal’s quote file? The answer is that I’ve been collecting quotes, poems and anecdotes for going on 30 years now, and many of them are not to be found in Bartlett’s or other anthologies. I hope to offer useful tidbits that are out of the ordinary in the hope that my fellow practitioners can use them to enliven their own speeches.
I’m going to be in Albuquerque this week, speaking at the 2008 Communications school of the National Association of Government Communicators. I expect to resume posting at my new location on or about Monday, May 5. I hope to see you there.
In conclusion, I’d like to thank Ragan Communications for starting me off as a blogger, and to thank you for your readership. I hope we’re not saying “Goodbye” on this occasion, but rather, “See you soon.”
Signing off for now.
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SEND IN THE CLOWNStag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.10122008-04-22T23:15:48Z2008-04-22T23:18:12ZThis morning’s New York Times has a story about national politicians making fun of themselves on national television. In particular, the story mentioned President Bush’s appearance on “Deal or No Deal” last night, and the fact that last week alone...
New York Times has a story about national politicians making fun of themselves on national television. In particular, the story mentioned President Bush’s appearance on “Deal or No Deal” last night, and the fact that last week alone Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all appeared on the same episode of “The Colbert Report.”
Trouble is, when so many national politicians try to gull the voters into thinking that they are just plain folks by doing comedy shticks on TV, it gives the game away. The ploy becomes obvious.
There’s a lot that could be said about politicians trying to broaden their appeal by deliberately being funny. But the best and the shortest comment was made long ago, by one of the greatest comic geniuses who ever lived: Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin said this: “I remain just one thing … a clown, and that places me on a higher plane than any politician.”
Send in the clowns.
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CHURCHILL FOR HIRE?tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.10062008-04-22T05:17:48Z2008-04-22T05:19:56ZWinston Churchill’s complete speeches, from 1897 to 1963, fill eight volumes and total five million words. A few years ago, Churchill’s grandson produced a representative selection of the great man’s feats of oratory –- and that single volume ran to...
Winston Churchill’s complete speeches, from 1897 to 1963, fill eight volumes and total five million words. A few years ago, Churchill’s grandson produced a representative selection of the great man’s feats of oratory –- and that single volume ran to 500 pages.
Even Churchill’s less well-known speeches are instructive for speechwriters today. In fact, in this political season, I have found myself tantalized by a recurring fantasy: If Churchill could be brought back as a speechwriter for the 2008 presidential election, which party would vie more eagerly for his services?
The answer is by no means obvious. Churchill changed parties twice – from Conservative to Liberal and then back. Democrats, focusing on his Liberal period, might snap him up for a single speech he gave in 1905, warning of what would follow if the ruling Conservative Party won the next election: “We know perfectly well what to expect – a party of great vested interests banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer … dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire.”
Republicans, for their part, might also hire Churchill on the strength of a single speech -- this one from 1933, after he had returned to the Conservative fold: “Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias?”
OK, John McCain would never say anything like that to a group of potential voters. But other Republicans might be very glad to have Churchill’s eloquence and sheer output on their side.
The rate at which Churchill churned out words is astonishing. It seems beyond the capacity of any one man. Indeed, when Churchill’s grandson lectures in America, he says that one of the questions he is most often asked is, “who was your grandfather’s speechwriter?”
Each time the question is posed, the great orator’s grandson replies with a twinkle in his eye, “He was a most remarkable man, by the name of Winston Spencer Churchill.”
“THE SPEECHWRITER’S SLANT” IS MOVINGtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.10022008-04-18T00:50:28Z2008-04-18T00:53:04ZThis is a notice to readers that after April 30, Ragan Communications will no longer host The Speechwriter’s Slant. I can’t say I blame the folks at Ragan for their decision. I know I’ve got great readers -- some of...
The Speechwriter’s Slant.
I can’t say I blame the folks at Ragan for their decision. I know I’ve got great readers -- some of them in places as far away as Dublin and Hong Kong. The trouble is, I don’t have enough of them to make it worthwhile for Ragan to pay me to write the blog.
But this will not be the end of The Speechwriter’s Slant. I’m going to continue the blog from my own web site. Probably, I won’t be blogging as much or as often, but I plan on adding a bonus feature for readers who care to follow me to my new location. I’m still working out the details, but I’ll have more to tell you before the end of the month. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll stay tuned.
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MS 150: IT WAS NO “BREEZE”tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9982008-04-15T00:23:36Z2008-04-15T22:03:16ZThis past weekend, for the fifth time, I rode in the MS 150 –- a two-day, 150+ mile bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise a hoped-for $14 million for multiple sclerosis research. This morning, I received a singularly...
This past weekend, for the fifth time, I rode in the MS 150 –- a two-day, 150+ mile bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise a hoped-for $14 million for multiple sclerosis research. This morning, I received a singularly inappropriate email from the National MS Society, congratulating me for making the ride “look like a breeze.”
Well, thanks very much, but the 2008 MS 150 was no “breeze.” Rather, it was a vicious, bone-chilling headwind that slowed riders to an agonized crawl for most of the first day and a good part of the second. I’m a pokey rider under the best of conditions. With the headwind, it took me 11 hours to cover 84 miles to the overnight rest stop at LaGrange.
I don’t know the speed of the headwind that buffeted me all day long. But I dimly remembered a rule of thumb I learned in the Boy Scouts. It takes a wind of 8 to 12 miles an hour to fully extend a light flag. So I kept a weather eye on the flags I encountered along the way. Since every single one of them was not only fully extended, but tugging furiously at its halyard, the headwind must have been at least 12 miles an hour –- probably more.
Because I was riding with a team from my church (irreverently named the “Holy Spokes”) I was able to avoid the mass camp-out of 13,000 riders at the LaGrange fairground. Instead, our pious little band made arrangements to spend the night at a nearby ranch.
The accommodations were rustic. We lodged in a stable (actually a barn). About a score of us laid our sleeping bags down on the bare planks of the loft. After a hard day’s ride, I was expecting a quiet refuge for the night, far away from the boom boxes and raucous partying at the fairground. What I didn’t realize –- and was dismayed to discover –- was how the most well-mannered and considerate Episcopalians could turn into perfect animals once they were asleep. The snoring was cacophonous, but I managed to snatch a few hours of shut-eye before our 5:30 breakfast the next morning.
After generous helpings of pancakes, grits and bacon and eggs, we set out for Austin, shivering in the 38-degree dawn. The MS 150 is a grueling ride, but it is made bearable by the many dedicated volunteers who monitor the health and safety of the riders on the highways, and man the rest stops that are spaced about ten miles apart along the route. At the rest stops, weary riders can find mechanics to fix their bikes, medical attention for sunburn or minor injuries, and ample supplies of Gatorade, fresh water, and healthy snacks.
I always gorge on the bananas at these stopping points, hoping that the rich store of potassium they contain will forestall muscle cramps. So far, I’ve avoided cramps, but I harbor the uneasy suspicion that scarfing down all those bananas may one day trigger some sinister, reverse-evolution process. I have nightmares that one day I’ll end the ride by peeling a banana with my toes.
Is all this agony worth it? Well, as a recurring sign along the route reminds us, we have two days of pain, MS sufferers have a lifetime. So it’s for a good cause.
Also, the ride is never dull. MS 150 riders are a colorful bunch. Along the way, I noted one bold spirit doing the ride on a unicycle, perched high on his single 36-inch wheel. Elsewhere, I spotted a group of women riders decked out with pixie wings. And then there's a guy I’ve seen every year I’ve made the trek to Austin: an Errol Flynn look-alike with a dashing moustache, a coxcomb of artificial flames atop his helmet, a Saint Arnold Brewery biker jersey stretched tight across his beefy torso and a devilish grin.
Beyond the riders, there’s the scenery. There are carpets of wildflowers to admire along the way, along with the rolling Texas hills, even though I may huff and puff while pedaling to the tops of them. But there was one moment at the start of the second day that I will particularly treasure. The morning sun had just risen over a low-lying mist. For an instant, the Texas landscape was transmuted into silver and gold. In a pasture on the other side of the road, a pair of lusty young horses frolicked like unicorns from a fairy tale. At that moment, I forgot my numb-with-cold fingers and my straining legs. I recalled the words of an old poem: “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”
And with that, I looked ahead and pedaled on to the finish line at Austin.
CELEBRATING SPEECHWRITERS?tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9922008-04-10T02:40:02Z2008-04-10T02:45:48ZFellow-speechwriter Lorne Christensen was so taken with my recent post on celebrating speechwriters that he emailed me today from Hong Kong. He tells me that “W” –- Oliver Stone’s forthcoming movie about President George W. Bush –- is going to...
http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2008/04/the-real-w-or-a.html.
I suppose speechwriters should be grateful that moviemakers acknowledge our existence. As they say in Hollywood, the only bad publicity is no publicity.
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MS -- PEDALING FOR A CUREtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9912008-04-09T02:05:01Z2008-04-09T02:18:31ZThis weekend, for the fifth time, I am taking part in the MS 150 -– that’s a two-day bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise money for a cure for multiple sclerosis. It is one of the biggest such...
This weekend, for the fifth time, I am taking part in the MS 150 -– that’s a two-day bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise money for a cure for multiple sclerosis. It is one of the biggest such events in the country. About 13,000 riders take part and, over the past few years, the MS-150 has raised over $10 million a year for research to find a cure for multiple sclerosis.
I don’t just ride, I sometimes give speeches to urge people to donate money to this effort.
So how good is a speechwriter when he steps up to the podium himself? You be the judge.
In one of the speeches I gave -- in this case to my church -- I told our parishioners that I could talk to them about what a terrible disease multiple sclerosis is. I could talk to them about how it usually strikes people in the prime of their lives. I could talk to them about how there is a new case of MS diagnosed every hour. And I could talk to them about how there is still no cure.
But, I said, I’m not going to do this. I’m just going to tell a story. And I did.
The story went like this: One year, when I was riding the MS 150, I was stopped for a traffic light and I happened to glance over at the rider on my left.
Immediately, I took a closer look. He was riding alone on a tandem bicycle. What happened to the other rider, I wondered. Had he fallen off? Been taken sick? Had the two riders possibly had an argument and split up in the middle of the ride?
But as I looked even more closely, I noticed that the rear pedals on the bike had been removed. No question about it; this man was deliberately riding solo on a bicycle built for two. Why? I asked myself.
At that moment, the light turned, the other rider pulled ahead of me, and suddenly I had my answer. The rider had a sign propped up on the empty rear seat. The sign said: “Last year, I rode with my wife. This year, I’m riding for her.”
That was all I said -- or needed to say.
CELEBRATING SPEECHWRITERStag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9872008-04-04T20:11:29Z2008-04-04T20:15:19ZSpeechwriters don’t have an equivalent to the Academy Awards yet, but we now have a recognition that is distinctly our own. Last month, more than 20 speechwriters from around the country were honored for excellence in speechwriting in the inaugural...
Vital Speeches of the Day and The Executive Speaker, and it is the first of its kind to recognize distinction in speechwriting.
“Today, communication in a public forum is dominated by PowerPoint presentations and impromptu speaking,” says Scott Accatino, general manager of professional resources at McMurray, Inc., which publishes Vital Speeches of the Day and The Executive Speaker. “In that environment, the power of a well-crafted, on-point and moving speech is more pronounced than ever, and this awards program helps keep the established and powerful art of influence through the spoken word alive and well.”
“Prior to the Ciceros,” Mr. Accatino continues, “there was no national awards program for those in the speechwriting field. Now there is a way to measure the accomplishments of these talented writers and recognize them for their valued contributions to the art of speechwriting.”
The award-winning speeches were selected by a distinguished panel of judges. The judges included Thomas F. Daly IV, editor of Vital speeches of the Day; Robert O. Skovgard, editor of The Executive Speaker; Peter Robinson, author, television host and former White House speechwriter; and Robert Veninga, Ph.D., award-winning author and Professor Emeritus at the university of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.
The winners and the full texts of their speeches may viewed at http://www.mcmurry.com/award/cicero/doc/2007Winners.pdf.
Yours truly is represented, appropriately enough, by a speech I gave about speechwriting to the Washington Speechwriters Roundtable in the fall of 2006. It’s called “Bearding the Lion: Leadership Strategies for Winning Over Tough Audiences.” It rated a Silver Cicero. Maybe next year I’ll go for a gold.
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SURFING THE NET AT WARP SPEEDtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9812008-04-01T23:17:40Z2008-04-01T23:22:59ZAndrew Sullivan, who blogs The Daily Dish, says he’s taking a mental health break to get away from the trench warfare being waged by the Clinton and Obama campaigns. I don’t blame him. It must be terribly stressful to be...
The Daily Dish, says he’s taking a mental health break to get away from the trench warfare being waged by the Clinton and Obama campaigns.
I don’t blame him. It must be terribly stressful to be required, in his phrase, to “have an opinion every 23 minutes.”
While he’s away, his blog will be covered by his research assistant, Patrick Appel. Mr. Appel claims to “keep tabs” on 500 blogs. Is such a thing possible? How many blogs can one so much as glance at in a day? But whether Mr. Appel was exaggerating or not, I’ll give him credit for finding and posting some very titillating facts and commentaries.
Meanwhile, the March 17 issue of The Ragan Report contains a link to what Britain’s Manchester Guardian calls the 50 most powerful blogs on the Internet. Here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs.
The Daily Dish ranked number 40 on the list. The Drudge Report ranked number 11. First place went to The Huffington Post. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut, but I get enough favorable feedback from readers like you to keep me posting.
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WILL HILLARY KNEECAP OBAMA?tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9772008-03-28T20:14:40Z2008-04-14T05:07:37ZEarlier this week, ABC News senior correspondent Jake Tapper interviewed a Democratic Party official who predicted that Sen. Hillary Clinton could still win the party’s presidential nomination –- but she would have to exercise what he called the “Tonya Harding...
Democracy by Henry Adams. Although it was published in 1880, it contains many passages that still ring true, even today.
In particular, the novel contains a devastating portrait of an unscrupulous and ruthlessly ambitious senator named Silas Ratcliffe, who intends to be president –- whatever the cost. At one point, Ratcliffe frankly avows to the heroine of the novel that the pleasure of politics lies in the possession of power: “He agreed that the country would do very well without him. ‘But here I am,’ said he, ‘and here I mean to stay.’ He had very little sympathy for thin moralizing, and a statesmanlike contempt for philosophical politics. He loved power, and he meant to be president. That was enough.”
Sound like anyone we know?
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BUT CAN OBAMA EXPLAIN ECONOMICS?tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9732008-03-27T16:44:10Z2008-03-27T16:48:49ZJohn McCain’s speech on the housing crisis in Santa Ana on March 25 was a dull speech: earnest, plodding, methodical and utterly devoid of any rhetorical flourishes that might set an audience swooning. Nevertheless, I think it was a good...
A bubble occurs when prices are driven up too quickly, speculators move into markets, and these players begin to suspend the normal rules of risk and assume that prices can only move up - but never down. We've seen this kind of bubble before - in the late 1990s, we had the technology bubble, when money poured into technology stocks and people assumed that those stock values would rise indefinitely. Between 2001 and 2006, housing prices rose by nearly 15 percent every year. The normal market forces of people buying and selling their homes were overwhelmed by rampant speculation. Our system of market checks and balances did not correct this until the bubble burst.
A sustained period of rising home prices made many home lenders complacent, giving them a false sense of security and causing them to lower their lending standards. They stopped asking basic questions of their borrowers like "can you afford this home? Can you put a reasonable amount of money down?" Lenders ended up violating the basic rule of banking: don’t lend people money who can’t pay it back. Some Americans bought homes they couldn't afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates. There are 80 million family homes in America and those homeowners are now facing the reality that the bubble has burst and prices go down as well as up.
Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary –- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets –- to make their payments on time. That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?
A good question, and Sen. McCain had an equally good answer:
The other part of what happened was an explosion of complex financial instruments that weren't particularly well understood by even the most sophisticated banks, lenders and hedge funds. To make matters worse, these instruments -- which basically bundled together mortgages and sold them to others to spread risk throughout our capital markets - were mostly off-balance sheets, and hidden from scrutiny. In other words, the housing bubble was made worse by a series of complex, inter-connected financial bets that were not transparent or fully understood. That means they weren't always managed wisely because people couldn't properly quantify the risk or the value of these bets. And because these instruments were bundled and sold and resold, it became harder and harder to find and connect up a real lender with a real borrower. Capital markets work best when there is both accountability and transparency. In the case of our current crisis, both were lacking.
Because managers did not fully understand the complex financial instruments and because there was insufficient transparency when they did try to learn, the initial losses spawned a crisis of confidence in the markets. Market players are increasingly unnerved by the uncertainty surrounding the level of risk, liability and loss currently in the financial system. Banks no longer trust each other and are increasingly unwilling to put their money to work. Credit is drying up and liquidity is now severely limited – and small business and hard-working families find themselves unable to get their usual loans.
The Senator then promised some “straight talk” on how to deal with the problem, and he delivered:
I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis. I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.
I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers. Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.
In our effort to help deserving homeowners, no assistance should be given to speculators. Any assistance for borrowers should be focused solely on homeowners, not people who bought houses for speculative purposes, to rent or as second homes. Any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t. I will consider any and all proposals based on their cost and benefits. In this crisis, as in all I may face in the future, I will not allow dogma to override common sense.
When we commit taxpayer dollars as assistance, it should be accompanied by reforms that ensure that we never face this problem again. Central to those reforms should be transparency and accountability.
In short, Sen. McCain succinctly analyzed the circumstances that caused the current economic downturn, and then outlined a sensible, hard-headed approach to dealing with it. In reading the speech, I was reminded of Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats -– the radio addresses he made to the nation during his presidency. For the most part, they were not memorable speeches, but they were models of simplicity, clarity and sheer persuasiveness. An aide to FDR once said that “he looked for words that he would use in an informal conversation with one or two or his friends.”
If it turns out to be a contest between Obama and McCain for the White House, it will be fascinating to see which of their very different rhetorical styles will sway the voters. Obama can touch people’s hearts; we know that. But in this latest speech, McCain has shown that he can appeal powerfully to their common sense. In the end, the American people may well decide that they love Obama’s platform performances –- but they trust McCain to run the country.
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SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WARtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9702008-03-25T23:29:17Z2008-03-25T23:45:50ZHad he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me,...
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
-- Thomas Hardy
Last week’s issue of the Economist carried the obituary of one Lazare Ponticelli, a French citizen who died on March 11 at the age of 110.
Mr. Ponticelli’s death might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that he was France’s last surviving veteran of World War I, or what the French still refer to as La Grande Guerre.
The French government had offered Mr. Ponticelli a state funeral and other honors, which he declined. He knew that he was being singled out merely because he was the last of the 8.4 million poilus, or foot-soldiers, who had fought for France in the terrible years between 1914 and 1918. Of these, 1,397,800 died and 4,266,000 were wounded.
Mr. Ponticelli, as his surname suggests, was not born in France. He was a native of Italy, whose family had moved to France to find work. In gratitude, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion as an under-age volunteer at 16. When Italy entered the war in 1915, he was forcibly repatriated and served in an Italian Alpine regiment for the duration. Afterwards, he was able to return to his adopted country.
To the end of his long life, he vividly recalled an occasion when his Italian regiment stopped firing on the enemy Austrians for three weeks. During this brief unofficial armistice, the soldiers on both sides swapped loaves of bread for tobacco, took pictures of each other and otherwise fraternized. In his later years, Mr. Ponticelli would share this story with anyone interested in his experiences –- but especially with children. For him, it illustrated the utter insanity of warfare. C’est completment idiot la guerre, he would say, sadly.
He would have agreed with the English poet, Thomas Hardy, who held similar views on war. I began this post with the opening stanzas of Hardy’s poem, “The Man He Killed.” I’m going to end with the last. It goes like this:
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.
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FORGETTING ONESELF INTO IMMORTALITYtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9662008-03-20T16:54:10Z2008-03-20T16:56:17ZFor Lent this year I read Come Be My Light, the private writings of Mother Theresa. Reading this book was a humbling experience. Mother Theresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. It was to be an order devoted, in...
Come Be My Light, the private writings of Mother Theresa.
Reading this book was a humbling experience. Mother Theresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. It was to be an order devoted, in her words, to "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."
Mother Theresa and her sisters served the poorest of the poor by living among them as one of them -- first in Calcutta in India, and then eventually throughout the whole world. By the time she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Theresa had reached the conclusion that “Calcutta is everywhere.” By that, she meant that even those who were materially well off could be spiritually impoverished.
In her Nobel lecture, Mother Theresa underscored this particular paradox by contrasting the smiles on the faces of the dying beggars she nursed in India, with the sad expressions she encountered when she visited comfortable nursing homes in the West: “I saw in that home they had everything,” she said, “but everybody was looking towards the door … And I turned to the sister and I asked: How is it that these people who have everything here, why are they all looking towards the door, why are they not smiling? I am so used to smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile. And she said, ‘This is nearly every day ….They are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.’ … This is where love comes…. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried….Are we there to receive them?”
The lives of saints are invariably paradoxical. Whenever Mother Theresa was asked how she kept the adulation that came with being an international celebrity from infecting her with the sin of pride, she would reply that Jesus had given her a great grace: the deepest conviction of her total nothingness. “If He could find a poorer woman through whom to do his work,” she said, “He would not choose me, but He would choose that woman.”
In the same spirit, she remarked on another occasion that God had been able to accomplish so much through her because she had completely emptied herself to let Him work His will.
Mother Theresa belongs to that very select company of whom the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.”
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A MORE PERFECT UNION –- OR UNIONS?tag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9642008-03-18T22:58:26Z2008-03-18T23:04:11ZSen. Barack Obama has just delivered another spellbinding speech, this time on racial reconciliation. It was eloquent and it was brilliant. Senator Obama did not ignore or minimize this country’s tortured racist past, but he offered hope that, ultimately, we...
Sen. Barack Obama has just delivered another spellbinding speech, this time on racial reconciliation. It was eloquent and it was brilliant. Senator Obama did not ignore or minimize this country’s tortured racist past, but he offered hope that, ultimately, we could rise above it.
In the course of his speech, he disavowed the inflammatory statements made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, without disowning the man who had been his friend and mentor. Rather, he said, in effect, that Rev. Wright’s sentiments belonged to the past that we must rise above.
To me, the crucial paragraph of the speech was this:
“The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country –- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen –- is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope –- the audacity to hope –- for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”
These are noble words; healing words; a statesman’s words. If Sen. Obama can back up these visionary words with forward-looking actions, he might make a great president.
The question is, can he? Or is he bound hand and foot to those Democratic Party constituencies most resistant to change –- such as the AFL-CIO, the trial lawyers and the teacher unions.
Republican strategist Karl Rove shrewdly put his finger on Obama’s dilemma in a column he wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month.
“The truth,” declared Rove, “is that Mr. Obama is unwilling to challenge special interests if they represent the financial and political muscle of the Democratic left. He says yes to the lobbyists of the AFL-CIO when they demand card-check legislation to take away the right of workers to have a secret ballot in unionization efforts, or when they oppose trade deals. He won't break with trial lawyers, even when they demand the ability to sue telecom companies that make it possible for intelligence agencies to intercept communications between terrorists abroad. And he is now going out of his way to proclaim fidelity to the educational unions. This is a disappointment since he'd earlier indicated an openness to education reform. Mr. Obama backs their agenda down the line, even calling for an end to testing, which is the only way parents can know with confidence whether their children are learning and their schools working.”
In this latest speech, as he has in other speeches, Sen. Obama even managed to pay lip service to conservative ideals. In this latest speech, it was to the “notion of self-help.” Clearly, he’s trying to appeal to Americans of all ethnic backgrounds and all political persuasions. But unless he can resolve the contradiction between his high-flown rhetoric and his catering to left-wing special interest groups, he runs the risk that many Americans will sooner or later come to regard his speeches as just so much Chinese food: Forty-five minutes later, you’re hungry.
IRISH ELOQUENCEtag:blog.ragan.com,2008:/speechblog//3.9582008-03-14T15:22:15Z2008-03-14T15:32:42ZThere was once a prominent Scottish-American minister, who was famed for the quality of his preaching. When other clergymen asked him how they might acquire his felicity with the spoken word, he would assume a mock-serious expression, raise an admonitory...
Great Irish Speeches, a new anthology of Irish eloquence, assembled by Richard Aldous, head of the history department of University College Dublin. It’s available from Amazon for $12.99.
Professor Aldous has selected 50 exceptional speeches by Irish political leaders, dating from the late 18th Century to the present. About a third of these speeches deal with Ireland’s struggle to become an independent nation; the rest deal with the struggle to determine what kind of an independent nation Ireland ought to be. That is a question that preoccupies the Irish people to this day.
Political questions are never simple in Ireland. Initially, there was the question of whether Irish patriots should pursue self-determination by constitutional means or by violence. So the speeches of statesmen –- Grattan, O’Connell and Parnell –- are counterpointed by the speeches of revolutionaries –- Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet and Patrick Pearse.
Pearse, who died before a British firing squad for his part in the Easter Rising of 1916, is represented by a fiery funeral oration that he gave the year before. “Life springs from death;” he exhorted his audience, “and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations … while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
Prophetic words. The quest for Irish freedom was further complicated by the fact that six counties in Northern Ireland, known as Ulster, had Protestant majorities. Protestant Irishmen asserted their own right to self-determination by demanding to remain part of Great Britain. “Ulster is not asking for concessions,” fulminated Sir Edward Carson in a 1914 speech against home rule for Ireland. "Ulster is asking to be let alone.”
Ulster remained part of Britain when the Irish Free State was established in 1921. But she was not let alone. She was plagued by bitter sectarian violence between the ruling Protestants and the insurgent Catholic minority for decades afterwards. Between 1966 to 2007, the period known as “the troubles,” over 3700 inhabitants of Northern Ireland lost their lives before peace was finally established. Professor Aldous’ anthology includes speeches by Bernadette Devlin, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, leading figures of that era.
Meanwhile, the Republic of Ireland, despite having been born of revolution, settled down to being a notably conservative country over which the Catholic Church exercised vast sway. In 1925, the church demanded a total ban on divorce, which was technically available through the Irish senate. The poet William Butler Yeats, then a member of that body, replied with a furious speech warning of dire consequences if the church got its way. “If you show that this country, Southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Catholic ideas and Catholic ideas alone,” argued Yeats, “you will never get the North. You will create an impassable barrier between South and North, and you will pass more and more Catholic laws, while the North will, gradually, assimilate its divorce and other laws to those of England. You will put a wedge into the midst of this nation.”
Sixty years later, Irish deputy Des O’Malley was to make the case –- in almost identical terms and with equal lack of success -- for legislation to permit the sale of condoms without a prescription. His speech is included in the anthology, as is the 1986 speech on reform of the divorce laws by prime minister Garret FitzGerald –- a reform measure that also failed. It was not until 1990s that Ireland caught up with the sexual revolution. The sale of condoms was permitted, divorce became available and homosexual activity between consenting adults was decriminalized.
Intriguingly, Irish-American President John F. Kennedy played a subtle role in the gradual liberalization of Irish attitudes. When Kennedy visited in Ireland in June of 1963, the government still censored books found objectionable by the Catholic Church. Kennedy took advantage of the rapturous reception he received from the Irish people to send a message to the politicians. In his address to the Dail, the Irish parliament, he made a pointed reference to James Joyce, who was still considered a “dirty” writer by those in power.
The reference, moreover, came during one of the most heart-melting passages of a rhetorical masterpiece. On this occasion, Kennedy surpassed even himself:
Our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters. They came to our shores in a mixture of hope and agony, and I would not underrate the difficulties of their course once they arrived in the United States. They left behind hearts, fields and a nation yearning to be free. It is no wonder that James Joyce described the Atlantic as a bowl of bitter tears, and an earlier poet wrote, “They are going, going, going and we cannot bid them stay."
Kennedy concluded his speech with the line, “Ireland’s hour has come” –- a line that resonated so deeply with the Irish people that nearly a quarter-century later, prime minister Bertie Ahern would quote it when he was accorded the rare honor of addressing a joint session of the British Parliament.
Mr. Ahern’s speech ends this splendid anthology, and the concluding paragraph of his speech will end today’s post to this blog. Mr. Ahern said this:
Today I can say to this Parliament at Westminster, as John Kennedy said in Dublin, “Ireland’s hour has come.” It came, not as victory or defeat, but as a shared future for all. Solidarity has made us stronger. Reconciliation has brought us closer. Ireland’s hour has come: a time of peace, of prosperity, of old values and new beginnings. This is the great lesson and the great gift of Irish history. This is what Ireland can give to the world.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.
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