http://tinyurl.com/5l6n9u
- - - BY choosing the venue of a vast outdoor stadium as John Kennedy did for his "new frontier" acceptance, and by speaking on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" address, Barack Obama - whose claim to fame is an ability to move audiences with his words - deliberately invited comparison with two of the most memorable speeches of our recent history. What a mistake. ... A stern editor could have improved the 4,500-word acceptance by cutting a thousand words of populist boilerplate and partisan-pleasing shots that offend centrists. But the die was cast before the writing began. The pretension of the fake Grecian temple setting clashed with the high-decibel, rock-star format and overwhelmed the history implicit in the event. Ancient Greeks had a word for it: hubris. - - - I was actually underwhelmed by the speech, and surprised by MSNBC's near orgasmic praise of it (surprised only in the sense that it was so gushing as to appear premeditated, almost irrespective of what he would have said--but they're so shamelessly in the tank for him it's unbelievable anyway). Finally someone has dissected it (who better than William Saffire?) and pointed out most of the things that nagged me about it. If you put that speech in the normal venue of a convention hall, it would have sounded like any other acceptance speech. That is to say, ho-hum. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
