I click on MSNBC and the first words out of Andrea Mitchell's mouth declare that she has just spoken with young speechwriter Jon Favreau, who wanted to remain off-camera and behind the scenes "of course," Mitchell said, but who said "he is just so excited to hear his words read today. It was a collaborative effort of course …."
I’ll take ‘Writing and Presidents’ for $1,000
Rather than add one more water molecule to torrent of comparisons between Obama and Lincoln, I will deal today with the subject of presidents and communication by quoting the great H.L. Mencken*, writing about the writing of the not-so-great president Warren G. Harding:
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds
me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the
line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs
barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of
grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish,
and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and
bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the
line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs
barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of
grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish,
and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and
bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
* You haven't really appreciated this passage until, under the influence of one and one-half gin and tonics at a conference cocktail party, it has been recited to you perfectly, from memory, by the great speechwriter and literary jukebox, Hal Gordon.
How to make magic
Today Ragan.com reruns a column I wrote for them last year, about how Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech became the single most powerful speech in American history. "Partly through historical fate and partly through
design, every single relevant element of communication lined up at
once," I wrote, and then listed and analyzed those elements one by one.
Boy, I'm smart. Or at least I was a year ago. Check it out!