Everybody and my wife’s uncle has sent me a note about former Obama White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes’ new American speech anthology, All We Say, subtitled, “The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches.”
I told my wife’s uncle I’d rather read a history of America in hubcaps or salt-shakers, than in speeches.
That’s an odd response from the editor and publisher of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine and the founder of the Professional Speechwriters Association. However:
First, I am genuinely confused about speech anthologies. There are already one million of them, with three more published every month, seemingly. Who in the world is reading all these? Who, in this world, is reading any of these? For whom is anybody publishing these?!!?!?!?
Also: While I think speeches are an essential aspect of civic dialogue—and have given a speech making this very argument, on four continents and counting—I don’t like the idea of “American Identity” being defined by them. The oral historian Studs Terkel taught me well and forever that “the big guys” don’t know everything. I’m sure Ben Rhodes, like most modern speech anthologizers, takes pains to publish speeches by lesser-known citizens. But by definition, speeches are delivered by people who have clearly had their say. And now a former White House speechwriter presumes to pick 15 of them to “remind us what American greatness actually sounds like,” according to the promo materials. Egads.
Next: I like speeches as contemporary social social phenomenons—ideas and feelings and rhythms in hot rooms full of human beings in moods of one kind or another. I would like to have been at the Gettysburg Address. Mostly, to find out if it was actually kinda boring, on sore feet, on the day. I doubt anyone there expected those words to be carved into marble, least of all President Lincoln, who actually said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Little did he know that speech anthologies would inexplicably become America’s leading book genre.
I like speechwriters too, but the notion of (another) one of the trying to define American history by speeches is sufficiently on the nose to break it.
Even as a professionally speech-loving and speechwriter-loving fellow, I’d much rather read:
A Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Songs
A Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Corporate Memos
A Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Disgusting Jokes
Those would be just as smart. And just as dumb. But at least, something new under the sun.
I’m sure I’m wrong about all this, incidentally, and I invite any speechwriter or non-speechwriter to write a review convincing me and all our speechwriter buddies of the value of Ben Rhodes’ new anthology. I’ll publish it at ProRhetoric.com, and I’ll shut my mouth until the next anthology appears, the week after next.
