House of Eratosthenes

Oh noes! You can hear the reaction at about 1:16. Morgan, speaking after his own wedding…went there. Producing a gasp, and it seems to me more like two or three such gasps, of genuine shock and maybe horror!

I have extremely modest ad-libbing skills. You can probably tell that for yourself. I’m probably just one or two notches further along than having no experience or natural talent at all, and that’s probably being charitable to myself. I know my way around this stuff just enough to be dangerous. But, if I get the impression my prepared remarks make this into a Barack-Obama-like speech, then yes, I see that as a problem and ad-libbing will be used to find an answer. I don’t care what kind of success this guy has had addressing crowds, if that’s success then I’d rather fail.

It comes under the category of “If I ever agreed with His politics or was ever on His bandwagon, this is where I’d be thinking about hopping off.” This is just plain unhealthy. I would hope, perhaps too optimistically, that I could get one or two die-hard Obama fans to admit at least that much. I recognize He’s a politician and giving the same speech over and over again is what politicians sometimes do…part of the job description…just because you said it in San Francisco on Wednesday doesn’t mean you can let it pass by in Philadelphia on Thursday. I get all that.

The issue has to do with being loquacious. Apart from the fact that it’s unnatural and crass to, for example, mention yourself thirty times or more during a funeral speech, Obama’s wonderful speeches — this is an “Emperor has no clothes moment” if ever there was one — are just plain boring. Truly, He is a dreadful bore. It is intellectually unhealthy to keep just saying the same things over and over again. Even in written form, I try to stay away from that. I get people writing in now and then, “Christ on a cracker, it’s been almost a whole week aren’t you going to blog anything?” And often, the answer is no. If it’s worth saying, it’s worth keeping some sort of structure on it, and if there’s structure to it and you’ve already said it, well then the only reason to say it again is because there was something unacceptably wrong with the way you said it before. After some seven thousand posts, you reach the point where most of it’s already been said.

This does not, you’ll notice, stop President Obama. Structure is not valued there. He may even see it as a liability. His rules are different; if He said it on Day N, it’s every bit as much worth saying on Day N+1 and N+2 and on and on and on and on. Look at Me! I’m saying it again, isn’t it wonderful! Millionairesandbillionairesontheircorporatejets, and you didn’t build that. Ugh. No. I do not want to talk that way. If He’s not wrong then I don’t want to be right.

And, as I explained in the video — those chairs are hard. Republicans, democrats, libertarians and don’t-cares, they’re all good friends who took the time to show up at our event, and they deserved consideration. No, my two decades wandering around in the wilderness are not that big a deal. I’m not that important. The groom is pretty much the #2 celebrity in these things. The point is that I married a wonderful, wonderful woman and it wasn’t necessary to go into some tedious rendition of my life’s story in order to say so, especially when the people in the room could see it with their own eyes. Brevity is a virtue, even moreso in the verbal forum, than it is on a blog…because in the verbal forum, the audience is captive.

It would be nice to have a president who understands such things. I’m looking forward to it someday. Meantime, I’m truly sorry if I actually upset anyone. But I suspect the shock-n-outrage wasn’t very genuine…hope not, anyway.

Update: Looks like someone else has formed a different, more positive opinion about the President’s unique speech-giving style. If, uh, I’m reading this right.

[…] where I disagree with blog-friend Morgan: Some things need to be repeated, ad infinitum, since otherwise our better natures take over and we start giving folks the benefit […]
- On the Need for Repetition | Rotten Chestnuts | 12/31/2012 @ 11:20
You Silver-Tongued Debbil, you.
- bpenni | 12/31/2012 @ 16:13
Excellent! Congratulations to you both. I love that she is sarcastic and beautiful in one! And you do well to learn from others who you disdain. That is not a universal feature. 🙂
Yay! You got married!
- tgoon | 01/01/2013 @ 09:29

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Badmouthing BarackSunday, December 30th, 2012

Badmouthing Barack
Sunday, December 30th, 2012