Want to know just how good Clinton's speech was? Check this out.
Sat Sep 08, 2012 at 06:54 AM PDT
Want to know just how good Clinton's speech was? Check this out.
by PuzzleX
You thought Bill Clinton was good at giving speeches? You have no idea just how good. You've just got to read "Conversation with a Teleprompter" from the New Yorker, published yesterday, September 7th.
I'll give you my own spin of it below the squiggle.
Let's start with this fact: not a lot of information can fit on a teleprompter.
So you're Clinton, and you're standing in front of 40,000 cheering delegates, you're on national TV, you're giving a speech that'll burnish your legacy -- and you see this in the teleprompter:
tough, constant
conflict may be good
politics, but in the
real world,
I'd wager 99 out of 100 politicians read this word for word. Because it's probably all you can do to read it without fumbling and read it with some sense of emotion.
Now, if Bill Clinton did say it word-for-word, he'd have something pretty good:
But where most politicians are reading the final draft and would be too fearful to mess it up by improvising, what Clinton sees in the teleprompter is like the first draft to him. He is playing off the energy of the crowd. He's synthesizing a lifetime of public speaking instantly. And on the spot, he comes back with sheer poetry:
The article from the New Yorker is filled with example after example, identifying the poetry in his improvisations. I highly recommend you check it out; you'll have fun reliving the speech, and you'll realize you missed half of what an amazing speech it truly was. And if you want more, you can also check out the full breakdown http://www.buzzfeed.com/nycsouthpaw/inside-bill-clintons-epic-convention-speech-4xje .
Oh, yeah -- one more thing. If you're wondering how many people are aware of how fun it is to hear a speech from Clinton: Clinton's speech outdrew the first NFL game of the year http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bill-clinton-defeats-nfl-in-wednesday-viewership/2012/09/06/552d7c82-f86b-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_story.htmlm .
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/08/1129269/-Want-to-know-just-how-good-Clinton-s-speech-was-Check-this-out
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All speakers like Presidents Obama and Clinton need are a few words to keep them on track, the spontaneity of the moment shows who they are and how they're perceived as giving a good speech.
ZZzzzzzt! Sorry - that's the Troll Buzzer - time to go home now!
"Clinton is the best politician in the country, bar none. "
You're entitled to your opinion, but Obama still won with 70 million votes.
Bounce baby!
He's a master and he's beyond comfortable. He was fugging brilliant and then some. 
My only BIG stroke of luck was being in a cabaret in West Berlin in 1974 one evening when a young woman I had met the night before was there again, and said she was leaving the next day for China, but I ought to meet her girlfriend. She leaned back and this tall blonde angel appeared. Today, 38 years later, we're still together. Now THAT'S luck.
As for the rest, well, it's a little luck, and some common sense.
My dad was the son of some minor New York prominence, so he took a daring assignment as a journalist from a small town newspaper, opening a one-man bureau for them in Washington at age 28, changed his name, and started from scratch. He was straight with everybody, quickly got a rep for it, and 15 years later introduced me to my first president (LBJ), who clearly did NOT want to have to spend time with some 13 year old kid. Before I was 10 years old, and before metal detectors were even invented, he used to take me up to the Senate Press Gallery in the Capitol, and meet guys with names like Humphrey, Javits, Dirksen, Kennedy etc etc. All I knew is that some of them were real characters, and they all seemed to have the same first name ("Senator"
. What did I know? But he was introducing me to guys like that for the rest of his life. "Bob" Kennedy, "Fritz" Mondale, "Gerry" Ford, etc etc. It wasn't some hotshot social circle. It was his work, and he loved it.
That's Part One.
Then, some 17 years ago, my best friend in the States had met up with a guy on an anti-smoking campaign. The guy was a successful financial adviser, investor, author, gay rights advocate, and spoke really good Russian. This guy invited my friend to be a part of a gathering held every New Year in South Carolina called Renaissance Weekend (www.renaissanceweekend.org). My friend liked it, knew I spoke Russian, too, and kept forgetting to invite me. You only get in (as a normal mortal) by being proposed by someone already a part of it. He finally got around to proposing me, and the committee must have been bored that day, because I was accepted, despite no claim to fame, and no momentous accomplishments whatsoever. My first one was a month after my father died. My Dad would have loved this, and indeed, when I mentioned my name, over half of the journalists there knew immediately whose son I was. It was here that I got to know some of the incredible people I now count as friends. Howard Dean, Dr. Ruth, Adrian Cronauer, Gabby Giffords, Peter Norton, just a really vast array of people, most of whom have seen and done more in their lifetimes than most of us (including me) could ever dream about. I remain on the periphery of all this. I still have my day job, and it usually means being in a different country every day. But if there is one thing I HAVE learned, it's that even extraordinary people, right up to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, are still people at the end of the day. You can talk to them, eat lunch with them, laugh with them, correspond with them. They don't always have the time, and they all have their own things to do, but they are no less human for all that. Not everyone gets to meet them, agreed. But if fate should ever send you in that direction, I'm sure you'd find the same thing.
That's Part Two.
Thanks for posting 
to shut that whole thing down.......
(Guess ya had ta know that was coming.......! )
