Speeches

*Godfather* · 02-27-2006, 06:14 PM

I love speeches! The tell so much about the times, the orator, the country, everything!

What's your favorite speech, worst ever, or one you just find interesting.

I think Bush is a crap speaker, I mean he has writers and all, but he still blows it....yet...his State of the Union speech he made recently was well spoken for him! Probably because he talked about Iraq, and that's all he's comfortable with...but hey

...And I think we all aready know Ask not what your country, and I have a dream

*G_Man* · 02-27-2006, 06:42 PM

so, this is our 300th thread... interesting topic. I don't like speeches, just for the reason you cited, GF. Staged, canned info.

I am more impressed with press conferences and debates. Both of which Bush is terrible at!

*Godfather* · 02-27-2006, 06:46 PM

Ahh Gman, I hope the 300th thread wasnt spoild for ya!

Canned, true.... but the impact of retoric and great orators on society is vast

I would almost consider it a form of art, to be able to captivate an audience, and convey such a message.

*G_Man* · 02-27-2006, 06:51 PM

It is an Art. But then again so is advertising and I hardly consider them good things.

Like Adolf Hitler. Convinced a whole downtrodden society that their only hope for salvation was through War and eventually attempted Genocide.

**Sp00k** · 02-28-2006, 10:44 AM

I think the key word for speeches is not the integrity or the method of conveyance, its the sincerity & emotional content that captivates peoples attention. Mind you the hardest part of listening to a speech is trying to define the sincerity.

There are a lot of good liars in politics.....ooh sorry they're not liars they just fabricate the truth.

Babbaloo · 02-28-2006, 02:27 PM

Mark Antony's oration is what set the standard that no one has yet to pass.

*Godfather* · 03-07-2006, 09:17 PM

If you guys could give a speach on an important topic, trying to convince people of a problem in our society, something that needs attention...what would you look at?

Censorship worries me, as does political correctness going beyond it's original purpose, and becoming rediculous

*G_Man* · 03-19-2006, 06:34 PM

Here it is, for all to listen.

wyeast · 03-20-2006, 07:03 AM

Quoting: G_Man

so, this is our 300th thread... interesting topic. I don't like speeches, just for the reason you cited, GF. Staged, canned info.

I am more impressed with press conferences and debates. Both of which Bush is terrible at!

I actually dislike press conferences and speeches for that very reason! Political debates are a joke. It's a barrage of sound bites and 30 second canned remarks that often barely address the issue at hand.

(Well, at least debates past the college level. Before then it's a lot of stammering and flirting with the team from the all-girls Catholic school.

)

To answer the question, I'm not sure what the best speech is. Perhaps when JFK declared we would reach the moon by the end of the decade. Bold, decisive, compelling enough to motivate the nation to continue the cause that he did not live to see to completion. Either that or maybe one of Churchill's at the opening of the war.

WORST Speech. Richard Gere's jerimiad on what was it, Tibet? It was such a sudden and obvious derail and so out of context that the brain was compelled to tune it out as trash. You sit there expecting one thing and all of a sudden it's "WTF???"

*G_Man* · 03-25-2006, 09:57 PM

I don't think any of us have lived to see JFK's dream come true.

Having said that...

GF: here is a book for you - available on audible for the iPod too!

Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World (Roughcut)
by Margaret MacMillan, Richard Holbrooke

From Publishers Weekly
A joke circulating in Paris early in 1919 held that the peacemaking Council of Four, representing Britain, France, the U.S. and Italy, was busy preparing a "just and lasting war." Six months of parleying concluded on June 28 with Germany's coerced agreement to a treaty no Allied statesman had fully read, according to MacMillan, a history professor at the University of Toronto, in this vivid account. Although President Wilson had insisted on a League of Nations, even his own Senate would vote the league down and refuse the treaty. As a rush to make expedient settlements replaced initial negotiating inertia, appeals by many nationalities for Wilsonian self-determination would be overwhelmed by rhetoric justifying national avarice. The Italians, who hadn't won a battle, and the French, who'd been saved from catastrophe, were the greediest, says MacMillan; the Japanese plucked Pacific islands that had been German and a colony in China known for German beer. The austere and unlikable Wilson got nothing; returning home, he suffered a debilitating stroke. The council's other members horse-traded for spoils, as did Greece, Poland and the new Yugoslavia. There was, Wilson declared, "disgust with the old order of things," but in most decisions the old order in fact prevailed, and corrosive problems, like Bolshevism, were shelved. Hitler would blame Versailles for more ills than it created, but the signatories often could not enforce their writ. MacMillan's lucid prose brings her participants to colorful and quotable life, and the grand sweep of her narrative encompasses all the continents the peacemakers vainly carved up. 16 pages of photos, maps.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Godfather* · 03-26-2006, 11:53 AM

Hey, that's actually sounds really interesting

I'd kinda like to hear more about the entire thing, I hear it was a bit of a gong show, especially with Germany basically locked in a closet and forced to sign after a few weeks (from what I understand).

Thanks, I think I'll try and get my hands on that