Was anyone besides me distracted from following the president’s speech last night by the sound of his hands dropping repeatedly to the lectern as he spoke? I suppose he does this all the time, and I just never noticed it until last night, when someone put a much-too-sensitive microphone in front of him.
Whether you heard it depended on which station you watched. I flipped around, so I know that on most stations it wasn’t audible, but on two or three it was. It was loudest on PBS (although not so much so on the Web version). I guess the engineers on some stations washed it out.
Anyway, what I learned is that he marks time in his speech, dropping his hands down with a distinctive “plop” at each pause. It’s a sort of kinetic form of punctuation that occurs wherever a full or partial stop occurs. It went like this:
Here’s what I ask Congress, though: (PLOP)
Don’t walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close.(PLOP)
Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people.(PLOP)
(Applause.) Let’s get it done.(PLOP)
Let’s get it done.(PLOP)
(Applause.)
Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit,(PLOP)
it’s not enough to dig us out of a massive fiscal hole in which we find ourselves.(PLOP)
It’s a challenge that makes all others that much harder to solve,(PLOP)
and one that’s been subject to a lot of political posturing.(PLOP)
So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight.(PLOP)
At the beginning of the last decade,(PLOP)
the year 2000,(PLOP)
America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion.(PLOP)
(Applause.) By the time I took office,(PLOP)
we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.(PLOP)
Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars,(PLOP)
two tax cuts,(PLOP)
and an expensive prescription drug program.(PLOP)
On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget.(PLOP)
All this was before I walked in the door.(PLOP)…
All of us have our speaking quirks. I use the lectern myself, but mostly as a sort of anchor to hold onto as I resist my peripatetic urge to move away from the microphone as I talk.
But now that I’ve noticed this about Obama, even it I don’t hear it in the future, I think I’m going to be conscious of it, and distracted. It sort of breaks the spell, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view.
Instead, Obama could go “ahhhhhh ….. uummmmm …. hmmmmmm” between the lines. You know you get into a cadence in a speech like that.
Actually, that’s what this reminded me of — JFK’s uuhhhs, which I thought HE used to great effect. If only I could learn to use my own little ticks in an effective rhythm like that…
Speech teachers say that those who pause during speeches or go “ummm” tend to be bright people who are thinking ahead of the words they’re saying.
I don’t think Bush ever paused during a speech that was prewritten.
I think there is certainly ample precedent for the incantatory rhythm in African American preaching.
It bothered me, too, but I attributed it to poor audio management (as in who chose that microphone?).
I noticed it but paid attention to the words instead.
The Prez is still struggling with a way to express irritation without coming across as strident. It would help if he had the knack of sticking the knife in and then smiling (as JFK and Reagan did).
Good point, Steve. I think the last thing Obama needs is to feed the fear of an Angry Black Man….
The AP had a story yesterday about how Michelle Obama had taken measures to curb weight gain in the girls. It was accompanied by a photo that made her look deranged. Nice.
http://www.nbc26.com/Global/story.asp?S=11896628
Let those babies eat! say I. I cringe any time anyone would take a single step toward making any girl weight-conscious. With a daughter who’s a dancer (a profession that lends itself to eating disorders), it terrifies me…
Dunno….I have always been large, but my parents were “stringbeans” when they married. Would I be lighter today (not skinny, I think, but lighter) if my mother had practiced better portion control? Maybe stopped with the home-made cookies and desserts and just had fruit? We always ate scratch-cooked meals–almost no fried foods and plenty of plain vegetables, but the portions might have been smaller–it wasn’t until I left home that I discovered that to most people, one pork chop, not two, is a serving. I wonder.