On Today's Speech

[barking_iguana]

As Inland at DKos says

This speech did not require Obama to reinvent the wheel, or himself. There wasn't anything in the speech that was new, besides specific references to Wright and Ferraro. Most of it is in his books. He's not inventing a spin, he's articulating his most deeply held belief.

That's why he gives a great speech: he's better than most politicians because he's reaching for something better and is determined to get there.

This is what Bill Bradley tried to be, but was too inhibited and maybe not smart enough.

OTOH, I think the speech was too long for its purpose and media environment by at least 10 minutes. It wouldn't have had as much good and necessary material had he not written it himself, but it could have used editing by others.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

I think anyone available to Obama probably would have massacred the speech.

I could have done it, though.

Mind you, the way I ‘edit’ such a thing is to say something like, ‘Here, this part; go back and shorten it to a couple of sentences.’ Or ‘Here, this part, it’s tangential; remove it.’ Or ‘Here, just say what you are talking about.’

I do that for Kristy.

The last kind of ‘edit’ is for instance change ‘A was responsible for B’ to ‘A did B’. Obama probably wouldn’t need much of that, though I’ll bet I could find a few places where it should be done.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

We agree on the kind of editing needed. More what a PhD adviser does than what a professional editor does.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

As a Rutgers undergrad I took a 300-level course in scientific and technical writing, which is a particularly demanding form of writing.

(I was one of the last students to take that course as a humanities elective before the College of Engineering, unfortunately, disallowed such a ‘practical’ course. We were required to take two upperclass-level humanities or social sciences courses; I took the course in modernist poetry for my other elective.)