A SPEECH WRITER LOOKS AT THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS. I was happy to have the PunditWire blog called to my attention. The participants are professional political speech writers. As an example of the point of view, here is a post on the blog answering the question “Are Speech Writers Philosophers?” by saying that they should be, that speech writers should “promote the return of rhetoric to the philosophic umbrella.” I was especially pleased by the blog because I found out that my old friend Bob Lehrman posts on it, and I will be able to keep up with his thinking about politics. Here is a post in which he argues that there are three reasons why the Democrats may do a lot better in 2012: the economy may improve; the turnout will be larger; and the Republicans may overreach. Kids, take note of how well the post is written; speech writers think hard about rhetoric. The introduction is interesting, and it also personalizes the essay. And I would note that there are three reasons. I posted here about how I was taught in high school Latin class that: “Roman orators liked using groups of three so much that they had a name for the figure of speech: ‘tricolon.'”
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Phil
The Punditwire administrator sent me a link to your blog. How did you ever find us? And what are you up to? I am actually in Peru, at the base of Macchu Picchu having just climbed up there and back – with a guide and yes, grueling. With this Spanish keyboard I’m having a little trouble getting the “at” sign to work, but my personal email is RALehrman (at)AOL.com. Write me and let’s catch up.
In stand up comedy I’ve noticed the tricolon in effect a lot of the time. For example when you’re listing examples you would do: Ordinary, Ordinary, Punch-Line.
It’s usually the formula I use, but I try messing around with it sometimes because you don’t want your rhythms becoming predictable. Maybe pretend to sneak the punch line in on the 4th item in a list of 6. If I think of a decent example I’ll return and write it, as I’m sure you’re all fascinated.
Nick, what of kind of luck have you had with non-tricolon rhythms? I once came across a fascinating article in a Sunday magazine in England which gave examples of political speeches (by leading politicians) where poor rhythm yielded no response and better rhythm led to thunderous applause. I seem to remember effective tricolon –perhaps also with effective climaxing — was one of the secrets.
There’s one particular joke I’m thinking of when I mention it, which I used for quite some time. It was part of my “Golden Bathtub” sketch, where I talked about a news item wherein a $1 million golden bathtub was successfully stolen from a Japanese hotel.
I lead into the act by talking about how superfluous an item a golden bathtub is, and I experimented with the following: “It’s not really a necessity. It’s not like someone goes camping and thinks to themselves, ‘I brought the tent…the sleeping bags…the food…the golden bathtub…trail mix…bug spray’ trying to slip the golden bathtub in quickly.
It worked, although it was certainly more of the set up portion of the act, and I wonder if I had just used it in a tricolon if it wouldn’t have been more effective.