Rory Stewart displays excellence

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Rory Stewart is a very, very good speaker

I am there quoting myself in a posting from 1 November, 2013. Though I had to go back to check the date and details I have never forgotten the impact on me that speech had. Thus when I spotted this lecture at Yale, delivered in April 2018, I was eager to watch it if only to indulge myself.

I did more than check details on that previous post, I re-read it and will take back not a word. Rory Stewart is outstanding. We see him here displaying all the qualities of all the best speakers.

During preliminary chats with my trainees, I regularly hear the protestation that they’re “ok” when lucky enough to be dealing with subject matter they know really well, but when ordered to deliver a presentation on something of which they have scant knowledge they are less good. Well of course! In an ideal world no one would be asked to speak on something they didn’t really know (though there are tricks); but this isn’t an ideal world and adverse circumstances arise.

Stewart here is being rather better than “ok”.

We see him showing total command of his subject, quoting from memory myriad facts, figures and a wide range of random data, and we are reminded that he makes his own luck. Consider the extraordinary lengths to which he goes in order to get right under the skin of the communities and cultures with which he deals. In 2002 he took leave from his job with the British foreign service to walk across Asia, entitling him thereafter to speak for those at the grass roots as one who had lived there.

There is another less obvious quality to his knowledge of his subject. Deep knowledge brings with it a heightened awareness of that which you don’t know. Stewart’s willingness in this speech to admit to questions to which he has no answers speaks eloquently for his inner confidence. Insecurity would not allow that admission.

That quality enriches the questions he receives. Though the absence of an audience mic prevents us from properly hearing the questions, the way he addresses them seems to acknowledge their value; and his answers to these relatively random issues are as full of detailed data from memory as the main body of the speech.

Had I been in the audience I would have highlighted the way the developed world’s devotion to the preposterous climate change fallacy denies impoverished African countries access to cheap energy from coal. I would have challenged his repeatedly trotting out ‘legitimate state monopoly on the use of violence’ as a commonplace desirability, because defining ‘legitimate’ presents immediate knottiness, even if you are prepared to overlook the 2nd amendment in the US Bill Of Rights, and so on. His attitude throughout suggests he is open to debating all views, and the consequent conversation will be the richer for it.

Yes he really is a very good speaker, equipped with an outstanding memory, and amazingly adept at addressing matters that are miles outside his apparent expertise. Here is a speech that I offer as a bonus and which moved Madam Deputy Speaker to declare it one of the best speeches she had ever heard in the House of Commons.

Rusty Reno should trust himself

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Last week we viewed a speech made by Tucker Carlson at a National Conservatism Conference in 2019. He was introduced by theologian R.R.Reno, widely known as ‘Rusty’, whose introduction was so well put together and delivered that I immediately went looking for a speech from him and found one at a plenary session at the same conference.

He is talking about Christian Universalism versus American Nationalism.

Not content with making a fine job of introducing Carlson, he makes an excellent job of introducing himself and his topic. For the first three quarters of a minute he tells us that he is going to address this knotty issue through the medium of seven propositions. So far so crystal clear, even up to and including his stating his first proposition.

That done he pulls his spectacles down from the crown of his head, peers through them at his script, and thereafter he might as well have been speaking in Klingon. Having been itching to learn more, I am now struggling to stay awake.

His first mistake is having as many as seven propositions. Unless his audience has been given a transcript of this talk they’re never going to remember all seven propositions still less the arguments that support them; and if they have been given a transcript why is he bothering to read it to them. They would make far more sense of it if they read it, each person absorbing it at his or her own pace.

Interestingly he seems to have managed to memorise all seven propositions because he raises his eyes to his audience to reveal each one. I’m prepared to bet that he can also remember all the arguments that support each one, but he doesn’t trust himself to do so because each time he plunges afresh into his script.

When will people learn that spoken English and written English are different languages? Write a learned treatise and any reasonably educated person will happily read and make sense of it. Read out a learned treatise and even a learned audience is as good as lost.

I wasn’t indulging in humorous hyperbole when I mentioned struggling to stay awake. I briefly dropped off and, deciding that my advanced years meant that this was one of those afternoons that would benefit from a nap, I went and had one. That was yesterday and, duly refreshed, I revisited the speech this morning only to drop off again. I still haven’t reached the end of the speech.

I have not a shred of doubt that Rusty Reno writes brilliant treatises. I also know from my own observation that he has all the makings of a fine speaker. All he needs to do is recognise that the two media are quite different, and then to prepare a clear mind-map enabling him to stand there, look at his audience and shoot his speech from the hip, just as he did with his excellent first 45 seconds. He needs to trust himself. I trust him.

Tucker Carlson homespun

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On his recent visit to Hungary, Tucker Carlson made a powerful speech which I find I am unable to embed herein – I wonder why. Gab has it, but embedding seems to be blocked – I wonder why. YouTube has it in audio only – I wonder why. At least I am able to provide you with the respective hyperlinks.

I have had him on this blog before twice: here and here. But frustrated by not being able to include that Hungary speech below, I went looking for another and found a good one. It was delivered to a National Conservatism conference in June 2019.

I like this introducer. His name is R.R.(Rusty) Reno, and I have already found a speech of his that I hope to feature here shortly so I shall not dwell more than on this introduction. He is obviously winging it, and at the beginning when he talks of how the audience can submit questions for the Q&A, he “ums” along in a seemingly shambolic fashion. No speaker who is less than comfortable on a podium would dream of doing that, so my interest is already tickled. The rest is personal reminiscence, shot from the hip, and interesting. How much time was he assigned for the introduction? I don’t know, but he happens to finish this “umming” meander at 4 minutes to the second. That could be just chance, but I suspect his air of shambles masks a serious level of skill. And there’s a stronger piece of evidence. Beginning at 03:20 Reno talks of how Carlson in his interviewing confronts the leadership class both of Left and Right. Look at his gestures in that passage. When he says “Left” he indicates it with his right hand, and indicates “right” with his left hand. Isn’t that the wrong way round? No, it’s the right way for the audience. I teach my trainees “mirror gesturing” but otherwise it is as rare as integrity in a politician

I also like self-deprecation, and Tucker Carlson is good at it. The easiest way to be good at it is to mean it. I leave it to you to judge whether you think he actually does mean it, but I also like the rather wild, little-boy laughing that I’ve seen in other speeches but that he can’t deploy on television. The interlinear message is that you’ve seen the stuffed shirt on TV, now here’s the real deal. He implies a privilege to his audience, which is a subtle form of flattery.

Carlson shoots from the hip as all proper speakers do, and he’s an enthusiastic user of Anapodoton, even to the extent of suddenly greeting an audience member in the middle of a sentence (he did it in the Hungary speech too). It all reinforces the message that we are listening to a spontaneous and sincere stream of consciousness. It’s a strong message that audiences love. It’s also in its way unashamedly homespun, because he’s addressing and articulating feelings that most of us have.

His speech is essentially divided into three sections – good! – and the last one, beginning at about 20:25, is devoted to peaceful coexistence. Whatever happened to that? Where did Live-And-Let-Live go? I like this section because someone has to say this! Someone has to highlight the blindingly obvious point that almost everyone just wants to get on with their lives, rubbing along with their friends and neighbours and strangers they happen to meet. Yet there is a tiny, evil, power-mad and deafening clique of hate-fuelled, misanthropic arseholes that are hell-bent on making us all enemies of each other. Why do we ever listen to them?

Anyway it’s a good and absorbing speech, and also one of those where I urge you to stick around at the end to listen to the Q&A.

Tom Tugendhat deserved applause

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In the House of Commons in the British Parliament last Wednesday 18 August, A spellbinding speech was delivered by Tom Tugendhat MP.

If his name is unfamiliar to you and you clicked it to learn about him on the hyperlinked page, you will quickly suspect that he was talking about the tragedy that is currently Afghanistan. You will of course be right. It was because of the Afghanistan crisis that Parliament was sitting at all.

The crisis caused a special recall of Members from their summer recess on that day, and they were crowded onto the benches.

They listened intently to this emotional speech, delivered with quiet, restrained passion by a man who had walked the walk, was now talking the talk, and somehow holding himself together.

They listened in silence till he shattered the pained decorum with a beautiful aside that granted the relief of an explosive laugh. If you think that must have been in poor taste, you haven’t yet heard it. I can spot a joke that has been deployed often enough for the timing to have been perfected. This was one, and he was right to use it here.

It was the only sound from the House till another MP intervened to deploy a parliamentary technical trick to bestow upon Tugendhat enough time to finish. And the next sound after that was the warm applause from both sides of the House when he did finish.

The applause was well deserved. It was an outstanding speech.

Dennis Prager commended

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In December 2016 The Herzl Institute held a conference at Glen Cove, NY, under the title of Jewish-Christian Alliance: Reclaiming and Rebuilding Conservatism.

One of the speakers was Dennis Prager who spoke on the 19th which happened auspiciously to be my 70th birthday. He of course is a mere stripling, being nearly two years younger.

Was this a very bald opening or did the producers of the video top’n’tail the footage to deliver an ultra clean start? I have no way of being certain, but I tend towards the latter because we do not see him even draw breath. Regardless, it does demonstrate the impact and power of bald openings, which I why I recommend them to all my trainees.

Prager is a proper speaker. I say that not only because he shoots from the hip but because he has a very rare quality to which I draw the attention of readers whenever we come across it (the last time was back in November with Antonin Scalia). He addresses a large audience in a hall, while sounding as if he is conducting a fireside chat. He speaks with his audience rather than to it. And the fireside chat feeling extends even into when he raises his voice for emphasis.

He also contrives to make everything sound new and spontaneous. I don’t mean to disparage by saying he “contrives”, but he has obviously said everything in this speech before – many times. Not necessarily in this precise structure, or even these precise words, but every path he takes here is very well trodden by him; yet it sounds new and spontaneous. One device he uses to achieve this is interrupting himself at a carefully timed tactical moment (the technical term is Anopodoton), as if a fresh angle on what he is saying has just occurred to him. I just described it as “carefully timed” because the self-interruption comes at the split-second when the rest of the interrupted sentence has become obvious and therefore does not need to be heard. When someone speaks as skilfully as this I find it a joy to witness. He is good.

And he needs to be good because he is fighting back against a formidable foe which has amassed enormous global power by pretending to be oppressed. Leftism is the richest, most potent, most influential, most tyrannical ‘victim’ the world has ever seen, but don’t take my word for it: listen to the speech. Even if you are a full card-carrying member of the choir, this sermon will teach you lots.

There is one jaw-dropping revelation that has quite a long lead-in, but the meat of it begins at 27:05. It is not directly relevant to his message, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

I commend this speech, every bit of it.

Larry Elder and stories

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In July 2019 – while Trump was still US President and before Covid sent the world mad – the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University held their 2019 Western Conservative Summit. Speaking at it was Larry Elder.

https://youtu.be/5AMV6R4N2Eg

When you have a radio show with a daily audience of 1.5 million, a paltry couple of thousand in a stadium is nothing. So why does he show such clear nerve symptoms – especially during his Hump? It is because the two media are completely different, and if you ever doubted it here is your evidence. For a couple of minutes he is rushing his words, stumbling and showing that he is far from comfortable. This man can speak, as we will discover, but he has had not enough need to learn nerve-control techniques in this specific medium. However many millions of ears are customarily on the other side of your radio microphone, public speaking remains a foreign country – and vice versa.

He noticeably relaxes as he begins to talk about how he got into radio. At the front of this story, which he has evidently told often, he gets a well-deserved laugh. Hump starts receding.

It’s not just the audience’s bestowing the laugh, though that is a powerful drug, it’s that he is telling a story. Stories grab audiences and relax them, and there are few things more effective at relaxing a speaker than a relaxed audience. You can clearly see his nerves melting away till he hits us at 2:00 with a beautiful punchline, and thereafter he’s on a roll, if still rather edgy and nervous.

At 9:30 he begins another story which takes the whole of the rest of his time. It concerns his difficult relationship with his father. It’s a good story with another excellent punchline with which he concludes the speech.

Larry Elder is articulate and coherent. His communication armoury is very well stocked, and I’m not surprised he has such a large audience for his radio programme; but if he plans much more speaking before live audiences he owes it to his own sanity to familiarise himself with the different techniques.

BLM and The Knee

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I read the other day that someone working for Sky had declared that those critical of ‘taking the knee’ were subhuman. There, I thought, was a prime example of idle hyperbole at best, and crass idiocy at worst. After all there are plenty of ways of displaying your opposition to racism, but taking the knee specifically pays homage to BLM, in the same way as a Hitler salute does to Nazism; and from what I have understood BLM is not the cosiest of clubs. Therefore I leapt at the chance to learn more when I saw that Hillsdale College had in October 2020 hosted a panel discussion entitled The BLM Movement and Civil Rights. I thought this would be a bit of a ‘blog holiday’ for me, not teaching just learning.

I was wrong. If you are a regular reader you will know my obsession with paperless speaking – no script, no notes – and the three panellists in order of speaking went from Paper Prisoner, via occasional glancer, to shooting from the hip, thus offering three stark examples of my case. Furthermore I couldn’t resist other interesting observations concerning their speaking style.

The panelists were Arthur Milikh, Wilfred Reilly, and Robert Woodson. The chairman is Michael Anton.

Of the four names above, Michael Anton is the only one whom I have denied a cyber link to learn about him. That is because he spends the first minute telling us all about himself. I briefly wonder whether he is inordinately nervous or a stammer sufferer who has almost conquered it. I decide upon the latter, which is admirable (it’s a difficult task). He conveys a lovely nature when introducing the others, reading the supplied resumé material but always raising his eyes to add his own personal twist. He’s good.

Arthur Milikh starts at 2:30, and we quickly learn two things. He really knows his stuff and will supply us with a wealth of deeply researched information, but we will have to work harder to absorb it because his audience engagement is lamentable. The reason for that is that damn paper that holds him prisoner. He can obviously communicate well through the written word but he has no idea how to convey it orally. At 9:15 he breaks out of the prison and addresses the audience freestyle, and for half a minute we see how he could be if he threw away his script. For me this is frustrating because I know how easily he’d do that with proper guidance, and how liberating he would find it.

That example is not ideal because it has to cope with transitions from reading to speaking and back again. We see it more clearly during Q&A when he fields a question that begins at 54:55, and thereafter all his speaking is perforce spontaneous and immeasurably better for it. 

For all that, this opening talk is hugely informative. There is a very revealing section that arrives around 13:40 on the theme of the appeasement of the corporate elites, and how BLM engineers it.  Milikh sets us up well for what is to follow.

Wilfred Reilly, talking about ‘Inner-city Crime and the Police’,begins at 19:42, and intrigues me. There is a nuance to his delivery that keeps me constantly wondering whether he is ever being altogether serious. His light touch seems to belie the seriousness of the topic, but he always stays just the right side of acceptability. His face at rest seems to be constantly slightly smiling, which may be just the way it was built by his Maker, though the preposterous beard – which somehow manages to be charming – is his own construction. He does ambush us with occasional flippant comments, excellently timed, and he sometimes protests that he doesn’t want to be glib but…

The glibness is interesting, because when it appears the humour comes direct from his knack of distilling things to a minimal use of words  – e.g. – “My basic one-sentence take on policing is that it’s a good idea”. 

Then at around 33:30 his delivery subtly hardens till at 36:28 the blast of war blows in his ears, and he imitates the action of the tiger. His sentences get shorter as do the words and finally he is serious – except he isn’t. He rounds off the entire speech – which, in passing, is full of some horrendous facts – with a flourish which draws a huge laugh from the audience.

This is one skilled communicator.

Robert Woodson begins at 38:45. He was on this blog only a handful of weeks ago with a full-length speech. Here as there he shoots the whole thing from the hip and is magnificent.  He is such a wise man!

He finishes at 50:30 and receives a standing ovation.  Even his fellow speakers stand.

There follow about twenty minutes of question and answer, and I found that equally riveting.

Anyone, be they footballers, sports commentators, world champion racing drivers, police officers, leaders of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, anyone who defends the taking of the knee – or, worse, attacks those who don’t – should watch this video and know the nature of the revolting movement to which they are paying abject homage. 

Roger Kimball liberated

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In February, 2012 Hillsdale College hosted a conference called The Liberal Arts and Education Today. It included a lecture from Roger Kimball.

Kimball was one of the first speakers I featured on this blog. I see it was in June 2013. I remember that, having read his book The Fortunes of Permanence I went looking for an example of his speaking. I now see that, for a title to that post I stole a phrase from Shakespeare’s As You Like It which was rather pretentious of me, though I can see why I did it. The phrase was full of wise saws and modern instances because Kimball was fond of quoting others. Is he still like that?

Yes he is; but I’ll come to that in a moment.

The introduction is ably provided by Madeleine Smith, who studies rhetoric. I mention that because she would not need to look up the word when I point out the parapraxis in her final sentence. It’s a Neil Armstrong moment.

Kimball begins at 1:30. He is reading a script.

More than almost anyone you ever heard of, Kimball is immersed in the written word. He reads it, writes, it edits it and publishes it. Little surprise then that his idea of speaking in public is to write an essay then stand and read it. Also, in fairness, there are far too many public speaking teachers who sincerely believe that to be a correct way to go about it. They are tragically misguided.

What he has beautifully written, and what he is reading, is fascinating and brilliantly learned. I would love to read it, but I am unhappy hearing and watching his doing it.

I feel I am watching a prisoner. The real Roger Kimball is somewhere in there, unable properly to reveal himself. It’s not that he reads without expression – quite the reverse: he reads superbly, but look at his hands. When they are not hidden behind his back they are permitted just fleetingly to rise, illustrate a shape and then disappear again. Or they grasp the sides of the lectern, and occasionally we partially see an extension of the fingers. All my instincts, my experience, and his fidgeting tell me that his personality and hands are dying to be really expressive, but they are incarcerated by the written word.

He still quotes other writers almost to excess – some might call it gnomic, but these aren’t cheap slogans. They are excellent observations that are relevant to what he is saying. This again would be lovely to read, but frustrating to hear because many are so profound that you want to pause and let them sink in before moving on. That is a luxury not available to a lecture audience.

His hidden personality almost escapes at 25:40 when he explosively utters the word “but”. For a short while thereafter his hands are almost liberated. Almost…

Do you want to see the Kimball personality set free? Then keep watching till the end of the lecture, and then stay with it. The questions begin at 38:30, and with his replies we see him speaking spontaneously. Within a couple of minutes his hands come up and begin gesturing eloquently and generously as his liberated personality takes flight.

By the way, this niche interest of mine is not the only reason to stay for the Q&A. Hillsdale students ask excellent questions and this section is really stimulating. His new spontaneity does cause a drop of perhaps 5% of the literary merit of what he utters, but the compensation is at least 40% increase in audience engagement, and that’s a pretty good trade.

So if Kimball were rash enough to seek my advice, how would I suggest he prepare a lecture? As an experiment I would tell him to leave his desk and go for a walk in the countryside; think up three really good probing questions concerning his topic and message; answer them aloud to the landscape and listen to himself. I think he’d like what he heard.

Darel E. Paul to be paused

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In early February, 2021, Darel Paul, Professor of Political Science at Williams College in Massachusetts, delivered to Hillsdale College a lecture entitled Political Correctness and Higher Education.

The introducer first introduces herself. She is Katie Ingham, a junior biochemistry major at Hillsdale. She speaks clearly and confidently and makes a good job of it. She might be mortified by her one small stumble, but I’m not: they happen. Nevertheless I have one little axe to grind. The introducer should never lead the applause for the introduced. The compulsion to do so is very strong; it feels as if you should; it even feels right while you are doing it; but it just looks wrong. It also sounds wrong because it is amplified by the microphone.

Professor Paul comes to the microphone at 1.21 speaks till 41:45 and then takes questions.

He reads a script. My tireless campaign for speakers to shoot from the hip has an etymological enemy here. The word “lecture” means “reading”.

The written word and the spoken word are different species. The language is different – subtly, but still noticeably. If you close your eyes you can still tell that he is reading. From the start it is clear that Paul’s theme is going to be very interesting, but I don’t need a talking head to make it so. This was written to be read and I’d prefer to read it. The talking head can try very hard to make the written word sound like the spoken word, thus blurring the boundaries between the two species, and learning to write speeches in spoken English can help, but Paul has written this in written English.

Another way to try to blur the boundaries is to read very expressively, and Paul does, but that still leaves another problem which is virtually insuperable. The written word and the spoken word are – or should be – differently structured. The spoken word should use much broader brushstrokes than this.

When reading you can stop to reflect on, and mentally debate, a passage. The desire to do so is a sign that the writing is challenging, provocative, and worthy of your time. You can’t do that while someone is speaking.

I can – and with this lecture often do – pause the video for the same purpose. You can do that also, but the students in the hall cannot. They may be supplied a transcript, but then that makes the lecture itself redundant.

Addressing a topic that demands fine brushstrokes, and delivering your address in a medium that demands broad brushstrokes, may seem an insoluble conundrum. It isn’t: there’s a solution, but it would take much more space and time than I have here.

Meanwhile, I commend this lecture as very thought-provoking and worthy to be regularly paused.

Abigail Shrier and rational fear

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At a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Franklin, Tennessee, in May 2021 – the same one addressed by Andy Ngo whom we examined on 4 June – there was a talk by Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage.

She has a Wikipedia page which, in its first paragraph, includes the following verbatim statement,

The book endorses the contentious concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria.

I have yet to read her book, but I’ve heard this speech twice. When you’ve heard her speech, you may like to decide for yourself whether that statement by Wikipedia is likely to be true. You may also understand why I chose to link her name to her own website instead of Wikipedia in order that she – rather than others – should tell us who she is.

The introduction is made by our old friend, Timothy Caspar, who makes the usual precise and concise job of it. He also throws in an appealing play on words at the end.

As stated earlier I’ve watched this twice, and you can add to that several dippings in and out at particular spots. It took only one viewing to absorb, marvel at, and get angered by, what she has to say; the rest was trying to analyse and understand her delivery.

She reads her speech, which for me is always a disappointment because spontaneous shooting from the hip is always more audience-friendly. As usual I wait eagerly for an ad lib ‘aside’ to see how much more fluent it is, but in this event it isn’t. On the contrary it is full of stumbles. That is very unusual. Intrigued, I look for a reason and eventually I think I find it. I’ll return to that, but meanwhile I claim that Shrier could easily be taught how to shoot everything from the hip, and would find it super-liberating, but would take a heap of persuading that it was a good idea.

She is very nervous, and these aren’t Hump nerves because they don’t recede after the first couple of minutes. She continues to display nerve symptoms throughout, making me itch to help her. For instance the periodic adjustment of microphones is a classic example. As a generality nerves are divided into rational and irrational, and rational ones are those that get dug in and stay for the duration, so what does she have to be rationally nervous about? The content is beautifully coherent.

She doesn’t seem to be upset by the audience’s laughter. It isn’t derision: it’s laughter of astonishment, of incredulity, even outrage, and there is plenty here to cause outrage.

Children’s futures being destroyed by organisations who exist to help them is an outrage. The fact of most transgender activists not themselves being transgender is an outrage, as it suggests their motivation to be sinister. The huge list of previously respectable institutions that have been infiltrated and hollowed out by activists is an outrage. The disgusting techniques used to stifle any debate is an outrage. And so on.

At 20:14 she tells us that trans-bigotry is “soaked in lies”. At 28:25 she addresses “Why?”, and the answer comes at 29:35. Chaos. Chaos is the point. It’s all tied in with a range of other disreputable and mendacious movements – BLM, Antifa, Critical Race Theory, Extinction Rebellion, etc. Chaos is the point. The more lies you can invent to swell the victim class, the more people you have to join the Revolution.

I can think of many other movements that are soaked in lies, but don’t get me started.

Shrier ends at 32:12, and as the applause hits her just look at her face! How often have you seen such smiles of profound relief? And lest there be any doubt listen to what she says at 33:05. She has become conditioned to be scared stiff of her audience. That’s where the rational nerves stemmed. Scott Atlas made a similar observation when he spoke to Hillsdale.

What sort of evil are we up against when daring to speak the truth is made so dangerous? It’s an evil that causes all-but-extinct organisations like Hillsdale College, that espouse free debate, to be of huge importance.