When Evan Sayet was the introducer in a recent posting examining a speech by Geert Wilders, I observed that it had been a couple of years since a speech of Sayet’s had been on this blog and perhaps it was time for another. Now is that time.

Here he is at The Heritage Foundation, in 2013, talking about his book KinderGarden of Eden.

He is introduced by someone called John whose surname I have been unable to find. The introduction, including all the customary housekeeping details like urging the audience to switch off their cellphones, takes a smidgeon less than three and a half minutes. For my purposes the most interesting snippet is the very first sentence which reveals that Evan Sayet writes his own introduction. That is what I urge my trainees to do.

The speech is about ten minutes long and, at 13:10 he throws it out to questions.

At the very end of his video, after the last of the questions, Sayet boasts that there was no TelePrompter. I am surprised – not that he shoots from the hip, which is what all proper speakers do – but because when he first starts speaking, after fielding a quick question from the floor, his eyes fix upon a spot just below the camera.

Eyes intent upon transmitting look slightly different from eyes intent upon receiving, and my impression in those first few seconds was that they were the latter. I assumed that this prompting was to carry him past The Hump (yes, even speakers as experienced and adept as this have a Hump). I felt I was right when, around a minute later, he got on a roll, his eyes stopped staring at that spot, and never returned. There was never another moment in this speech when he looked to me to be prompted.

He speaks very well, which is hardly surprising when you consider how much he speaks. In fact his voice is here suffering from over-use, and he could use some help in this respect. For my ear, coming from the other side of the Atlantic, the speed with which he speaks causes some loss of comprehension here and there, but this could be a cunning device to persuade me to buy the book. (It worked.)

I am not too transatlantic to pick up, at 12:12, the significance of the words, “You didn’t build that.” It is a notorious Obama quote.

But another transatlantic difficulty I do have is in following his sports analogies. He’s an American addressing other Americans, while I am a foreign eavesdropper, so it’s hardly his fault. But it does highlight something about parallels like this. Sports analogies are brilliantly effective so long as your audience knows what the hell you’re talking about.

The speech, and therefore presumably the book that I look forward to receiving, concerns how and why today’s media promotes messages that are not just untrue, but the precise opposite of the truth. The reasoning is very interesting, and I look forward to absorbing it at my own pace. It’s important because, as he says …

Journalism is the first draft of history.