COLUMN: At last! Ready-made rhetoric

From Nathan Smith's, "Just Skip to the Crossword," Fall '97 From Nathan Smith's, "Just Skip to the Crossword," Fall '97 A month or two ago, I noticed a plethora of speeches in the news. Apparently we elected a president or something. Anyway, as I sat drooling and nodding over the umpteenth acceptance speech, inspiration suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. Despite the fact many of the speeches made by American potentates seem pitched to people with an average IQ of 50, every such delivery represents a late night of writing and editing for the speech writer. All that midnight oil -- or midnight halogen to be precise -- burned away just for the sake of making some presidential appointee seem eloquent for about 25 minutes. It's a crying shame. It occurred to me there must be some way, short of overthrowing the government, to save them the trouble. Most speeches are carefully stolen from past writers and subsequently rephrased so as to avoid accusations of plagiarism. So why not compose one perfectly generic piece of political rhetoric, to be used at any and all speech making events? Imagine the labor and money saved! Imagine the many talented and capable writers suddenly put out of work by this revolutionary labor-saving creation! Isn't that what America is all about? So, after a great deal of contemplation, I have carefully composed a speech which fits all occasions. Whether accepting a Nobel peace prize, addressing the Undergraduate Assembly, rallying the Christian Coalition, reviving the Esperanto movement, defending NAMBLA or condemning any given foreign country, the following speech is guaranteed to instill the proper combination of passion, anger, and blindness prerequisite to mobilizing a large, torch-bearing crowd. Best of all, I have decided not to protect it with copyrights so that all political figures might easily adopt it as their own. So, dear reader, get an eye full now. Before you know it, you will be hearing these exact words falling from the lips of Jack Kemp, Al Gore, Judith Rodin and Colin Powell alike. Fellow Americans. Lady Americans. I stand today with memories of yesterdays past and dreams of tomorrows of the future. Like most of you, I am troubled by what I see in the papers, on the news, on the information superhighway and on the naked streets of the city. It is high time we collectively set about answering the whole vexed question of what is going on. Are we ready to roll up our sleeves, take action and solve it or must the slow process of checks and balances grind on imperceptibly until finally we are back to square one? I ask you, are we or are we not Americans? Until we arrive at the hard answers to these rather soft questions, the bridge to the 20th century will not be able to support 18-wheelers. And in the race towards a new era, I for one am not going to sit by and watch the wholesale exclusion of truckers! If you feel as strongly as I, join me in the battle for our struggle. As citizens of this great nation we have the right -- no, the moral obligation -- to take up arms and defend the causes we barely understand and half-heartedly believe in! Besides, what else have you got to do with your time, now that it's no longer football season? Here is the place! Now is the time! You are the one! So don't just sit there; stand up! We have wallowed in complacency long enough. We have drunk to the dregs the bottle of apathy. The time has come to put a cork in it. Standing at the base of a seemingly insurmountable mountainous mound of mounting opposition, it can be all too easy to lose hope, to turn away, and take the easy way out. Well damn it, cast your fears aside. If we all pull together and reach deep down into the bowels of our guts, we shall there discover the intestinal fortitude necessary to take the hard way out. We've taken it so easy and nothing has been accomplished -- just imagine if we make it hard ourselves! Think how little we can achieve then! As we teeter on the cusp of a new millennium, the edge of the thousand year chasm, we must choose between tripping and tumbling into a future thrust upon us, or running full throttle, headlong into the unknown. Otherwise, the choice will be made for us. Nobody wants that. We must open wide our arms and embrace the spiny porcupine of potential. For the alternative -- carefully thinking about the issues and making prudent, rational decisions -- sounds to me like the end of American society as we know it. It's easy enough for me to stand up here and yell until I'm blue at the mouth. In fact I just did. But the real transformation is up to you, the average Joe Blow from Kokomo that composes the pith and vinegar of this society. You are the brainless brawn which can slap the sleeper hold on all who oppose us! So let's go out there and get 'em! KILL KILL KILL!!! (At this point the speaker should roll his or her eyes back, fall to the ground and twitch uncontrollably.) For optimal effectiveness, the speech should be complemented by the properly timed dabbing of the brow, dramatic pauses, and inspirational tears. Also, you should pay one person in the audience for standing up at just the right moment and saying, "hey, he's right!" Carefully delivered, this speech is guaranteed to rouse any audience to violent action, or your money back.