Long story short: A 1992 speech by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating is being included in Australia’s National Archives’ “Sound of Australia” list.
But Don Watson, who wrote the Redfern Park speech—about reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous people—sez the speech itself wasn’t a work of genius. “This was something I had written basically overnight,” he said.
What made the speech matter was Keating’s willingess to give the speech. “There was only one politician who had the courage and conviction to deliver it and that was Paul.”
With the speech’s authorship long established, that seems to me to be just about the right thing for the speechwriter to say.
But Keating was not amused, finding “condescension” in Watson’s remarks and claiming that “The sentiments of the speech, that is, the core of its authority and authorship, were mine.”
And besides, Keating added, Watson shouldn’t be going around blabbing. Doing so violates what he called “the contract of participating in the endeavor and the power in return for anonymity.”
Arguing about who wrote what line in a classic speech, two decades on?
Toward the end of a recent speech, London Mayor Boris Johnson came right out and said it. Said what? Said the text will be posted online—and told his audience what use to make of it:
Now Ladies and Gentlemen, I make no apology for saying that this speech will be on our website and you can find the address on your menu. I did this because we hope that my message about co-operation is one you will take back to your chanceries. A message that international economic co-operation is critical if we are to move into economic recovery and stability, both swiftly and surely.
If a former presidential speechwriter is going to take hard-line positions and go toe-to-toe with Jon Stewart, why can’t he look more like Clint Eastwood, and less like Otto Pilot, from the movie Airplane?And why can’t he have a sense of humor?
On a freelance basis, a VSOTD correspondent has been writing speeches and other materials at a university. Now she’s coming on board full time, and they’re asking her to come up with the job title.
She asks me—and I ask you: “What’s a good-sounding title for someone who provides editorial assistance (including speeches) to the chief executive. Not too pompous? I don’t want to be Speechwriter—too narrow. Nor editor, writer, editorial assistant.”
“Special Assistant” is the conventional title for this, but alas “I hate that—too dry.”
The speechwriting-salient point from an article in the Guardian, about the new documentary, By the People, about the Obama presidential campaign:
One confessional in particular stands out for its comedy and its tragedy. The film’s first interview with Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau seats him, theatrically, near a photo of Ted Sorensen, John Kennedy’s wordsmith, as he waxes on about how speeches should aim to echo Camelot. But as the campaign wears on, the romance wears thin. By June – after the Iowa caucuses, Super Tuesday, superdelegates and the 3am phone call ad – Favreau summarises what is now just one of many election-night speeches he’s written for the candidate: “We won, thank you other candidates, Hillary you’re great, McCain, blah blah blah. Hope, change. You know.”
“Harper’s new speechwriter is a gay rights opponent,” exclaims the story on the online Canadian publication X: Where Queers Conspire, with plenty of back-up from strident anti-gay quotes from former Calgary Herald columnist Nigel Hannaford.
The question isn’t, as a gay activist claims in the piece, whether Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper agrees with Hannaford’s views. It’s why a nation’s statesman and an elected representative of all its citizens would hire a speechwriter so thoroughly on the record with hostile views toward any one part of the populace.
I’m left taking one of two messages from Harper’s decision to hire Hannaford. Either Harper actually is sending a message, “Harper to gays: Drop dead.” Or Hannaford is so good and so valuable a communications aide that Harper doesn’t mind provoking gays with the controversial hire.
The proof’ll be in the writing. We’ll be watching.
This week’s Vital Speeches podcast is just, veteran speechwriter Alex Tsigdinos telling a harrowing “Tale from the Front” from earlier in his career.
VSOTD.com invites readers who have similar tales to tell—or any other audio essays they think their fellow speechwriter would enjoy—to submit a script to me, at vseditor@mcmurry.com.
If I choose to run it as a podcast, I’ll give you easy dial-in recording instructions and you’ll be broadcasting to your peers in a snap.
Accustomed to the disconnectedness between the profound public moment and backstage banality, speechwriters will find this as familiar as surreal. It’s raw video of the scene before President Nixon’s televised resignation address on Aug. 8, 1974. (Found on my endless fishing expedition for contemporary and historical speeches for Vital Speeches‘ YouTube site.)
