Observations on Obama’s Berlin speech
Posted July 24th, 2008 at 1:48 PM by Jon HamSeveral things:
1. The two biggest applause lines were about ending the war in Iraq and cutting the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere.
2. It was nice that he spent so much time explaining what the Berlin Airlift was. I bet a lot of those people didn’t know all that.
3. If you want to make eye contact with Barack Obama don’t stand in the center of the audience. Because he’s so dependent on the TelePrompters, he never, and I mean never, looks straight ahead.
4. He mispronounced several words badly (he said “turban” instead of “German” at one point, he said “couracheous” instead of “courageous,” and he began the word “responsibility” by saying “responsimil…” and never ended the word or corrected it. I guess he figured German speakers would never notice. If McCain were to do this it would be seen as proof of the onset of senility.
5. He spoke a lot about NATO and the strategies, resolve and partnerships that ended the Cold War, never acknowledging that he himself and most of those in his party opposed those policies for decades.
6. Give him credit for being smart enough not to try to speak any German. As much trouble as he had with English (see No. 4 above), this is probably a good thing.
July 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
[...] on Obama’s Berlin speech smijer wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHe mispronounced several words badly [...]
July 24th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Too bad someone couldn’t sneak the phonetic “Ish bin ine shisekopf” onto the TelePrompter.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
[...] Jon Ham has the definitive observations on the Berlin speech. [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am
The Morning Scramble, part 1 – 7/25/2008…
This is going to be extra-filling today after yesterday’s light fare, so I’m going with a 2-parter. I hereby dedicate the first-half song to Uncle Jimbo and his search for a new avatar for Blackfive’s newest contributor,……
July 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I think this is my favorite line in the speech:
As a writer, I pay careful attention to word choice. Effective writing — speech-writing included — requires finding the most effective way of communicating an idea. Here Obama’s speech-writer has selected “globalized world” as the most effective phrase.
What did he discard, I wonder? “Worldly Earth?” “Planetary world”? “Globalized planet”? “Earthly planet”? “Planetized Earth”?
I bet he lingered a long time over “Big blue marble-y world” before punting and going with his final choice.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:45 am
[...] in what may be the first blog post that ever pointed out the man’s reliance on the device, I commented on his Berlin speech: If you want to make eye contact with Barack Obama don’t stand in the center of the audience. [...]