There are some teenagers who suffer from a syndrome and deliberately cut themselves. And there are some adults who get an odd pleasure from the eye-watering pain of plucking nose hairs. For the rest of us, there are the political conventions.
Why do we endure hours of this torture for four nights straight? We sit lump-like on sofas and witness a parade of speakers recite an encyclopedia of hackneyed political clichés as we wait for something unexpected to happen, which never does.
Wait, wait! If this is not quite enough masochistic pleasure for you, I have a suggestion: Watch the convention on PBS - completely free of commercial interruption!
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3 comments:
G.O.E.,
Any thoughts on the speeches so far at the DNC?
The parade of speakers last night, saying the same thing, over and over again, wearied me so that I was in bed and asleep before Hillary took the podium.
Ted Kennedy did pretty well, considering his condition. Fortunately he didn't mention anything about alternative energy, particularly wind power, seeing as how he has opposed construction of a floating wind farm off Cape Cod because it would be so unsightly and inconvenient for his rich sailing constituents.
Michelle Obama did well, although I kept feeling that she was constantly defending herself against conservative critics at the expense of voicing with passion her own - not just her husband's - political and social views.
I hope that Barack Obama does not waste the opportunity of addressing a crowd of 80,000 in introducing himself and explaining who he is. Good God, we know that by now. Tell us how we can be a better nation and a better people, and how he plans to help us achieve that. Dazzle us with rhetoric. Make us cry. Make us wake up in the morning with a conviction to go out and do something useful for the rest of the country.
It's nice to see someone who does not attach a negative connotation to "rhetoric."
Accept assonance acutely...
Enliven your speech, enliven your gesture, enliven you anaphora.
Use chiasmus without hesitation and without inhibition orate.
In your words... dazzle.
-ellipses
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