For an aggressively inarticulate generation

Check out this short slam poetry piece by Taylor Mali, given the typographical treatment by graphic artist Ronnie Bruce. This is the best 2:45 you'll spend today.

Mali's poem is about speaking with conviction, about not ending every sentence with an uptick, as a question, thereby making you sound unsure of everything you say. (Ya know?) Bruce takes that performance and gives us the actual words, the hidden question marks, the metadiscourse of "like" and "you know." He portrays words as both shy and bold. He makes them into trees and axes. He fits everything together. The poem was poignant and funny and clever to begin with, but Bruce's execution has made it into art.

I love words so much. I think this demonstrates the power they can have if you're competent and you speak with conviction. And with an increasingly "aggressively inarticulate generation" learning literacy via text message and Facebook chat, it's a nice reminder that though language may change, the power it has when used effectively is enduring.

White House Poetry Slam

This video apparently went viral back in the spring of 2009, but I missed it until my friend Franklin sent it to me this weekend. If you haven't heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda, here's a crash course: He's Puerto Rican, born in New York and in his early twenties he penned the music and lyrics for In the Heights. By age 28 he was playing the lead role in the Broadway production and winning Tony Awards and Grammy Awards and a bunch of other awards. He also helped Stephen Sondheim translate West Side Story into Spanish for a stage adaptation. Dude's brilliant, and his way of bending and mixing words is unreal. (He also really seems to "get" it: He taught English for awhile at his former high school in Washington Heights.)

I'm not terribly familiar with the slam poetry world, but sometimes a performance (or performer) just stops you in your tracks and demands that you listen. Miranda is one of those. And you have to love performance art that your high school U.S. History teacher would appreciate.

And look! We now have proof that Michelle Obama can snap. Of course, with those arms, we never really had any doubts.

RDMLKJD

We studied the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in one of my classes last quarter. I was familiar, of course, with his "I Had a Dream" speech, but I hadn't given much thought beyond that to the influence that Dr. King had on American rhetoric. He was an educated, incredibly thoughtful man, and the clarity with which he conveyed ideas through his sermons and speeches is breathtaking. He was a great writer, a great orator, an iconic preacher. His speeches are like music. Everything from the structure of his message to his use of alliteration, isocolon and especially rhythm serve to ensure his words continue to echo throughout our society. The truth that guided him continues to guide us.

We've come a long way since 1963. We still have a long way to go, but Dr. King's dream for a world that transcends what we used to think possible is alive and thriving in the minds of the people who will lead us further into the 21st century. I am hopeful, at least.

Strike a chord; don't pound the keys

In high school I started watching re-runs of The West Wing and dreaming about working in the White House. Specifically, I wanted to be either Press Secretary CJ Cregg or speechwriter Sam Seaborn or, most of all, head speechwriter Toby Ziegler. No one plays a tortured writer quite like Richard Schiff. (For the record, I would have also settled for dating Sam Seaborn. Rob Lowe in his prime, people.)

I'd never before seen speechwriting celebrated as an art apart from any other; this scene in particular is iconic in my mind:

In college I double-majored in journalism and political science, always thinking in the back of my mind of speechwriting but never actually attempting it. I spent a summer interning in the Washington, D.C. office of Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka, working on the Hill during the day and traipsing back to my West End sublet and devouring two or three West Wing episodes a night. Obviously reality didn't have much in common with my favorite TV show, but it was an incredible summer and I came away with a deeper appreciation for the complexities of working in government, particularly in communications.

Yesterday President Obama gave a speech in Tucson at the memorial for the victims of the shooting last Saturday. He's getting praise for it all over the place, and for good reason: It's a really, really phenomenal piece of writing. If you haven't seen it, read the transcript here or watch below:

The speech is emotional but balanced. It is precise and focused and does not take advantage of the situation. Most of all, it's sincere. This is the best speech of Obama's presidency thus far.

I'm a little embarrassed that I don't know more about Obama's speechwriters beyond the fact that a 29-year-old whippersnapper leads the team. Jon Favreau (no, not that one) started as a Kerry intern in 2004 and, six years later, is Obama's Director of Speechwriting. Talk about making me and everyone else under 30 look bad.

Besides an incident last summer wherein Favreau was photographed playing beer pong shirtless (the horror!), he's received mostly positive reviews under the current administration. Favreau was on the Time 100 list and also got some love from GQ and Vanity Fair.

(By the way, Favreau is not the youngest head speechwriter the White House has seen: That would be James Fallows, who wrote for Jimmy Carter in the '80s and has since established himself as a total badass with a pen, writing for the Atlantic Monthly and pumping out top-notch books like nobody's business.)

It's inspiring to see this caliber of writing coming from the very top of the government communication machine. It makes me want to be a part of politics again, a part of bringing eloquence to a national forum which is too often dominated by trying to out-scream the other guy. Of this speech, I think Toby Ziegler would be proud.