The unwritten rule among speechwriters is that we are heard, but rarely heard from.

But what about when they’re heard from, without actually ever being heard.  Such is the strange case of Jacob Rigg, who has been making a name for himself in the UK claiming to be an Obama speechwriter.

And give him credit for trying to monetize the credential, because it appears that now he’s selling tickets for the privilege of hearing him speak.

Here’s the problem: nobody inside the White House seems to have ever heard of the guy, never mind taken his input on a speech.

This happens more than you might think.  I make no claim to knowing Jacob’s motivation, but I can’t tell you how many times during my time as a White House speechwriter, somebody would come up to me and say, do you know so-and-so — he’s a speechwriter in the White House?  And I’d have no idea who they were talking about.

In some cases, someone was asked to submit a few ideas for a speech, and felt that their contribution earned them the title.

In other cases, it’s just a little bit of deliberate obfuscation.  Someone who is a speechwriter at a cabinet agency will call themselves an administration speechwriter.

Sometimes a speechwriter for the Vice President, wanting to be associated with the President, will call him or herself a White House Speechwriter.  (I’m sure I was guilty of this, back in my dating days.)

But what to make of somebody who, as far as anybody can tell, simply seeks to bask in the reflected glow of President Obama’s rhetoric? 

Sam Rosenman, who was a speechwriter for FDR, once described the job as “the grind and the glamor.”  It seems that this guy wants the latter without the former.

I guess rhetorical victory really does have 1,000 fathers.  Even if some of them are adopted.