Nice piece from former Bush 43 speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson on “What the Teleprompter Teaches“:
…it is a mistake to argue that the uncrafted is somehow more authentic. Those writers and commentators who prefer the unscripted, who use “rhetoric” as an epithet, who see the teleprompter as a linguistic push-up bra, do not [...]
March 25, 2009 – 11:03 am
Not an especially scintillating presidential press conference last night, but few are. Hopefully, some teenagers planning to tune in to American Idol were unwittingly served up a lesson in American democracy instead.
Two quick thoughts on a couple of hobby horses.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported on his blog (”George’s Bottom Line”): “The president had a new single [...]
As Vinca mentioned below, Robert Schlesinger offered his opinion about President Obama’s use of the teleprompter – and given Schlesinger’s thorough knowledge of White House speech history, his opinion should be given weight. But I don’t think he’s entirely right.
The crux of Schlesinger’s argument is that there’s no difference between delivering a speech using prepared [...]
Politico’s Carol Lee writes about President Obama’s ubiquitous teleprompter (which I’ve mentioned a couple times before). Calling it the president’s ”safety net,” Lee writes:
Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual – not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events large and [...]
February 9, 2009 – 8:19 pm
I tuned into President Obama’s East Room statement/press conference this evening mainly to see if he’d use the teleprompter. He did use it during the first segment of his remarks and I think it hurt him.
The prompter, as I noted earlier, is designed to help the speaker look at his audience more naturally. In a large setting, [...]
February 9, 2009 – 12:40 pm
On Friday I noticed that President Obama used a teleprompter when delivering his remarks on the economy in the East Room. I thought it was unusual because the East Room is a pretty intimate venue. I usually associate the teleprompter with bigger crowds and bigger spaces.
I can’t think of a time when President Bush used [...]
