\nThere is no gainsaying King’s natural gifts. But King’s speech didn’t just bubble forth from some innate Negro musicality. Rather, it demonstrates a savvy understanding of how memorable oratory works, knowledge available even to stutterers and malapropists. <\/p>\n
What lifts King’s performance from merely brilliant to unforgettable is his use of what we might call resonance. The best speeches are almost never self-contained, wholly original works. They depend for their power on the ability to strike chords that already exist within us. Both Ronald Reagan’s 1974 "City on a Hill" speech and Mario Cuomo’s 1984 "A Tale of Two Cities" allude directly to John Winthrop’s 1630 speech aboard the Arbella. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama quoted the Declaration of Independence, and he called people to "a belief in things not seen," which references Hebrews 11: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, he quoted Isaiah and alluded to the angel Gabriel. And so forth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s a really fine essay on King’s famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963 (44 years ago this August!). It’s short so hit the link and read the whole thing. The Power of Dreams OpinionJournal – Taste There is no gainsaying King’s natural gifts. But King’s speech didn’t just bubble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9504,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions\/9504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}