Zell

It was so nice of Zell to give a real stem-winder just when I needed to explain to my students what a stemwinder was.

You don't see them anymore. Actually, you do see them but they are usually not successful. One reason is that you see them given by Northerners. Northerners giving stemwinders make a number of mistakes, usually from inexperience. Take Dean. Dean was in the midst of giving a perfectly respectable stemwinder. You find when you are standing in front of a group of people giving a list of items that each just naturally has to be bigger, louder, better than the last. You sense this naturally when you are in front of a crowd giving the speech. But Dean had not started out with an ending in mind. So when he got through the end of his list of states he found himself with nothing to say but "Aheeeeee..." Not Presidential. You just know that Zell knew exactly where he was going to end when he began. He started with "Spitballs?!!" and wrote himself a list that would get him there.

As fun as the speech was, you can see why they have gone out of style. I found myself a little worried as the speech went on. When I found myself wondering silently if I could entirely agree with one of Zell's statements I suddenly had a vision of Zell stopping in the middle of his rotation and fixing his eyes on me, like he could sense I was less than %100, reaching out and grabbing me by the neck, "I said unfit, professor boy!"

I have to say, I can't stand this "well, everyone is right," "can't we all just get along?" drivel. For one thing it is no good having Michael Moore out there with a movie claiming that Bush was actually conspiring with the Bin Laden family and being feted at the Democratic convention and then turn around and start whinning about negative campaigning. But even leaving aside the who started it issue, what is so bad about being negative? If you actually believe Bush is bringing the country into international disrepute why wouldn't you be angry?

Everything is being made for what we think are dictates of television. Don't be hot, its a cool medium. Don't talk for more than 30 minutes--people have short attention spans. I thought that Juliani's speech was just the length it needed to be, as long as he is making good arguments it stays interesting. Interest is a function of content, not length. And why are we ashamed of anger? Was not our Lord angry when he saw injustice? What is it with us, that we are willing to talk about sex as if it were a spectator sport but are ashamed of getting good and ticked off?

There is something about the South that lets them get away with this. When Barry Goldwater gave a good stem-winder it scared people, made him look mentally unbalanced. For some reason Southerners are able to be angry in public and still look dignified.

By the way, on this subject, I was told once by a Shakespeare teacher that he loved teaching Shakespeare to Southerners. It seems that they naturally are able to read the verse. Just by reading it in thier own accent they lengthen the vowels when they should (on the short words) and come up in thier intonation at the end of a line as is required. people from the mountains of West Virginia read it and the rhymes even work. It kind of makes sense. Shakespeare is just a series of stemwinders leading to challenges to duels--pretty much a desrcription of Zell's weekend.