While watching Obama’s excellent address to the joint session of congress, I wondered who wrote his terrific speech.
It’s Jon Favreau, called “Favs” by his friends, a 27 year old who plays video games to relax and likes to hang out at Starbucks or another coffee shop to write the brilliant speeches for our brilliant President Obama.
Jon Favreau is called Obama’s “Mind Reader”. I say he’s much more than that. How about the feeling of being a rhetorical force changing the world with words!! Still, writing the words which change the world takes work.
He is too busy to read much. “I’m embarrassed to say that since college” — Favreau graduated from Holy Cross in 2003 — “I’ve been so busy speechwriting for Kerry and then Barack that I haven’t been reading all the good literary stuff I used to read back in the day.” As for speechcraft, while he says the speeches of Bobby Kennedy are his favorites, he also says Peggy Noonan is his all-time favorite speechwriter. He cites Ronald Reagan’s Pointe du Hoc speech marking the fortieth anniversary of D-day as his favorite of hers, and in Noonan’s sugary epic, you can hear the faint echo of Barack Obama talking about his grandfather.
Jindal’s Republican response sounded so flat afterwords. He sounds more like a used car salesman than a leader of the free world. Ahh, Republicans, counting on people’s continued ignorance.
I love how both ABC and our local PBS station cut him off.
Recent Comments