Warning: Politics ahead – Specious Speeches

Posted today on Facebook by Kathleen Trelease Blackwood, one of my teachers from high school:

Today’s Inaugural speech was impressive and I would love to meet the speechwriter. But, it isn’t Obama. I’ve listened closely to most of what he has had to say, in debates five years ago, in campaign speeches, in press conferences, etc. Today’s speech was not his syntax, his phrasing, his style – this was far beyond the average intellectual capability he has demonstrated for the past five years. He only gets credit for finding a good speechwriter, so that he could read the teleprompter. Trust me – an English teacher almost always knows when a student (or President) is trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own.

I have to be honest: I didn’t have the stomach to watch what I knew would be some nice platitudes, a lot of well-spoken lies, charming false promises, unabashed inflated sense of self that all ultimately turn into things I have no control over.

Thanks for confirming that while the words were impressive, they were as disingenuous as the man who spoke them.