The Tea Party's response to President Obama's State of the Union address was an example of both rhetorical failures and a few successes. The Bachmann speech was undermined by the off-center teleprompter that appeared to make the Minnesota Representative look to the left of the camera. This just shows how the smallest of missteps can ruin any speech. Michele Bachmann used visual evidence to bolster the idea that government spending has exploded. However, the visuals got rather tacky when the pictures of the Constitution and the Capitol showed up in the background. Bachmann’s speech was rather well written and well spoken, but the poor quality of the surroundings really hurt what she was trying to say. Tea Partiers rallied around Bachmann’s claims and her graphs did help her argument, but I, for one, could not get over Bachmann’s off-line look. Bachmann, who has proclaimed on the record to never use Teleprompters, clearly was reading her speech from the Teleprompter. The Daily Show poked fun at Bachmann with Olivia Munn struggling to find the camera in her “correspondent rebuttal” of Jon Stewart’s jokes about the State of the Union beginning at 1:24 in this video. Also, there were the problems with some of the visuals. The pictures of the Capitol and the Constitution really do not add to her message and turns off many viewers. The Tea Partiers rally around the view of the rah-rah patriotic, fundamental Consitutionalism. However, many Americans are not fans of what many people view as blatant propoganda. Bachmann missed an opportunity to appeal to Americans beyond the Tea Party, without even having all that many speaking problems, proving that there is more to rhetoric that just speech. Visuals and presence can be just as important to any speech.
That Jon Stewart parody was hilarious. In theater, when there is one thing on the stage that's not supposed to be there (like a dropped hat), and the audience focuses on it, it's called a red herring. That is what I feel like the eye-contact was. I'm really curious to see how long the tea party's momentum will last.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I was LAUGHING SO HARD at Jon Stewart's show two nights ago. He's a genius.
ReplyDeleteYou brought up a great point about patriotism. To the "typical" GOP member I wouldn't be considered patriotic. I feel like now, patriotism is an act, not a genuine faith in our country. Symbols that used to be important like the Constitution or the capitol now have little to no real meaning.
I feel like what the GOP party lacks is reinventing their ideas with more powerful words and images even if their ideas are powerful. Your post is a great example of that.
It is funny how little, unnoticed things like this can completely override anything the speaker had to say. While I also agree that cliche ultra-patriotic displays such as this are sort of meaningless and often turn viewers off, I think that this is somewhat characteristic of how the Tea Party goes about most of its politics. I don't know how much momentum the party really has even now, but I can't imagine it lasting more than a year or two. A "party" with no real platforms other than railing against the "establishment" can't help but fail in the hub of compromise that is Washington D.C.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a link to the actual speech would've been nice, just for future blog posts.
Interesting post! The camera/teleprompter problem here strikes me as a fascinating example of how we tend to lose interest in actually processing messages we feel we've heard before. One communication theory that discusses this is the Elaboration Likelihood Model:
ReplyDeletehttp://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/672%20outline-ELM.htm