Nobel Prize for Economics (& Atkinson Award for Imagery): Joseph Stiglitz

Today's Independent has an interesting interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in which he is described as having 'the veteran teacher's ability to put the intellectually inferior at their ease'.

Unlike the economics teachers of my undergraduate days (who only inspired me to drop the subject in favour of sociology), Stiglitz has quite a way with words that I've blogged about before.

How good an economist he is, I have no idea, but this isn't the first time that I've been impressed by the ease and frequency with which he uses imagery to make his points intelligible to wider audiences.

Here are some samples from the article in today's Independent, followed by video clips of him from televised interviews over the past year or so.

Garbage disposal service
The US government, Stiglitz says, was reduced to the role of garbage disposal service for the banks' toxic assets, bad loans and worthless securities they themselves had created.

Safety net
The safety net should focus on protecting individuals; but the safety net was extended to corporations, in the belief that the consequences of not doing so would be too horrific. Once extended, it will be difficult to withdraw.

Blackmail
The world-weary response of the media and the politicians, after the immediate horrors have passed – to give in to the financial sector's blackmail.

A gun to our heads
He reminds us that the banks have effectively tried to keep "a gun to our heads", that says that if we don't keep them going on their terms then they will "kill the economy".

The market is a crazy man
"You're dealing with a crazy man, you're asking what I can do to placate a crazy man: Having got what he wants he will still kill you."

The Great American Robbery
His sheer indignation at what he calls "the Great American Robbery" – that multi-trillion dollar bailout for the banks sanctioned by the Bush and Obama administrations – is as awesome as the sums involved, and as understandable.

Calm sea of financial stability
According to Stiglitz, far from free markets delivering a calm ocean of financial stability, they have delivered us a financial crisis, on average, every year or two.

Stiglitz on 'tail-spins', 'diseases' and 'party-poopers':


(If you're interested in how effectively imagery can be used in speeches and presentations, see Chapter 7 of Lend Me Your Ears: 'Painting Pictures with words: the use of imagery and anecdotes', pp. 215-240).
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Televised debates about televised debates really would be worth watching!

It was, I suppose, only to be expected that debates about the format and rules for the televised pre-election leaders' debates would hot up as the election draws nigh - no matter how pointless and unenforceable such rules are almost certain to be.

The Guardian is warning that the party leaders' election debates are in danger of 'being negotiated to death', and today's Times is reporting that Brown is calling in 'the Obama team for help with television debate'.

As readers of this blog will know, I'm fully expecting the 'debates' to be as boring as all the other interviews the media will be inflicting on us during the election.

But all this talk about the debates about the debates has given me an idea:

Why don't the BBC, ITN and Sky insist that all further negotiations with the main political parties about the rules and formats for the debates must be conducted in front of the cameras?

That would surely make for such riveting viewing that it wouldn't matter very much whether or not the actual 'debates' ever get to take place at all.

RELATED POSTS:


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'New Statesman' on political speeches & speechwriting


An interesting article by Sophie Elmhirst on political speeches and speech writing has just appeared in the New Statesman magazine.

I can't complain about her quotes from me being inaccurate, even if some of them do make me sound like a grumpy old man recycling themes that will be all too familiar to regular followers of this blog.

However, given my extraordinary generosity in allowing her to spend half a day at one of my courses (without charge) I confess to being disappointed that none of my books got a mention.

So, by way of reciprocity, I've provided the above link so that you can read the article without actually having to buy a copy of the magazine!
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Translation news: Выступать легко: Все, что вам нужно знать о речах и презентациях

I've just heard today that the Russian translation of Lend Me Your Ears will be published on 19 February 2010.

If you can read Russian, you can check for further details of the publishers, availability, etc. HERE & HERE, and I'll be posting more details as and when I have them.

Meanwhile:

Two slight worries
  1. The name of the originating Russian publishing house is 'Nofun Publishing', which, at least to English ears, doesn't sound too promising.
  2. The title of the book, according to Google's automated literal translation, is To come out easily (with the same sub-title as the English version). Even though this might take it into new and unexpected markets, I'm rather hoping that the version given to me by the books translator - Speaking in Public is Easy is nearer the mark.
P.S.
  1. News from my brother, who speaks Russian, about the mysterious title: "vistupat is a compound verb - 'vi' (= 'outwards') + 'stupat' (= 'move') - and it can mean 'walk out' but more usually 'speak out', 'make a speech'. "
  2. 250 Roubles = £5.24 (i.e. about half the price it is in the UK!).

Макс Аткинсон
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Ronald Reagan's master class on how to cope when the teleprompter lets you down

May 08, 1985

President Left Speechless by TelePrompTer

STRASBOURG, France — President Reagan, often spoken of as "the great communicator," was noticeably at a loss for words when his TelePrompTer broke down during his major speech before the European Parliament today.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan's TelePrompTer cut out three times, causing the President to lose his place.


I don't agree with this 25 year old headline from the Los Angeles Times, as I saw it as a master class on how to recover from the worst thing that can happen when a speaker is using a teleprompter.

As Reagan started to speak, I'd just pressed the 'record' button on my Sony Betamax (!), little expecting the potential disaster awaiting him about half a minute into the speech.

All went well until the French "swarmed on to the boulevards of Paris, rallied under the Arc de Triomphe and sang the Marseilleise...." at which point disaster struck.

But it only took three seconds for the 'great communicator' to see the problem and come up with a solution: an unscripted ad lib - "In the .." Five more seconds and he completes it with "they were out there in the open and free air" - continuing to look at his audience until looking down and continuing from the lectern as if nothing had happened.


TWO PRACTICAL TIPS FROM THE MAESTRO

Quick though his recovery was, it lasted long enough for me to wory about two things before he carried on.
  1. Was there a hard copy of the script on the lectern?
  2. Was he wearing the right contact lenses to be able to read it without glasses?
The answer to both was "yes" - and the the only difference made by his having to read from the lectern was that it slowed him up so that the speech lasted about five minutes longer than had originally been scheduled.
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400th post: Oratory and the Sound of Music

As this is the 400th post since the blog began, I wanted to post something a bit special. And there is, I believe, something very special about the two short clips I've chosen to mark the occasion.

For one thing, they're the only ones I've ever seen in which musical backing is added to excerpts from political speeches.

For another, they show that there was a time, a little more than 20 years ago, when our two biggest political parties still believed that making speeches at rallies not only had an important part to play in election campaigns, but also that they make for effective television - otherwise, why else would they have included excerpts from their leaders' speeches in their own party election broadcasts?

I was struck at the time (and still am) by how effectively the music works to lift the mood of what the speakers are saying - and you can see what you think by watching these two clips.

Both were broadcast within a week or two of each other during the 1987 general election.

1. KINNOCK - THE MOVIE

The first comes from the PEB directed by Hugh Hudson, the successful advertising film-maker who'd graduated to become a feature film-director who'd been nominated for an Oscar for Chariots of Fire a few years earlier.

American readers might also be interested to know that this particular segment from Neil Kinnock's speech was the climax of the sequence that was later lifted, more or less verbatim (and with disastrous consequences), by US Vice President Joe Biden during his failed bid for the Democratic nomination in 1988.

Notice how the theme from Brahms's first symphony comes in just as Kinnock concludes with"it was because there was no platform upon which they could stand" - and then builds as the camera pans along the Labur logo through the standing ovation and freezes on a final victory salute to the applauding audience as the music ends.


2. THATCHER RESPONDS

Such was the impact of the film that Labour decided to replay it in another of their allotted PEB slots later in the campaign. And, even though the Conservatives were well ahead in the polls, Hudson's film rattled them at least enough to borrow this particular idea for one of their own PEB slots.

This time the music comes from Holst's Jupiter - the well-known tune of the patriotic hymn "I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above ..." - but what follows suggests that imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

As in the Kinnock movie, the sequence builds through shots of the standing ovation and fades as the film freezes into a still of Mr and Mrs Thatcher smiling and looking towards her applauding supporters.


3. THE UK GENERAL ELECTION 2010?

The first time I used these clips was in a paper that John Heritage and I presented on the 'Snakes and Ladders theory of political communication' at a conference held at Essex University after the 1987 general election (the gist of which was that speeches are 'ladders' that bring positive news and interviews are 'snakes' that only bring bad news - for more on which, see HERE).

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the next UK general election looks like being the most 'speechless' one in history (HERE).

A few months ago, in The Lost Art of Oratory' by a BBC executive who helped to lose it in the first place, I suggested that this was partly the fault of the British media.

But why our politicians have gone along with the idea that speeches somehow don't work on television (and that endless interviews actually do them some good) continues to baffle me - especially when we (and that presumably includes any of our politicians and media with as much as half a brain) have just seen a brilliant orator come from nowhere to the White House, aided and abetted by televised speeches

Thatcher and Kinnock both excelled at making powerful speeches at rallies that came across as lively events - from which both the passion of the leaders and the enthusiasm of their audiences were communicated way beyond the conference halls into our living rooms.

It's a liveliness that I fear we may never see again - unless or until one of our political parties bites the bullet and forces the camera crews out of the television studios and on to the stump.

Given the relative speaking skills of the current leaders, David Cameron would surely have most to gain from emulating rallies of the Thatcher-Kinnock era.

But I don't suppose he will - which means that my own audiences will have to carry on having to watch increasingly ancient clips from general elections that more and more of them are too young to remember.

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Claptrap the movie (revisited)

Last September, to mark the 25th anniversary of the televising of Claptrap, I began a series of posts on how the film came to be made. The first of these featured some embedded clips of the YouTube version of the film.

However, YouTube rules meant that it had to be posted in four separate episodes and, at the time, I only had access to a rather poor quality version of the movie. Since then, I've unearthed a rather better quality video, and you can now watch the uninterrupted 27 minutes here:

LINKS TO OTHER POSTS IN THE CLAPTRAP SAGA:
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