The Gaming Den

Ann Romney really should not be allowed to speak to the press. Because she is terrible.

Anyway. I'm an extemporaneous speaker. I can (and sometimes will) talk at length in a fairly coherent matter without preparation; the few times I needed to make presentations in school or university I rarely needed more than a couple minutes to figure out the gist of what I was going to say, and the only time I used notecards was when I needed to refer to specific figures or statistics I didn't memorize. I never read a prepared speech.

But I understand people that have trouble speaking. I've written speeches, helped out and critiqued people that needed to give presentations, and when I gave people suggestions I said "Yes, use notes. Don't be afraid to refer to your note cards. Just don't read it off your notecards. Maintain contact with the audience." and so on and so forth. I perfectly dig how some people need to rely on prepared materials. I do not see the teleprompter as a Bad Thing; it's a tool, nothing else.

And, let us put it quiet frankly, many people are shit speakers without it.

The Republicans have lambasted Obama for using a teleprompter, but the President is at least lucid, coherent, intelligent, and intelligible when giving a speech - a long way away from President George W. Bush, whose errors in speaking were very, very many and completely fucking embarassing. So why the hate for the teleprompter? He is your friend! He wants to help you! READ THE TELEPROMPTER, BITCHES!

Or do it like me:
don't do speeches if you are not held at gun point.

in school i usually got a's and the occassional b for the written part of essays and then an f for refusing to do the speech thing.

fucking hate having to stand in front of people and talk about stuff . . .
makes me uncomfortable as hell to the point of nervous breakdown x.x

Ancient History wrote:
The Republicans have lambasted Obama for using a teleprompter, but the President is at least lucid, coherent, intelligent, and intelligible when giving a speech - a long way away from President George W. Bush, whose errors in speaking were very, very many and completely fucking embarassing. So why the hate for the teleprompter? He is your friend! He wants to help you! READ THE TELEPROMPTER, BITCHES!

Remember when Obama got to take questions and answers from the Republicans in one of their meetings, and they stipulated he couldn't use a teleprompter? And Team Obama asked for it to be televised live? And then they got their verbal asses handed to them because turns out he is still a coherent speaker?

Good times.

I call bullshit.

• Mitt Romney was previously Governor of a major Eastern State
• Mitt Romney has campaigned in two national presidential primaries, both of which were contentious
• Mitt Romney is a politician with a stable family and zero domestic scandals
• Mitt Romney is a politican within a party that extols "family values"
• Mitt Romney is a member of a religions sect which highly emphasizes family
• Mitt Romney has used his family as a selling point multiple times in his political career.
• Ann Romney has never had paid employment outside the home - her entire job has been supporting her husband and family
• Ann Romney supports her husband in his political career.

So there's no fucking way that she's never given a speech using a teleprompter before and this is being floated merely to manage expectations for her. My uninformed guess is that she's not co-coordinating enough with the GOP talking points machine and they're worried about that.

Stahlseele wrote:Or do it like me:
don't do speeches if you are not held at gun point.

in school i usually got a's and the occassional b for the written part of essays and then an f for refusing to do the speech thing.

fucking hate having to stand in front of people and talk about stuff . . .
makes me uncomfortable as hell to the point of nervous breakdown x.x

I find DMing is good practice for public speaking. Putting on a funny voice and talking at length in front of people you meet once a week means it doesn't seem so scary talking to an audience of people about something you have had time to prepare for.

Well, the problem with Ann Romney is twofold:

1) She has nothing relevant to say as Mrs. Mittens. If she doesn't sing her husband's praises, that would be noteworthy, but they also wouldn't give her the microphone.

2) She has nothing relevant to say as herself. She isn't a terrible person by any means, but she is a very boring and unrelatable rich white woman with no personal experience...doing anything. She is not Nancy Reagan, or even Hillary Clinton.

Which is why she does very, very badly in interviews. She's farther out of touch with regular human beings that Mitt.

Red_Rob wrote:

Stahlseele wrote:Or do it like me:
don't do speeches if you are not held at gun point.

in school i usually got a's and the occassional b for the written part of essays and then an f for refusing to do the speech thing.

fucking hate having to stand in front of people and talk about stuff . . .
makes me uncomfortable as hell to the point of nervous breakdown x.x

I find DMing is good practice for public speaking. Putting on a funny voice and talking at length in front of people you meet once a week means it doesn't seem so scary talking to an audience of people about something you have had time to prepare for.

you can put me into a place and i can strike up a conversation with basically just about anybody . . i do tech-support for a living right now, i can talk untill the sun burns out to people about just about anything . . but have me stand somewhere before people who expect me to do a speech or something like that, and i get the shakes . . actual shakes . . i just can't do it. i lock up and that's that. i have walked out on superiors at work because of this . .

What was really amusing was how the Republicans in the primary were all down on Obama for using a Teleprompter, and they opted not to use them, and produced an endless string of gaffes, most memorably one of them forgetting one of the departments he wanted to cut.

That was incredibly hilarious.

name_here wrote:What was really amusing was how the Republicans in the primary were all down on Obama for using a Teleprompter, and they opted not to use them, and produced an endless string of gaffes, most memorably one of them forgetting one of the departments he wanted to cut.

That was incredibly hilarious.

Well, that was during a debate where he wouldn't have been using a teleprompter anyway. I'd hope.

Let this not diminish the hilariousness of it, however.

That actually makes it funnier, that they'd ask him not to use something he had no intention of using anyway as though that was their trump card. "Hey, for your next speech, you can't use a pogo-stick! Take THAT!"