I
am qualified to speak about the physical skills that must be
recognized, monitored, and studied by anyone who will be observed,
photographed, and videoed by large numbers of people in the public
setting. I've made over a thousand court appearances as a lawyer, and
for the last ten years I have routinely taught classes of four hours
duration with around one hundred students. Many of those classes were
videoed for later use on my university's web site, and everyone has a
camera handy now and loves to take photos. I never knew when they
were taping a class, so I always assumed that they were. In court
there was almost always a court reporter making a transcription of
every word, and usually also every “ahhhhh,” and “ummmmm.”
You had to be careful to compose your spoken sentences so that they
could not be ridiculed later on. I considered the problems
associated with this kind of life, and I came to some conclusions.
There
are three major skills that must be considered by anyone who wishes
to make a living in the public eye: 1) voice control; 2) gesture
control; and 3) expression control.
Voice
Control
Your
voice is of paramount importance. Even on video, it is your voice
that is carrying the informational element of your presentation. In
any kind of public presentation, you cannot use the same voice that
you use to talk to your mom on the phone, or when discussing just any
old thing with your friend over a coffee.
All
public speaking is an acting job. When it is your turn to speak, you
must project with an almost Shakespearean volume of tone, like you
were channeling Sir Laurence Olivier or something. You need it to cut
through the ambient noise and register in the brains of people who
are either distracted by something else or thinking mostly of what
they are going to say when it is their turn. YOU MUST MAKE A VOICE.
The “oh, shucks” tone does not work in public settings.
Has
Mr. Kavanaugh been living up to this requirement? I am under strict
doctors orders not to take in too much news these days, so I haven't
heard enough to make specific criticisms. It is clear, however, that
he does not pay enough attention to keeping his mouth shut until he
has a sentence prepared that it worth saying at all, much less
recording for posterity. There's a lot of stumbling going on, a lot
of confusion being registered. This is just not cool. It's not
professional, and it falls well short of the requirements for anyone
who wishes to be considered talented at making public presentations.
Gesture
Control
Gesture
control is one that does not immediately seem important to most
people, but really it is of critical importance. Think of President
Trump (no matter how distasteful that may be). Recall his hand
gestures while he is making his rambling, incoherent speeches. His
hand movements are stiff and jerky. Often, they are silly, like when
he seems to be tracking the movement of a bouncing ball across the
air above his podium. Now picture the way he hunches his shoulders,
or holds up one hand with his middle finger and thumb making a
circle, waving it around for a while. Those are examples of someone
who has never considered the requirements of proper communications.
Mr.
Kavanaugh seems equally guilty of failing to understand the
importance of gesture control, failing to study the science of it in
order to get better at it, and failing dismally at avoiding
embarrassing gestures in very important public appearances. Sitting
in congress this week, he often seemed to be trying to cast some kind
of Harry Potter spell with his fingers in weird, unnatural postures.
Please! I'm only a
small time lawyer turned relatively unimportant university lecturer,
and yet I've devoted more time and thought to these things than
either the President of the United States or his nominee for
appointment to the Supreme Court? That doesn't sound right, now does
it?
Expression
Control
Expression
control is where Mr. Kavanaugh really fails spectacularly. He makes
the weirdest damn faces, it's like he has Tourettes or something. Any
little situation is enough to set his face muscles chasing off into
the emotional distance. Someone wants to shake his hand? His face
seeks simultaneously to display displeasure, fear, and rage. Even his
relaxed smile is so desperate and unnatural that it more conveys the
feeling of a forlorn hope that he is performing adequately. His
facial muscles themselves seem to be working at cross purposes and
against his best interests. He has this ability, when he purses his
lips, to tense the muscles just in the very center of his lower lip
so that they create two deep lines. I've never seen that one before.
Pursing your lips in the first place is almost never a good idea,
unless you are acting on a soap-opera. The photographs that appear in
the news are uniformly awful. Virtually every still picture of him
that I have seen has indicated that here is a person that has no idea
that one's expression is something that one could, with a bit of
practice, control. It's all so amateurish and silly.
So
What?
I
am a harsh critic of certain things. This just happens to be one of
them. Serious people study these things, while I just try to be aware
of them and monitor them carefully. My interest in improving my own
performance makes me interested in observing the performance of
others.
Of
our recent presidents, Bill Clinton did a very good job in all three
modalities while he was president, but by now his expression control
is a bit sloppy. He almost looks medicated sometimes. Hillary,
although not a president herself, has lived with the concept more
than most people. She's not great at any of these three skills, and
that failure cost her the very few votes that she would have needed
to win. George W. Bush was a terrible public speaker, but he did have a certain hayseed-charisma that allowed him to get away with it most of the time. President Obama? Long time readers can guess where I'm going
with this. President Obama had obviously considered these problems
carefully, received some instruction, and practiced on video
extensively. As a result, his speeches were usually clinics in how to
monitor one's presentation. He is always in tight control of every
aspect of his public persona. From his earliest appearance on the political scene, and continuing to this day, he has been a very good public speaker.
This
guy Kavanaugh will be raised to the Supreme Court any second now, owing mostly to
the Black Flag nature of our politics these days. It's in the bag, mostly due to the sad fact that Americans have given up voting for some unknown reason. Then we'll be stuck
with him for a good long time, unless they can figure out a way to
impeach him. Nothing would surprise me anymore. It will be
interesting, but not in a good way, to watch him immediately adopt
Imperial Mannerisms as he sits on the Supreme Court bench, like he
was Darth Stupidus or something. His votes, and his written
decisions, will make Gorsuch look good, which may turn out to be the
greatest accomplishment of Kavanaugh's life.
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