{"id":41194,"date":"2014-01-20T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T18:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41194"},"modified":"2014-01-20T12:12:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T18:12:44","slug":"the-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41194","title":{"rendered":"The Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, on the official observance of Martin Luther King&#8217;s birthday, here&#8217;s a reminder of what the fuss is all about:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HRIF4_WzU1w\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, I heard a report on NPR that noted that among African-Americans, people are actually desensitized to the &#8220;I Have A Dream&#8221; speech. \u00a0It&#8217;s actually overplayed; people hear it so much, so often, and in so many contexts, that people are more or less numb to it.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s a shame bordering on cultural crime; in an era when public oratory seems a dying art, when the likes of Barack Obama are considered &#8220;great public speakers&#8221;, listening to one of the greats &#8211; Reagan, Thatcher, JFK, Churchill and of course King &#8211; is both a thrill and, in a way, almost retro. The idea of being able to move people, not just with words but with rhythm alliteration, repetition for effect, assonance, structure and tone &#8211; seems almost a lost art.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a crying shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, on the official observance of Martin Luther King&#8217;s birthday, here&#8217;s a reminder of what the fuss is all about: A few years ago, I heard a report on NPR that noted that among African-Americans, people are actually desensitized to the &#8220;I Have A Dream&#8221; speech. \u00a0It&#8217;s actually overplayed; people hear it so much, so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebony-and-ivory","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41194"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41196,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41194\/revisions\/41196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}