spinline.net: The Blog

I don’t have much to say about the substance of Obama’s speech; there are certainly others who can muster up more thoughtful things to say than I could. As for the delivery, I have to say, that drawl or twang or whatever that he’s affecting sounds awkward and is just a bad idea all around.

This isn’t the first time he’s adopted the twang but it seems like he’s doing it more often recently. Hillary Clinton does the same thing on occasion, adopting an attempted folksy drawl depending on the audience and venue. With Hillary, the effect is just horrible; nails-on-chalkboard excruciating. But then again, she is not good at delivering speeches in general, this week notwithstanding, while Obama is a gifted speaker so the effect is not nearly as bad. Still, the twang is cloying and counterproductive attempt to add a dash of working-class authenticity. It doesn’t play to his strengths and he doesn’t need to do this.

NOTE: It’s annoying when Pat Buchanan does it too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.