Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> >
> > How do we perceive an orator who describes his own humbleness as
> > "great"? Particularly right after using the word "profound" to
> > describe his gratitude?
>
> um, "great" as in "large"? like a "great lake"? not as in "catherine the
> great"?
>
> anyway, since when has the rhetorical topos of humility not been, well, a
> topos. of course he does that. so did people like cicero and paul. i think
> if we simply complain about it being fake we are missing a lot of what's
> going on.
I haven't followed this closely enough to know whose speeches are being discussed (and of course I haven't listened to or read _any_ of the election speeches), but I would like to say a word in defense of _anyone's_ opening, however silly it may sound in isolation. Beginnings are damnably difficult, witness the asinine beginning to a great poem:
Let Observation with extensive View, Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
(Vanity of Human Wishes)
Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively! But it IS a wonderful poem -- and only a fool would condemn it on the basis of the absurd opening.
Carrol