Why do politicians bother delivering speeches?

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footage of them speaking usually ends up on tv, but without exception the content of politicians' speeches are made known in advance to the media. they may as well just issue communiques and end the pretence.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

http://radar.smh.com.au/archives/hit_melon.gif

― Hitler, Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

They should just re-use old footage of them giving a different speech and then dub the new speech over the top each time. Maybe the person doing the overdub could change and perhaps there could be a "mystery voice" competition. I'd love to see Jeremy Paxman saying at the end of Newsnight "And the winner of our mystery voice competition, who correctly identified that it was Harry Hill doing the voice of David Cameron is Liz Keating from Doncaster. Congratulations Liz, you win a Newsnight T-shirt"

― James Ward (jamesmichaelward), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:03 (twenty years ago)

the content of politicians' speeches are made known in advance to the media.

Quite aside from the fact that they often have barely any content to speak of.

To answer your orginal question: it's so the electorate know who has the shiniest teeth, and thus who to vote for.

― chap who would dare to tell uninteresting celeb spotting stories (chap), Wednesday, 30 November 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

The last presidential speeches I heard that had any pretence to worthwhile content were by James Earl Carter. Those were no great shakes, but there was at least a reason to listen to them. Starting with Ronald Reagan and the Peggy Noonan crew, all content has been carefully scrubbed out and replaced by bouquets of plastic flowers.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 30 November 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

Yeah but see there's this whole weird practice where there are actually people in the room with them -- it's referred to as an "audience" -- listening to the speech. They might not even like it, but they walk away thinking that they saw that one politician up there speaking, and boy was he for real and stuff, and wasn't it nice of him to actually come speak to them directly, unlike that other guy, who apparently didn't think their organization was worth it?

If not for that actual in-the-room effect and symbolic among-the-people stuff, then yeah, I get the feeling loads of politicians would just make brief statements consisting solely of the three sentences they wanted to show up on the news later. (Communiques wouldn't work, because nobody likes hearing the news anchor read what someone said over a screenful of text.)

― nabiscothingy, Wednesday, 30 November 2005 01:50 (twenty years ago)

I wish more/some politicians would do like the protagonist ofKongi's Harvest and make eight-hour speeches elucidating every aspect of their political vision no matter how insane

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 30 November 2005 02:45 (twenty years ago)

that watermelon looks delicious. fuck winter.

― JD from CDepot, Wednesday, 30 November 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

ten years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg7gLIx__-k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG6xMglSMdk

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 July 2016 21:14 (nine years ago)

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