Title : Who wrote Joe Biden's blood-red "soul of America" speech? Jon "Soul of America" Meacham?
link : Who wrote Joe Biden's blood-red "soul of America" speech? Jon "Soul of America" Meacham?
Who wrote Joe Biden's blood-red "soul of America" speech? Jon "Soul of America" Meacham?
I should have guessed, because I've blogged about Meacham's input into Biden rhetoric a few times, but I needed this Politico article to jog my memory: "The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search/But the actions of Trump and his supporters, along with threats of violence, sped up Biden’s need to address the nation."
"Democracy speech"? Is that what they want it called? The speech where he demonized half of American voters?
President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history.
Ugh! Warning us about our fellow citizens. Accusing us of "assault." Claiming to represent "democracy." I hope that was "unlike anything in modern American history," because it was horrible.
It also was months in the making....
So they didn't just brainstorm and jumble everything into a first draft and decide it was fine as is? Hmph. They really worked hard on it? Plied literary and editing skills and all? They meant it. Or they're bullshitting now, trying to shore up the President's reputation.
The actual writing of the speech started about three weeks ago, with Jon Meacham, the historian who has had a hand in a number of Biden’s most sweeping speeches, helping the framing....
He was one of the framers. Who knows how much he did — whether he envisioned the entire arc of the rhetoric or whether talentless hacks rifled through his "Soul of America" book for phrases to upgrade their drivel?
The Politico article goes on and on with mindless assertions like "the belief inside the White House is that the address was simply unavoidable."
There's nothing more about Meacham, so let me go back into my archive and pull out the 3 old posts where I'd discussed Meacham's contribution to Biden's rhetoric:
November 10, 2020: We learned that Meacham contributed to the writing of Biden's victory speech (and also went on MSNBC praising the speech and not disclosing that he'd worked on it). I quoted a NYT article:
In [his victory speech], Mr. Biden spoke of a mission “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and to make America respected around the world again” and was widely credited with striking the right tone about bringing the country back together. The language echoed the title of Mr. Meacham’s 2018 book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” which has long served as a touchstone for Mr. Biden, who has reached out to Mr. Meacham in the past to discuss passages he liked.... Mr. Biden’s reliance on a historian stands in contrast with President Trump’s lack of interest in the past....
November 11, 2020: I said Biden's victory speech, with its Meacham material reminded me of "The Grapes of Wrath," the part where Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) expresses the belief that there's just one big soul: "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." My comment (ad libbed during a podcast in which I read the text of my November 10th post):
What do you think of the idea that a country has a soul?... I like to think of the idea that individual human beings have a soul, and when I hear of this composite soul of an entire country, I'm skeptical.... That's what makes me think of fascism.... especially if you're not acknowledging the soul of individual people, and so often, from the Democratic side, I get the sense that they view their opponents as being soulless... and I feel that they're also antagonistic to individualism. Everyone needs to think the same thing, and people should be cancelled if they don't all say the same thing.... I read that as a rejection of the sense that individual people have a soul, and then you come at this with the idea that America has a soul. There's just an Oversoul to America....
This idea of the nation's soul has bothered me for a long time. It purports to express what America is, but it's out of line with the American values of individualism and also freedom of religion and the separation of religion and government. It's latched onto by shallow politician trying to sound deep. Or... I hope that's all it is. If he's serious and actually believes deeply in this deep-appearing notion, then we need to worry that he's stumbling down the road to fascism.
February 17, 2021: I quote something Biden said during a CNN town hall. He was rambling on the topic of living in the White House:
And I feel a sense of — I must tell you, a sense of history about it. Jon Meacham, who you know, and several other presidential historians helped me with my — I asked my brother, who's good at this, to set up the Oval Office for me.... And what you realize is, the most consequential thing, for me, is.... I always in the past looked at the presidency in the terms of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, and how can — like they're superhuman. But I had to remind myself that the really fine men that I knew well, the last seven presidents, and at least there are people who I knew well enough to know that I could play on the same team with. So, it took away the sense of, this is — my God, I'm not Abraham Lincoln. I'm not Franklin Roosevelt. How do I deal with these problems?
Meacham was just a stray, non-nutritious nugget in that word salad. All you can say is that if you ask Biden to name a historian, he'll probably say Jon Meacham.
I should have guessed, because I've blogged about Meacham's input into Biden rhetoric a few times, but I needed this Politico article to jog my memory: "The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search/But the actions of Trump and his supporters, along with threats of violence, sped up Biden’s need to address the nation."
"Democracy speech"? Is that what they want it called? The speech where he demonized half of American voters?
President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history.
Ugh! Warning us about our fellow citizens. Accusing us of "assault." Claiming to represent "democracy." I hope that was "unlike anything in modern American history," because it was horrible.
It also was months in the making....
So they didn't just brainstorm and jumble everything into a first draft and decide it was fine as is? Hmph. They really worked hard on it? Plied literary and editing skills and all? They meant it. Or they're bullshitting now, trying to shore up the President's reputation.
The actual writing of the speech started about three weeks ago, with Jon Meacham, the historian who has had a hand in a number of Biden’s most sweeping speeches, helping the framing....
He was one of the framers. Who knows how much he did — whether he envisioned the entire arc of the rhetoric or whether talentless hacks rifled through his "Soul of America" book for phrases to upgrade their drivel?
The Politico article goes on and on with mindless assertions like "the belief inside the White House is that the address was simply unavoidable."
There's nothing more about Meacham, so let me go back into my archive and pull out the 3 old posts where I'd discussed Meacham's contribution to Biden's rhetoric:
November 10, 2020: We learned that Meacham contributed to the writing of Biden's victory speech (and also went on MSNBC praising the speech and not disclosing that he'd worked on it). I quoted a NYT article:
In [his victory speech], Mr. Biden spoke of a mission “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and to make America respected around the world again” and was widely credited with striking the right tone about bringing the country back together. The language echoed the title of Mr. Meacham’s 2018 book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” which has long served as a touchstone for Mr. Biden, who has reached out to Mr. Meacham in the past to discuss passages he liked.... Mr. Biden’s reliance on a historian stands in contrast with President Trump’s lack of interest in the past....
November 11, 2020: I said Biden's victory speech, with its Meacham material reminded me of "The Grapes of Wrath," the part where Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) expresses the belief that there's just one big soul: "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." My comment (ad libbed during a podcast in which I read the text of my November 10th post):
What do you think of the idea that a country has a soul?... I like to think of the idea that individual human beings have a soul, and when I hear of this composite soul of an entire country, I'm skeptical.... That's what makes me think of fascism.... especially if you're not acknowledging the soul of individual people, and so often, from the Democratic side, I get the sense that they view their opponents as being soulless... and I feel that they're also antagonistic to individualism. Everyone needs to think the same thing, and people should be cancelled if they don't all say the same thing.... I read that as a rejection of the sense that individual people have a soul, and then you come at this with the idea that America has a soul. There's just an Oversoul to America....
This idea of the nation's soul has bothered me for a long time. It purports to express what America is, but it's out of line with the American values of individualism and also freedom of religion and the separation of religion and government. It's latched onto by shallow politician trying to sound deep. Or... I hope that's all it is. If he's serious and actually believes deeply in this deep-appearing notion, then we need to worry that he's stumbling down the road to fascism.
February 17, 2021: I quote something Biden said during a CNN town hall. He was rambling on the topic of living in the White House:
And I feel a sense of — I must tell you, a sense of history about it. Jon Meacham, who you know, and several other presidential historians helped me with my — I asked my brother, who's good at this, to set up the Oval Office for me.... And what you realize is, the most consequential thing, for me, is.... I always in the past looked at the presidency in the terms of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and George Washington, and how can — like they're superhuman. But I had to remind myself that the really fine men that I knew well, the last seven presidents, and at least there are people who I knew well enough to know that I could play on the same team with. So, it took away the sense of, this is — my God, I'm not Abraham Lincoln. I'm not Franklin Roosevelt. How do I deal with these problems?
Meacham was just a stray, non-nutritious nugget in that word salad. All you can say is that if you ask Biden to name a historian, he'll probably say Jon Meacham.
Thus articles Who wrote Joe Biden's blood-red "soul of America" speech? Jon "Soul of America" Meacham?
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