"Tell them about your dream"

"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had originally prepared a short and somewhat formal recitation of the sufferings of African Americans attempting to realize their freedom in a society chained by discrimination. He was about to sit down when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out, "Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!" Encouraged by shouts from the audience, King drew upon some of his past talks, and the result became the landmark statement of civil rights in America -- a dream of all people, of all races and colors and backgrounds, sharing in an America marked by freedom and democracy." --US Diplomatic Mission to Germany.


On King Day 2012, I am reflecting how much we've lost with regards to the unguarded moment and the art of political improvisation, even political bravery.

There are few unguarded or improvised moments in the life of any politician these days. New technologies and have all but made such a moment as the drama of King's speech impossible today; no politician ever wants to veer much from script. In fact, many of their communications directors no longer even bother to fulfill information requests, but rather try to put writers on the spot with questions of their own, even trying to control what's said or written about them, parsing information frugally, and only agreeing to safe interviews with less-experienced journalists easily flattered by access.

In this week's LA Weekly, we see Eric Garcetti scuttling down a City Hall corridor, insisting that he doesn't have enough time to talk to the publication. The incident is a telling one, because it's easy to build a case against the news side of the LA Weekly with its perpetually raving managing editor and its nascent schmoopie-in-chief. Many in Council, in fact, have learned there's little downside in not talking to the Weekly at all, feeling far safer talking to fawning scribes who have no memory of the Herald Examiner than to some who have been writing news analysis and opinion pieces for over thirty years. If not them, who? It seems odd to be able to make less time for the Weekly than, say, the Los Feliz Ledger.

Even someone experienced enough to know better, Zev Yaroslavsky now controls things too tightly as well: last week he spoke at the Palm, and two local scribes for major publications, Jim Newton and Jon Regardie, were obliged to write pieces on their audience with the Zev through another interviewer's (a teevee interviewer's, natch) filter. The point of all this bonhomie was to say--nothing new at all, just to keep Zev's name in front of them as a potential candidate. And thus, nothing new was dutifully reported, although the obvious was stated again and again. But really--this is public service? Does a newsmaker really make news when he hosts a banquet with a single interviewer in pocket, and makes no news other than emphasizing yet again that he is making no news?

Or consider this hilarious, tightly-controlled page: Paul Krekorian's on wikipedia. St. Paul, according to this encyclopedic hagiography--ten times longer than Tom LaBonge's, who has served the City almost ten times as long--"has garnered praise for his 'thoughtful' approach and 'decisive' action to help his district and the city of Los Angeles." For dozens of paragraphs, with some references to bloggers half his age, he garners such laurels. Nobody cares enough about St. Paul's wikipedia page to challenge; but who, foe or even friend, reads this much-varnished, beyond comprehensive bio without snickering?

And we needn't say much about the stagecraft of the Mayor. There is little hope of redemption at this point--we've seen the track record, and even other Council members have complained to me about access.

Before rhetoric was supplanted in our college curricula with the voodoo of psychology a century ago, orators and writers alike knew the concept of "kairos"--"a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved."

King's speech was such a moment, and he drove forcefully through it. But alas, with media so vulnerable and under-resourced today, and social media so readily employable for scripting rather than sincere dialog, politicians and public figures don't even avail themselves to improvisation or even real conversation much anymore. They pay the price: everything they say and do comes off as staged, lackluster, scripted, counterfeit.