Biographies Are the Bunk

It’s intolerable to overload an introduction with biographical detail. Biographical speeches often sound syrupy as they set out the subject’s stimulating dreams, or his strenuous past. These sketches also follow a stereotyped form-usually the speaker begins by saying:

You probably never heard of Joe. Joe probably never heard of you either. But if you are a thinking man, he knows a lot about your thoughts.

This is followed by a flashback to his humble ancestry:
111 start with Joe’s Mother. After all, that’s where most people start.
Joe was born rather suddenly in “St. Jo” by the “Big Mo.” His Ma and Pa were so fond of their product that a family of five children followed. Saturday night baths in a tin tub were in inverse order according to age; the baby got the clean water . . . that’s why Joe always looked tanned when he was a kid until he got to girling around and decided to share the horse trough with the horses.

Later in life whenever Joe walked into a luxury hotel and saw the gleaming bathroom fixtures, he recalled that old galvanized tub in the kitchen. The speaker follows closely the course of Joe’s career- a course that aroused the jealousies of lesser lights, and this observation is followed by a thumb-nose sketch of his enemies. Then by way of contrast, Joe’s virtues appear and the wind-up is wound around a few parting words of wisdom, such as:
He believed that everyone around him was as honest as he was-a stubborn faith that wasn’t justified in every instance. Joe was frequently hurt and hurt badly-yet even these experiences failed to shake his belief in the goodness of people.

So much for Joe. The speaker’s presence is ample evidence that he was born-and how many people care where?
Natal notes seldom stimulate interest. When Kentucky’s Governor “Happy” Chandler publicly praised a centenarian, a mountaineer muttered,

“Oh, I dunno. He’s done nuthin’ ‘cept grow old and look how long it took him!”

Tags: public speaking

Kindly consider linking to this article by just copying and pasting the code below on your website/blog ( press Ctrl+C to copy the entire code). The text link will look on your website like this: Biographies Are the Bunk

<a href="http://www.public-speaking-art.com/biographies-are-the-bunk.html">Biographies Are the Bunk</a>