US NEW & WORLD REPORT has an article by Suzi Parker revealing that our own “First Lady,” Michelle Obama received…fasten your seatbelts…Teleprompter-reading coaching in 2009 so that like her “eloquent” husband, she, too, could learn to communicate with the masses with little or no actual effort — except, of course, the intense effort it takes to read a Teleprompter.
Speech coach Christine Jahnke, author of the new book The Well-Spkoen Woman, reveals that she taught the first lady how to use a Teleprompter in advance of her pitch in 2009 to the Olympic Committee in Denmark to pick Chicago for the 2016 Olympics, won by Rio de Janeiro.
We all know how well that turned out for Chicago. Not only did Michelle make a Teleprompter-assisted pitch for her home town, but her oh-so-persuasive husband did, as well. And the winner was…Rio.
“She is obviously a fine speaker,” Jahnke says. “But the Olympic speech was on a Teleprompter, and she was less familiar with that technique.”
Well, if you say so, Ms. Jahnke. But normally, when an “obviously … fine speaker” speaks, he or she doesn’t need a Teleprompter.
Jahnke says Obama rehearsed four times and made time to do so even amid important meetings. “A well-spoken woman takes a speech seriously and prepares,” Jahnke says.
Like no president before, President Obama is a huge fan of the Teleprompter, using it at both formal and social events. So it’s natural for the rest of the family to follow suit.
Is that a subtle hint that we’ll soon be underwriting Sasha’s and Malia’s Teleprompter-reading coaching sessions? And Michelle’s mother’s, and the President’s uncle’s? Leave no Obama behind in using the all-important crutch of “obviously..fine speaker”s’ favorite oratorical aide.
Jahnke has some tips for the first lady Obama as she prepares to hit the campaign trail for her husband’s re-elect. “What she did well in 2008, she should be doing again, which is showing his personal side,” Jahnke says. “She brings so much warmth when she is talking about the family and their experiences as the first family. She does that so well that through her we see that side of him that we don’t usually see when he is giving a speech to the joint members of Congress,” adds the speech coach.
Does anyone want to hazard a guess who paid for Michelle’s Teleprompter-coaching? The Democratic National Committee? I seriously doubt it. This seems like exactly the sort of thing you and I and every tax-paying American underwrote, not unlike her recent safari with the Obama daughters getting a tax-payer-supported boondoggle, masquerading as “senior staff” –and that charade was well in advance of Halloween. Wonder what the First Daughters will be masquerading as on October 31. Cabinet Secretaries? Your guess is as good as mine.
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